Anwar warns of new ‘racist’ narrative among Malaysians

Mr Anwar Ibrahim said the views of the minorities
on their views of Islam should not be shunned and
they should be given the space to express their opinions.

17 May, 2019

SELANGOR — Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said on Thursday (May 16) that there is a new narrative on racism that needs to be addressed before Malaysia can move forward.

He said the narrative does not only exist within the Malay community, but also in the Indian and Chinese community.

“Some have the perception that racist tool is only within the Malays but this is not true. It is also within the Indian and Chinese races.

["Racist Tool"? Such language from someone who is to be PM!}

From making waves to drowning in red ink: Hyflux, Tuaspring and how a business giant came undone

As Hyflux’s dramatic debt restructuring continues to unfold, its flagship Tuaspring desalination plant was taken over on Saturday (May 18) by PUB at no cost. CNA looks back at how the ambitious project started - and then floundered.


ByTang See Kit

18 May 2019


SINGAPORE: As they arrived, the guests would have been in no doubt they were attending a high-profile event.

Huge balloons and congratulatory flowers festooned the area. Drummers and a Chinese orchestra revved up the celebratory atmosphere. Photographers clicked away as guests streamed in and warm handshakes were exchanged.

At the centre of it all was Olivia Lum, the founder of home-grown star company Hyflux.

Dressed in a black and white pant suit, the businesswoman, whose name was synonymous with the water treatment giant she built, had a broad smile when the day’s special guest, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, arrived.

It was a happy day, as seen from the scenes captured by a video on Youtube.

The event was the opening of Tuaspring desalination plant – Singapore’s second and largest seawater treatment plant supplying 70 million gallons of treated water, or 125 Olympic-sized pools worth of water, per day for 25 years.

It was also the first water plant in Singapore and Asia to be integrated with a power generator.

Seniors each need at least S$1,379 monthly to meet basic needs: Study

Singapore

By JANICE LIM

23 MAY, 2019

SINGAPORE — A Singaporean senior citizen aged 65 and above and living alone needs about S$1,379 a month to meet basic standards of living.

The amount increases to S$1,721 for those aged between 55 and 64.

As for couples aged 65 and older, they need S$2,351 a month.

That is what a team of researchers found after conducting focus-group discussions with more than 100 people who come from various ethnic groups, housing types and educational levels. Almost nine in 10 (89 per cent) were aged 55 and above.

Led by Assistant Professor Ng Koe Hoe from the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, the study seeks to find out the amount of money needed for older people to achieve a basic standard of living in Singapore today.

The heat is on: Earth is getting ‘very, very close’ to crossing tipping point, scientist warns

By Low Youjin

06 June, 2019


SINGAPORE — Just days after an Australian think tank issued a gloomy report warning that climate change will end human civilisation by 2050, another scientist has made a similarly dire forecast.

[Right. Humans are so unadaptable. We're doomed.]

Speaking at the Ecosperity conference in Singapore on Thursday (June 6), Dr Will Steffen, emeritus professor at the Australian National University, said that Earth is “getting very, very close to crossing tipping points we won't be able to get back from”.

He added: “We scientists are getting really concerned.”

[We are GOING to go past the tipping point!]

30 years after Tiananmen, a Chinese military insider warns: Never forget

29 May, 2019

BEIJING — For three decades, Ms Jiang Lin kept quiet about the carnage she had seen on the night when the Chinese army rolled through Beijing to crush student protests in Tiananmen Square.

But the memories tormented her — of soldiers firing into crowds in the dark, bodies slumped in pools of blood and the thud of clubs when troops bludgeoned her to the ground near the square.

Ms Jiang was a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army back then, with a firsthand view of both the massacre and a failed attempt by senior commanders to dissuade China’s leaders from using military force to crush the pro-democracy protests.

‘Wow, what is that?’ US Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects

01 June, 2019

WASHINGTON — The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East coast.

Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds.

“These things would be out there all day,” said Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”

In late 2014, a Super Hornet pilot had a near collision with one of the objects, and an official mishap report was filed. Some of the incidents were captured on video, including one taken by a plane’s camera in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the ocean waves as pilots question what they are watching.

“Wow, what is that, man?” one exclaims. “Look at it fly!”

Coming in 2050? The end of human civilisation due to climate change, warns report

By Faris Mokhtar

04 June, 2019


SINGAPORE — A dystopian world beset by “outright chaos”, overwhelming threats to global security and political panic, could be upon mankind by 2050, a report from an Australian think-tank has warned.

Climate change, if left on its current trajectory, could by then spell the end of global civilisation as it is known, as devastating floods, lethal heat conditions “beyond the threshold of human survivability” and the collapse of ecosystems, grip the planet.

This nightmare 2050 scenario was presented in a policy paper published on May 30 by independent Australian think-tank Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. It has also been endorsed by a former Australian defence chief.

“Climate change now represents a near to mid-term existential threat to human civilisation,” said the authors of the paper, Mr David Spratt, a research director at the think-tank and Mr Ian Dunlop, a former chairman of the Australian Coal Association and a former international oil, gas and coal industry executive.