Here's the News.
All the news worth reading. (To me anyway)
Note that this is a news clippings blog. Articles (mainly from Straits Times) are NOT written by me.
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The share of Chinese restaurants has fallen in metro areas across the country in the last five years. Many owners are glad their children won’t be taking over.
New York Times
By Amelia Nierenberg and Quoctrung Bui
Dec. 24, 2019
KINGSTON, N.Y. — More than 40 years after buying Eng’s, a Chinese-American restaurant in the Hudson Valley, Tom Sit is reluctantly considering retirement.
For much of his life, Mr. Sit has worked here seven days a week, 12 hours a day. He cooks in the same kitchen where he worked as a young immigrant from China. He parks in the same lot where he’d take breaks and read his wife’s letters, sent from Montreal while they courted by post in the late 1970s. He seats his regulars at the same tables where his three daughters did homework.
Two years ago, at the insistence of his wife, Faye Lee Sit, he started taking off one day a week. Still, it’s not sustainable. He’s 76, and they’re going to be grandparents soon. Working 80 hours a week is just too hard. But his grown daughters, who have college degrees and well-paying jobs, don’t intend to take over.
Two vloggers may have found the perfect solution to China’s rising meat consumption – a critter some consider pests, the programme China’s Growing Appetite discovers.
Bamboo rats are considered pests by farmers because they eat root crops. But now the rodents are being farmed for their meat.
For Singapore, the past decade has been by turns turbulent, mournful and jubilant.
The 2010s bore witness to a brazen show of public disorder when a riot erupted in Little India. To a nation grieving the death of its founding prime minister. To an awe-inspiring 50th birthday bash. To Singapore’s first Olympic gold. The list runs on.
Summing up the decade, sociologist Tan Ern Ser of the National University of Singapore said a watershed General Election in 2011 — which saw the country’s ruling party record its lowest share of the vote since independence — was the first major event of the decade that underlined Singaporeans’ unhappiness with an influx of foreigners, among other things.
The cost of living and widening social inequality were also uppermost on people’s minds over the decade. Digital disruption has also gathered speed, with the attendant challenges making it more urgent for Singaporeans to sharpen their skills to ride out the industrial transformation taking root here and globally, said Associate Professor Tan.
My full name — Prakash Kuttickattu House Ramanpillai Gokkallan Nair — is 47 letters long.
[Must be a joy filling up forms requiring full name as in NRIC. See below "About the Author" for a hint as to why he put his full name out.]
Most people know me as Prakash, and most people would consider Nair to be my surname. Gokkallan and Ramanpillai are my father’s and grandfather’s names respectively.
On the other hand, Kuttickattu (roughly meaning “small forest” in my mother tongue, Malayalam), is actually the name of my ancestral home in Kerala, India.
And it is from Kuttickattu that I write this piece.
2019 will be remembered as a year of mass street protests, including violent ones. The sharp disruptions to normalcy highlight the resistance to the dysfunctional status quo and the quest for political and socio-economic change in increasingly polarised societies.
While taking to the streets in protest is not new, this year’s unrest in at least 18 countries in different corners of the world is characterised by the breadth and intensity of the protests.
What else can we glean from these protests and what do they say about governance today?
On Sunday (Dec 15), an international meeting to push through bolder measures to tackle climate change fell through, after countries were unable to come to an agreement on the details.
The 2019 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, was held in the Spanish capital of Madrid, and had brought together close to 200 countries over a span of two weeks to sort through the details of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change signed in 2016.
Despite running for two days longer than initially expected, making it the longest-running climate change conference in the UN’s history, little was achieved beyond broad statements calling for countries to do more to fight climate change by next year.
TODAY looks at what the COP25 was supposed to achieve, why it was so pressing to achieve these targets and what were the sticking points at the conference.
As someone who works in the field of scenario planning, I find that every end of year brings no shortage of amusement and more than a little dose of humility. This is because this is the season for us working in the field to review forecasts and predictions made 12 months earlier, and see how hilariously and hideously we got them mostly wrong.
In a matter of days, we will welcome 2020, marking not only the end of a year, but also an eventful decade.
More than that, 2020 is one of those time horizons that Generation Xers like myself thought would always be distant and mythical enough that it could be the basis for long-term scenarios.
Indeed, the first-ever set of national scenarios that the Singapore Government crafted more than two decades ago used the year 2020 to imagine the nation’s future. But more on that later.
Growing up, I always thought of “the future” as 2020. But now, here 2020 comes.
Trade wars rarely have victors. They do, however, sometimes have losers. And United States President Donald Trump has definitely turned out to be a loser.
Of course, that’s not the way he and his team are portraying the tentative deal they’ve struck with China, which they’re claiming as a triumph. The reality is that the Trump administration achieved almost none of its goals; it has basically declared victory while going into headlong retreat.
And the Chinese know it. As The New York Times reports, Chinese officials are “jubilant and even incredulous” at the success of their hard-line negotiating strategy.
To understand what just went down, you need to ask what Mr Trump and company were trying to accomplish with their tariffs, and how that compares with what really happened.
First and foremost, Mr Trump wanted to slash the US trade deficit. Economists more or less unanimously consider this the wrong objective, but in Mr Trump’s mind countries win when they sell more than they buy, and nobody is going to convince him otherwise.
So it’s remarkable to note that the trade deficit has risen, not fallen, on Trump’s watch, from US$544 billion in 2016 to US$691 billion in the 12 months ending in October.
Is it considered rude to ask your local hawkers where they source their food?
This was a question posed by an exchange student on NUSWhispers, an anonymous confessions platform that caters mainly to students from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
NEW YORK: History will record Dec 10, 2019 as the day Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats drew up articles of impeachment against Donald Trump.
But his decision to meet the same day with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, gave a clearer pointer about the tide of US politics.
Had Mr Trump been worried about being convicted in the upcoming Senate trial he would have avoided any contact with Russians.
As it happened, Ms Pelosi omitted direct reference to Mr Trump’s Russia ties. The impeachment articles focused on his “abuse of power” over Ukraine and “obstruction of Congress”.
Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation did not even merit a footnote. This allowed Mr Trump to declare victory on a report that he falsely claimed had exonerated him.
TAIPEI: China has too many other issues to worry about at the moment, from protests in Hong Kong to a slowing economy, to give much thought to Taiwan, the mayor of Taipei, sometimes seen as a potential future president, said on Thursday (Dec 5).
China claims self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under Beijing's control by force if necessary. It regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive issue in China-US ties, Washington being Taiwan's main arms supplier.
But Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, who has advocated for better relations with China, told Reuters that while Taiwan was important to China, it was not currently the "core issue" that Beijing likes to portray.
"They say that Taiwan is a core issue, but I'm very clear that it isn't. Taiwan is not China's core issue," he said.
"In comparison to Hong Kong, to Xinjiang, Taiwan is not on the top of the priority list. For mainland China, there are their economic problems, their GDP has already fallen to below 7 per cent," Ko added in an interview, where he switched between Mandarin and English.
Within the span of a year, Greta Thunberg’s weekly lone ranger act of skipping school to stage a climate strike outside the Swedish parliament has spread globally into what is known as the Fridays for Future (FFF) movement. Despite being at the tender age of 16 and diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, Greta’s display of her commitment to the cause has been impressive.
By refusing environmental awards and refraining from travelling by air for international conferences, she has catapulted herself as a leading climate change campaigner, and earned audiences with various international leaders and politicians.
Her message to them: To “listen to the science”, and also understand the acuteness of impending environmental disasters.
BEIJING: In the end, it took only 20 years for US-China relations to come full circle.
Donald Trump’s decision to sign the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act into law will further complicate the world’s most important bilateral diplomatic relationship.
REACTION AND RESPONSE
Under the Act, the US secretary of state is required to make a determination every year as to whether the “one country, two systems” formula that guarantees Hong Kong’s independent legal system and civil liberties is intact.
If it is not, the US could revoke special economic and commercial privileges that it extends to the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
That, in turn, has provoked a response from China and could enrage Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose administration insists that it continues to honour one country, two systems and is hypersensitive to any suggestions to the contrary.
SHANGHAI: US President Donald Trump signed into law congressional Bills that back protesters in Hong Kong and threaten China with possible sanctions on human rights, prompting China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday (Nov 28) to warn of "firm countermeasures".
Mass protests for more democracy and autonomy have rocked the former British colony and more than 5,800 people have been arrested since June, with the escalating violence raising fears that China will ratchet up its response to end the unrest.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which the Senate and House passed last week, puts the special treatment Hong Kong enjoys under US law under tighter scrutiny linked to the extent of the territory's autonomy from Beijing.
A second Bill, which Trump also signed, bans the export to the Hong Kong police of crowd-control munitions, such as tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and stun guns.
SEOUL - Hwang Hyeon-dong lives in a 6.6-square-metre (71-square-foot) cubicle near his university campus in Seoul, which comes with a shared bathroom and kitchen plus all the rice he can eat, that he rents for 350,000 won ($302) a month.
The sparsely furnished rooms, in premises called goshi-won, were previously mostly used by less well-off students to temporarily cut themselves off from the outside world while they studied for civil service job tests.
Now they are increasingly becoming permanent homes to young people like Hwang, who identifies himself among the "dirt spoons", those born to low-income families who have all but given up on social mobility.
HONG KONG: In January of 1993, an ambitious Chinese Communist Party boss, a 39-year-old official with chubby cheeks and a mop of black hair, visited Hong Kong.
He was seeking out the city’s rich among the shimmering skyscrapers, hoping to secure investment in Fuzhou, the second-tier city he ran in mainland China. His name was Xi Jinping.
That August, Xi received a guest back home. Hong Kong’s most famous tycoon, Li Ka-shing, known locally as “superman” for his business acumen, had come to town. A photograph from the event shows Xi grinning as he walked beside Li, who held a bouquet of flowers in his hand. In the background, a long banner hung with the message to “warmly welcome” Li Ka-shing.
During those days, in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen incident, Beijing was desperate to fire up a languishing economy. National leaders and provincial potentates were courting Li for his cash and the star power his name brought to development projects on the mainland. That time has passed.
HONG KONG - Hong Kong's democrats romped to a landslide and symbolic majority in district council elections after residents turned out in record numbers on Sunday to vote following six months of anti-government protests in the embattled city.
In a rare weekend lull in the unrest that has rocked the financial hub, democratic candidates across the city of 7.4 million people secured more than half of the 452 district council seats for the first time against a strongly resourced and mobilized pro-establishment opposition.
When the results began trickling in after midnight, including upset wins for democrats against heavyweight pro-Beijing opponents, some voting centers erupted in loud cheers and chants of "Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution Now" - a slogan used by many protesters on the streets over the past six months.
Some winning candidates said the result was akin to a vote of support for the demonstrators and could raise the heat on Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive, Carrie Lam, amid the city's worst political crisis in decades.
"This is the power of democracy. This is a democratic tsunami," said Tommy Cheung, a former student protest leader who won a seat in the Yuen Long district close to China's border.
The terms “free speech” and “Singapore” don’t exactly go hand in hand. That’s something that, as a Western-trained (former) journalist who worked at The Straits Times, the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek, among others, I have had a hard time reconciling for the past three decades.
Today, I remain a big believer in civil liberties, press freedom and free speech. But certain circumstances have made me adapt my thinking and slightly amend my belief system. One of these is becoming a parent.
Once you have children, you start to think about how you want your kids to be raised and the influences that will affect them as they mature. You try your best to educate them, teach them how to appreciate, understand, and digest information and opinions.
In many ways, building and running a country is akin to parenting millions of people.
BEIJING — The Chinese government, still coming to terms with a stunning electoral victory for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, is directing its ire at a popular foe: the United States.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the American ambassador to Beijing on Monday (Nov 25), a day after the local elections in Hong Kong that were seen as a rebuke to the authoritarian policies of President Xi Jinping.
Chinese officials warned the ambassador, Mr Terry Branstad, that the United States should “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs,” according to the ministry. They also criticised Congress for passing a bill recently to support the protesters.
LONDON - Global bottled water giants are ramping up trials of easily recyclable aluminum cans to replace plastic that pollutes the world's seas. Sound like a slam-dunk for the environment? Not entirely.
Aluminum cans might indeed mean less ocean waste, but they come with their own eco-price: the production of each can pumps about twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as each plastic bottle.
French group Danone has become the latest company to make a move, telling Reuters it had started to replace some plastic bottles with aluminum cans for local water brands in Britain, Poland and Denmark.
The shift, previously unannounced, comes as multinational rivals like Coca-Cola Co , PepsiCo and Nestle are also launching some canned versions of water brands.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been treated as a hero on Chinese social media since he said the Hong Kong protesters were trying to “humiliate and bring down” the Hong Kong government. Photo: AFP
Alice Wu
29 Oct, 2019
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has recently offered extensive comments on Hong Kong’s situation. At a time when repeating slogans sadly passes for public discourse and tweets are rampant, such thoughtful comments – which essentially require that they be more than 280 characters – without all the hyperbolic dressing are refreshing.
Russia’s efforts to influence elections in the United States and Europe were a wake-up call about the threat of foreign influence in domestic public opinion and politics, blatantly violating norms of non-interference.
China is not guilty of Russia’s excesses, but Beijing’s information and influence campaign has affected countries from Singapore to Sweden, causing many to take countermeasures.
China’s campaigns range from overt diplomacy and public messaging disseminated through propaganda organs, to covert cyber exercises by specialised hackers and the “50-cent trolls” on social networking sites.
Its capabilities are built into the government’s vast propaganda apparatus, including the People’s Liberation Army, intelligence departments, and the foreign education and culture ministries.
The influence mission is integral to the Communist Party, most notably in the United Front Work Department, which is responsible for engaging intellectuals, including overseas and ethnic Chinese.
Changi Airport Group Refutes Claims That Jewel Was A Stolen Design For Qatar
Being accused of plagiarism is no laughing matter. But what happens when the accuser’s “evidence” is not even correct?
On 22 Oct, the CEO of Qatar Airways tried to shade Singapore at the unveiling of Hamad International Airport’s (HIA) expansion plan by saying Jewel was an imitation of their design which was “on the table nearly 6 years ago”.
However, Jewel’s design had come from a “competitive process” in 2012, 7 years ago.
Yesterday, Changi Aiport Group (CAG) chief executive Lee Seow Hiang refuted Qatar’s claims. He told The Straits Times (ST) that “we respect intellectual property rights and expect the same of all our partners.”
Qatar Airways CEO says Jewel is a copy
At the press conference 2 weeks ago, Qatar Airways’ CEO Akbar Al Baker apparently made an implicit jab at Jewel by saying that “somebody copied our design”.
ST also quoted him claiming that people from “that country” had stolen their design and went ahead with construction.
According to ST, the plans for HIA do show some familiar traits. HIA tweeted that expansion plans include an indoor water feature and a “stunning” tropical garden.
CAG and Jewel’s architect Mr Moshe Safdie have since refuted Qatar’s allegations. Mr Lee emphasised that they “value the originality and creativity of ideas as [they] innovate to elevate the Changi experience”.
Jewel’s design was picked in July 2012 after a “competitive process”. Safdie Architects was then awarded the contract in May 2013 for its “compelling” design.
Mr Safdie explained that they have been “pursuing the concept of gardens as a focal point… for many decades”. Their findings then inspired them to create what has now become Jewel Changi’s centerpiece.
To substantiate their point, Mr Lee shared that Safdie Architects has never done any projects in Qatar.
Thus, it seems like Qatar has little proof to back up the argument they started.
We are delighted that Jewel’s uniqueness and originality has been well-recognised by the international community and resulted in many wanting to emulate it.
Imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, so maybe all Qatar Airways wanted was a little bit of recognition.
Nevertheless, this teaches us that it’s important to get your facts straight before making such a serious allegation. Featured image adapted from Capitaland and Twitter. [Was going to comment that I have lost all respect for Qatar. Then realised it is just one egotistical CEO who can be ignored.]
[There has always been talk about solar power in sunny Singapore. Here are two articles from 2016 and 2018. So this is not a sudden development. The problem is Solar requires considerable amount of land or space for installing solar panels, and even in sunny SG, solar is intermittent. As I type this, it is cloudy. The reason why solar panels need so much land or space is because solar power is very energy diffused. Even with more than half of all HDB flats installed with solar panels, it would only produce about 10% of our needs. Even if we solar panelled EVERY roof in SG, we MIGHT get 20% of our energy. Here's the working of the various options. And here's a YouTube video on how Renewable energy is a scam:
Anyway, Singapore going Solar? It's nice, but it's not the real solution.
Singapore to ramp up solar energy production, with 1 in 2 HDB rooftops having solar panels by 2020
By Low Youjin
29 October, 2019
SINGAPORE — By next year, Housing and Development Board (HDB) residents can expect to see one in two flats sporting solar panels on their rooftops.
And by 2030, Singapore aims to produce at least 2 gigawatt-peak (GWp) of solar energy, said Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing on Tuesday (Oct 29).
That would be enough to power around 350,000 Singaporean households a year — more than 10 per cent of the peak daily electricity demand today, said Mr Chan, who was speaking at the opening of the Singapore International Energy Week conference.
The 2030 target is more than five times the current target of 350 megawatt-peak (MWp) of solar energy by 2020. As of the second quarter of this year, some 260 MWp of solar capacity has already been installed.
[SG use about 6000 to 65000 MW of energy. 350 MW is about 1/15 or so of our needs.]
Singapore is on track to meet its 2020 target, said Mr Chan, who added that “one in two HDB rooftops” will be fitted with solar panels by then.
OVERCOMING SPACE CONSTRAINTS
Given Singapore’s space constraints, the Republic needs to come up with ways to maximise the number of solar panels installed here, said Mr Chan.
He said that solar panels can be deployed on reservoirs, on top of rooftops or even on the vertical surfaces of buildings.
"If we can do that, we will be able to significantly double the amount of space (available)," said Mr Chan.
The Government is currently studying setting up floating solar panels in Bedok Reservoir and Lower Seletar Reservoir.
For its part, national water agency PUB also announced in June that it intends to deploy Singapore’s first single large-scale 50 MWp floating photovoltaic (PV) system on Tengeh Reservoir by 2021.
It was also reported last year that Sunseap will be building a sea-based floating photovoltaic system, a five-hectare development located north of Woodlands Waterfront Park, along the Straits of Johor.
Other initiatives to support solar adoption include the use of vacant state land that is not required for development in the near future.
This was started by JTC Corporation in May.
The project, called the SolarLand initiative, uses mobile substations and solar PV systems that can be relocated to alternate sites, should the land be needed for other uses.
In a factsheet released on Tuesday, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) said that Jurong Island made an “ideal location” for the first SolarLand project due to the availability of vacant land that was large enough to accommodate it.
The current system deployed at Jurong Island can produce about 6.6 GWh of solar energy per year, said the EMA.
In his speech, Mr Chan added that Singapore will also support research and development into solar energy, and also streamline regulations to make it cost-competitive to deploy solar panels.
For example, research is ongoing for building-integrated photovoltaics, said the EMA. This could mean that solar panels could soon be integrated directly into a building's facade, rather than as separate rooftop installations.
STORING ALL THAT SOLAR ENERGY
In order to “do solar energy well”, Singapore will also need technology to store it, added Mr Chan.
However, the adoption of such energy storage systems (ESS) here is still “nascent”, and there is less than 1 MW of such systems installed currently, said the EMA.
Hence, Singapore aims to deploy 200MW of storage systems beyond 2025, said Mr Chan.
The EMA noted that the production of solar energy fluctuates due to weather conditions such as cloud cover, and this could lead to imbalances between electricity demand and supply.
Having adequate storage support will help overcome this, it added.
[And now let's see what the experts have to say about this plan.]
New solar targets ‘good start’, but unlikely to have significant impact, say experts
By Low Youjin
30 October, 2019
SINGAPORE – A recent announcement to ramp up Singapore’s solar energy production by 2030 is a step in the right direction, but the new targets are still too low to have much of an impact in the fight against climate change or on consumers’ electricity bills, experts said.
On Tuesday (Oct 29), Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing announced that Singapore now aims to produce at least 2 gigawatt-peak (GWp) of solar energy by 2030.
This is more than five times the target that the Republic previously set, of producing 350 megawatt-peak (MWp) of solar energy by 2020, which it is on track to meet, he said.
Scientists have repeatedly warned that carbon emissions need to be drastically reduced by 2050 to keep global warming below 2°C — failing which there will be disastrous effects on global economies and societies — and one way to do that is through the use of more green energy such as solar power.
Professor Anthony Owen, a principal fellow at the National University of Singapore's Energy Studies Institute, said Tuesday’s announcement is a good step towards greening the Republic’s energy sector, but it will likely have “very little” significance for the climate as the solar targets are “so small by global standards”.
“However, in principle it’s a good start,” said Prof Owen, whose research interests include environmental impact of alternative power generation technologies.
[Recognise that under SG's unofficial "rules of engagement", non-government "authorities" are required to... not undermine government initiatives. "In principle it's a good start" is actually a meaningless statement. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. Does that mean that if you take a step you are beginning a journey of a thousand miles? Sometimes a step is just a step. ]
Agreeing, Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar, executive director of Nanyang Technological University’s Energy Research Institute, said that 2 GWp of solar energy represents only a small percentage of Singapore’s electricity demand.
[Damning with faint praise?]
According to this year’s energy consumption statistics from the Energy Market Authority, solar power currently meets less than 1 per cent of the country's energy demand.
The new targets will represent about 4 per cent of Singapore’s current total electricity demand.
[See? From 1% to 4%. That's a 400% increase! Or a 300% increase? Whatever. It's impressive right?!??!]
Added Prof Subodh: “It is unlikely, even by 2050, that we will be in a situation where we have more electricity (generated) by solar than what we need.”
[What a wet blanket!]
MINOR PRICE FALLS
The addition of more green energy to Singapore’s power grid may reduce the demand for electricity generated by non-renewable sources such as natural gas, but experts warned that this might not necessarily lead to drastic reductions in household electricity bills.
Solar is one of the cheapest sources of electricity today, noted Ms Kohe Hasan, a specialist energy and commodities lawyer at law firm Reed Smith.
For example, a new 60-megawatt solar farm project in Cambodia has announced a tariff rate of 3.877 US cents (5.283 Singapore cents) per kilowatt hour, the lowest power purchase tariff recorded in Southeast Asia, she said.
“It is hoped that in increasing (solar’s) contribution towards Singapore’s energy mix from less than 1 per cent to about 4 per cent, there will be a concomitant reduction in the tariff rate,” she said.
Prof Owen, however, expressed his doubts that this would happen.
He acknowledged that rooftop solar “effectively reduces market demand” for electricity during daylight hours, which consequently means that wholesale price of electricity should fall at these times.
But, he also pointed out that there are various factors that affect the operation and price-bidding behaviour of natural gas facilities.
“I would expect, on balance, that any retail price falls would be minor,” he said.
GOING BEYOND SOLAR
Singapore is working on ways to maximise the number of solar panels that can be deployed here, but space will remain an issue in this land-scarce country, experts noted.
One solution Mr Chan alluded to in his speech on Tuesday is the Asean Power Grid, an initiative conceptualised in the late 1990s that could see greater electricity integration in the region using renewable energy.
“Today in Southeast Asia, some countries have an abundance of hydro and other renewables,” said Mr Chan. “If we can connect the regional grid, it will provide greater resilience and stability for the entire system.”
Ms Kohe said that this is a feasible solution as cross-border power grid connections “could relieve burdens” related to excess power generation capacity.
However, she stressed that this is dependent on participating parties agreeing to support one another and work together to deal with technical issues, such as synchronising the various countries’ respective grids.
She added: “(The Asean Power Grid) offers the dual benefits of stronger energy and economic ties among member states, and the expansion of Asean’s influence in the global economy and environment.”
[It will depend on how the ASEAN Power Grid (APG) is structured and organised. If it ends up with Singapore drawing on power generated in Malaysia, we would have gotten out of our dependence on Malaysia for water to a dependence on Malaysia for power. That does not bode well for SG. If the APG is structured more transnationally - that is, even tho the power is generated by say Malaysian hydroelectric generators, the power is sold to SG by a transnational ASEAN organisation that is apolitical - then the APG may work for SG.]
Meanwhile, Prof Subodh believes that a better alternative would be a future where solar energy is used to contribute to the production of hydrogen.
He said that hydrogen is the “ultimate clean fuel”, especially if it is “green hydrogen” generated from renewable energy sources that have zero carbon footprint.
Hydrogen itself, he said, produces water as a by-product when it is burnt.
Mixing hydrogen with natural gas would require little physical infrastructure changes, and it will also “burn a lot cleaner” than just natural gas alone.
He added that safety should not be something to be concerned about if a dedicated hydrogen power plant is ever built in the future. Prof Subodh explained that unlike natural gas, hydrogen is not combustible on its own.
“If we can handle LNG (liquid natural gas), we can handle hydrogen,” he said.
[All these seems to me to be attempts to dance around the idea of nuclear power. For now. ]
SINGAPORE — The genetic material of pigs was found in cuttlefish and prawn balls manufactured by a particular seafood brand in Singapore, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) found.
Their discovery of arguably the most serious case of mislabelling of seafood products for a multi-religious society such as Singapore came about after they tested 105 samples of seafood products bought from six supermarkets and two seafood restaurants.
They also found that more premium seafood such as prawn roe, wild-caught Atlantic salmon and halibut have been replaced with lower-value ingredients such as fish roe, Pacific salmon and arrowtooth flounder respectively.
It was, fittingly, President Halimah Yacob who announced that Singapore would be holding its first international conference on social cohesion and inter-faith harmony in June this year.
It shows the high level of support from the country’s leadership on issues related to religious harmony.
Indeed, soon after making the announcement, she spoke at a remembrance ceremony organised by the Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) to honour those killed during the terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch in March.
The IRO, formed in 1949, with 10 major religions represented, has had a long history in Singapore of promoting understanding and goodwill.
Why is inter-faith harmony taken so seriously in Singapore, including at the highest level of government? There are several reasons.
SINGAPORE — Barely a year after Dyson announced that it would build its electric car in Singapore, the British technology company announced on Thursday (Oct 10) that it plans to shut down its automotive project.
Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB) said the disruption to its operations and workforce in Singapore will be minimal, as Dyson’s decision not to pursue the electric vehicle business was taken at an early stage.
Dyson said it decided to close the project because although its automotive team has developed a “fantastic electric car”, it is not commercially viable.
SINGAPORE — Permit for assemblies that “advocate political causes of other countries” will not be granted, the Singapore Police Force said on Saturday (Sept 28).
In response to queries about police’s approach to calls for an anti-totalitarian rally in Singapore, the police warned that foreigners visiting or living in Singapore will have to abide by the country’s laws.
“Action will be taken against those who break the law. This may include termination of visa or work passes,” police said.
“At the Speakers’ Corner, only Singapore citizens and permanent residents are allowed to participate in assemblies without a permit, subject to the conditions in the Speakers’ Corner rules.”
After being the talk of the town for more than a year, Malaysian opposition parties United Malays National Organistion (Umno) and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) have finally “tied the knot”.
This does not surprise anyone, as they were “flirting” with each other since the last general election. They were working together to ensure Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) defeat in the election.
Although they did not succeed in their last attempt, the Umno-PAS political marriage has rippled the political landscape. People are concerned about the existence of this mono-ethnic, mono-religion political pact.
Many see it as a perilous development for a plural society. Some pundits anticipate a more polarised nation with more racial or religious tension, because politicians from the Umno-PAS pact are prone to only address audiences from a single race and religion.
We should not discount the possibility of some PH politicians, who wish to outdo their rivals, might resort to a hardline racial narrative too.
Singapore wants to work with technology companies to fight foreign influence in national affairs, Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam said on Wednesday (Sept 25).
25 September, 2019
SINGAPORE — Governments must lead the fight against foreign interference in national affairs and cannot look to technology companies to solve the problem, Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said on Wednesday (Sept 25).
“Governments have to lead from the front and we need to ensure we have the right tools to fight this,” Mr Shanmugam, who is also Law Minister, said at a conference on foreign-interference tactics and countermeasures.
SINGAPORE — Singapore motorists at petrol pumps over the weekend might not have noticed any price difference, but a significant shift could be on the cards. This is after drone attacks crippled Saudi Arabia oil facilities on Saturday (Sept 14), causing the price of crude oil to surge overnight.
In what was the largest intraday spike in 20 years, Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, rose nearly 19.5 per cent at one point and US futures leaped by 15 per cent on Monday (Sept 16).
On the other hand, petrol prices hardly moved over the weekend, as it typically takes months before global shocks are reflected in refined products such as petroleum.
However, this looks to be the biggest supply shock in history, what with more than 5.7 million barrels a day, or 5 per cent of global supply, temporarily affected by the attacks — exceeding past oil embargoes as well as the Iranian Revolution, which lasted from 1978 to 1979.
[And countries have announced that they are releasing their strategic oil reserves to adjust for the shortfall - and take advantage of the price increase? It will smoothen out.]
For Singapore, which imports around S$15 billion more oil than it exports, the impact will likely be felt both positively and negatively by businesses, consumers and the overall economy, with much depending on the increasingly volatile outlook of the Middle East, experts tell TODAY.
Psychometric tests like Color Code, Myers-Briggs and DiSC have become a goofy part of corporate life, but what happens when we take them seriously?
New York Times
22 September, 2019
NEW YORK — On his first day working at the University of Phoenix, Eric Shapiro found out the good news: He had tested red-yellow.
To the layperson this doesn’t mean much. But to those well-versed in the psychology of Taylor Hartman’s “Color Code,” as all employees of the University of Phoenix’s enrollment office were required to be, it was a career-maker.
Red meant you were a person motivated by power and yellow by fun. This was an ideal combination for someone looking to climb the ranks in an admissions team that demanded the ability to schmooze and then hit recruitment targets: equal parts charisma and competitiveness.
“The dominant people in the office, most of the leadership staff including myself when I got promoted, we were heavy red and yellows,” said Mr Shapiro, 36. “Yellows tend to be really good at working the room. Reds tend to be more type A, like bulls in a china shop. You’re passionate, you’re not sensitive, you get over things quicker.”
Foreign interference is a form of political warfare — coercive means short of conventional war — that lies in the continuum between diplomacy and aggression. It is an application of soft force that entails a foreign state using its influence to affect the politics and policies of the target state covertly.
A foreign state with hostile intent would undermine the sovereignty of the target state — without violating its physical territory — by infiltrating its national institutions and people. The desired outcomes of the foreign state are political and economic gains at the expense of the target state.
SINGAPORE — Singapore came in the bottom half (13 out of 20) in an index ranking the major global economies' resilience against the threats of an ageing workforce and job automation.
Yet, in Asia, the city state came out on top, eclipsing regional powerhouses Japan, China and South Korea in the Ageing and Automation Resilience Index.
Two stories - from August and Sept 2019 - on China's GDP growth. It's slowing.
'Very difficult' for China's economy to grow 6% or faster: Premier Li
16 September, 2019
SHANGHAI — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said it is "very difficult" for China's economy to grow at a rate of 6 per cent or more because of the high base from which it was starting and the complicated international backdrop.
HAWAII — The eruption last year of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii produced the equivalent of 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of lava. Much of it ended up flowing into the Pacific Ocean, creating plumes of acidic, glassy steam in the process.
The eruption also unexpectedly coincided with an explosion in the population of phytoplankton, a diverse array of sea surface-dwelling, sunlight-drinking microscopic organisms. This massive bloom began just three days after lava from Kilauea first touched the sea.
It expanded rapidly, stretching nearly 100 miles offshore in just two weeks. When the eruption dwindled and the lava stopped flowing seaward, the bloom quickly disappeared.
Scientists were initially baffled as to how 2,100-degree Fahrenheit, life-annihilating lava could trigger a biological bloom. A study published Thursday in Science reveals that it came down to a volcanic sleight of hand: As the lava tumbled to the ocean’s depths, it heated the deeper, nutrient-rich waters, allowing them to bubble up to the nutrient-starved surface. This provided a grand banquet for the phytoplankton, leading to their rapid proliferation.
SHANGHAI — Ms Wang Lingmei is sitting in front of a rehab training machine in an elderly care centre in China and playing an electronic game.
Using a machine that looks a bit like an electronic piano with a TV screen attached instead of a music score, the 84-year-old is reaching out to touch virtual fruits by moving a handle as part of a daily exercise routine to recover mobility after fracturing her right arm and leg in a fall a year ago.
“The game is interesting and makes me feel happy,” she says in a Shanghai dialect. “We have a therapist to monitor our condition while using it, so I am not afraid of this technology and machine. After all, it’s a new thing for me.”
HONG KONG — More than ever before, many Hong Kong soccer fans were in no mood to hear the Chinese national anthem.
Thousands of people in Hong Kong Stadium on Tuesday (Sept 10) turned their backs on the field as the Chinese anthem played before a World Cup qualifying match against Iran, drowning out the song with boos. Many Hong Kongers say they have never felt pride hearing the song — the semiautonomous territory does not have its own anthem — and they certainly do not now, as mass pro-democracy protests continue into a fourth month.
But in the stadium’s stands and concourses Tuesday, hordes of fans repeatedly sang a song created less than three weeks before, which some protesters have billed as their equivalent of a national anthem. And over the next two days, more than a dozen singalongs took place at shopping malls across the city, some attracting thousands of people.
The PH government led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has to define with clarity what it means by a multiracial Malaysia, says the author.
Malay Mail
11 September, 2019
If Pakatan Harapan (PH) wants to be returned to power in Malaysia's next election, it must show it is in charge of issues which are falling about all over the place.
First, it must show, even now, that it wants to win the next election. And not lose it by taking the long view or the short-sighted one that it still has 3½ years to put things together.
Air conditioners use 20 times as much power as running a fan and their growing popularity could fuel demand for fossil fuel-based electricity that exacerbates climate change.
11 September, 2019
OXFORD — As climate change brings more frequent and extreme heatwaves around the world, demand for air conditioners is soaring, with 10 new units sold every second on average — but the poor may be left to swelter, said a University of Oxford researcher.
By 2050, energy use for cooling is projected to triple, while in hot countries like India, China, Brazil and Indonesia, it is expected to grow five-fold, the World Bank has said.
"By the end of the century, global energy demand for cooling will be more than it is for heating,” said Ms Radhika Khosla, who leads an Oxford Martin School programme on future cooling.
But not everyone will be able to afford to beat the heat.
“Traditionally, energy poverty has been defined as people not having heating. Now that is potentially going to shift, and we could have cooling poverty,” Ms Khosla warned on the sidelines of a conference on efforts to slash planet-warming emissions.
Rising heat is having a huge impact on health — deaths and hospital admissions jump in heatwaves — but also on productivity as workers struggle to cope, climate scientists say.
A 2018 report from Sustainable Energy for All, a UN-backed organisation, said more than 1.1 billion people globally faced immediate risks from lack of access to cooling.
On a warming planet, cooling is not a luxury but "essential for everyday life", said the organisation's CEO Rachel Kyte.
HONG KONG - This is a transcript of a talk given last week by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to a group of businesspeople in the city. The transcript is taken from an audio recording of Lam's remarks that was obtained by Reuters. People who attended the talk say she spoke for about a half hour. The recording, which runs 24 minutes, captures the bulk of the event. Reuters has redacted the transcript in a few spots to remove the names of individuals mentioned by Lam, as well as details related to the meeting. The transcript does not include a short question and answer session after her talk.
CARRIE LAM:
In the last two years, one of the policy areas that I have spent most time in is innovation and technology. Now, I actually personally chair the steering committee.
In less than three months' time, Hong Kong has been turned upside down, and my life has been turned upside down. But this is not the moment for self-pitifulness, although [name redacted] nowadays it's extremely difficult for me to go out. I have not been on the streets, not in the shopping malls, can't go to a hair salon, can't do anything because my whereabouts will be spread around the social media, the Telegram, the LIHKG, and you could expect a big crowd of black T-shirts and black-masked young people waiting for me.
SINGAPORE — Members of Parliament (MPs) have backed a new law that better protect injured workers, but a handful of them are saying that there is still a lack of protection for those who are self-employed.
Self-employed persons are not covered by the Work Injury Compensation Act (Wica) whether now or under the amended law, because they are considered to be under a contract of service with an employer. Changes to the Act, which include allowing for injured employees to get faster and higher insurance payouts, were passed on Tuesday (Sept 3) in Parliament. The changes will take effect September next year.
A nondescript exhibit at the National Museum has the potential to reshape Singapore's national history narrative. Singapore leaders were actively involved in negotiations leading to the exit from Malaysia, newly released documents highlight.
Museums play an important role in a nation's history. They serve as repositories of national history, preserving and showcasing artefacts and documents central to our shared understanding of the past, so that we can better understand our present.
[This is nothing new. The information in the "newly released" documents has been publicised before, and if there is anything new, it is simply the "documentary proof" provided by these original documents.]
Curators and public educators in charge of museums and their exhibitions also play a key role in shaping our sense of the past, and hence our sense of self, and our shared national identity.
LONDON — Mr Boris Johnson, prime minister of the United Kingdom, announced on Wednesday (Aug 28) that Britain’s parliament will be suspended, or prorogued, for more than a month before Brexit.
The British parliament will not sit from mid-September to Oct 14, which means that Members of Parliament (MPs) are unlikely to have time to pass laws that could stop the UK from leaving the European Union (EU) without a deal on Oct 31.
The move has enraged opponents.
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Labour party member John McDonnell has said that Mr Johnson’s decision is as good as a “British coup”, while protesters gathered on Wednesday across London — notably along the River Thames and outside the Houses of Parliament — to object to the move.
A public petition against the suspension has also garnered more than a million signatures.
The five key demands the protesters made were: the withdrawal of the extradition bill, an independent inquiry into the protests; fully democratic elections; dropping of the term "riot" in describing protests; and dropping charges against those arrested so far.
30 August, 2019
HONG KONG — Earlier this summer, Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, submitted a report to Beijing that assessed protesters' five key demands and found that withdrawing a contentious extradition bill could help defuse the mounting political crisis in the territory.
The Chinese central government rejected Ms Lam's proposal to withdraw the extradition bill and ordered her not to yield to any of the protesters' other demands at that time, three individuals with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
China's role in directing how Hong Kong handles the protests has been widely assumed, supported by stern statements in state media about the country's sovereignty and protesters' "radical" goals.
China’s communist leadership is struggling over how to respond to Hong Kong’s swelling protests. Giving in to protesters’ demands for democracy or allowing unrest to spread is out of the question. Yet armed intervention will have its price.
On April 15, 1989, students marched from Beijing University to Tiananmen Square, ostensibly mourning the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party general-secretary purged by party hardliners in 1987 for his liberal views.
It was the first demonstration in what grew into the huge pro-democracy protest movement that rocked Beijing and China that spring. Reporting from the square, I ended the story that night by asking: “How long will the government wait to crush this challenge to its authority?”
In 1989, it took six weeks before the Communist Party sent in the army, bringing the movement to a bloody end. In Hong Kong, the wait has been almost three months.
HONG KONG - Exasperated with the government's unflinching attitude to escalating civil unrest, Jason Tse quit his job in Australia and jumped on a plane to join what he believes is a do-or-die fight for Hong Kong's future.
The Chinese territory is grappling with its biggest crisis since its handover to Beijing 22 years ago as many residents fret over what they see as China's tightening grip over the city and a relentless march toward mainland control.
The battle for Hong Kong's soul has pitted protesters against the former British colony's political masters in Beijing, with broad swathes of the Asian financial center determined to defend the territory's freedoms at any cost.
HONG KONG — Across the border from Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party screams its presence with banners and slogans on nearly every street. Yet in the former British colony, where China’s ruling party confronts what it calls a “life and death” struggle against a turbulent protest movement, it is invisible: It is not registered and has no publicly declared local members.
But in Hong Kong, this officially nonexistent organisation is in the vanguard of defending Chinese rule in the face of its biggest public resistance since the authoritarian leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
The party, operating in the shadows through individuals and organisations, is driving an increasingly firm pushback against the anti-government protests, now in their 13th week.
Parroting slogans scripted by the Communist Party on the mainland, activists in a host of local pro-China organisations have mobilised to discredit the protesters as violent hooligans bent on wrecking the city.
SINGAPORE — As a result of climate change and rising population, the world is set to face a 56 per cent shortfall in food nutrition by 2050. Yet, Singapore is still heavily reliant on food imports from countries with weather-dependent traditional farms, a new study has found.
Released on Tuesday (Aug 27), the study by the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) and consulting firm Deloitte said that Singapore's farms are the key to bolstering the country's food security — by deploying smart technology to boost yields.
Singapore should also become a centre for food by-products, as a way to tackle large levels of food waste, it added. Some details of the study, on food waste, were released earlier this month.
The latest report warned that the shortfall in food needed to feed the world in 2050 is likely to be exacerbated by a global shortage of nearly 600 million hectares of agricultural land. This could have significant implications for Singapore, which imports 90 per cent of its food. Food imports here are substantially sourced from countries that use traditional farming methods which are dependent on weather conditions.
While 100 years seems far away, Singapore has already started to feel the impact of climate change with hotter weather and heavier rainfall in recent years.
23 August, 2019
SINGAPORE — A “50- to 100-year problem” was how Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong described the “grave threat” of rising sea levels to Singapore.
While 100 years seems far away, Singapore has already started to feel the impact of climate change with hotter weather and heavier rainfall in recent years. Studies have also shown that Singapore could experience more extreme weather patterns as soon as 2050.
Indeed, steps are already underway to mitigate against the impact of rising sea levels. For example, Singapore has introduced a carbon tax, to nudge companies to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It has also begun building infrastructure such as train stations on elevated ground.
More measures are in the pipeline. How much time does Singapore have to make sure that it is sufficiently ready? TODAY takes a closer look.
Some Hongkongers say that based on what they see on social media, Singaporeans do not understand the situation, and why protesters are fighting for ‘freedom and liberty’
Reports of Hongkongers relocating to Singapore and moving assets there have fuelled the perception that the Lion City is capitalising on Hong Kong’s situation
“These Singaporeans primarily think from a materialist perspective and cannot understand Hong Kong’s struggle for freedom and democracy or against growing encroachment from the mainland,”
Dewey Sim
Are unsympathetic Singaporeans gloating at the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong, viewing protesters as little more than disruptive troublemakers?
Some Hongkongers believe so, pointing to comments they have heard from their Singaporean friends and remarks made on social media.
Hongkonger Joyce Fung, in her 20s, said: “I keep seeing how they label protesters ‘violent rioters’, and say that Hong Kong people should accept the fact that Hong Kong is part of China.”
Being a social savings pool, the CPF is more than just a system of individual pension accounts, says the author.
14 August, 2019
To whom does our Central Provident Fund (CPF) money belong? This question comes up regularly in Singapore, and two recent cases attracted wide public attention and deep sympathies among Singaporeans.
In one case, a husband wanted to draw out his CPF monies to pay for his wife’s treatment at a private hospital. She had reportedly been given a terminal diagnosis. In another, a father wanted to draw out his CPF monies for his daughter’s tertiary education.
Indeed, there are provisions for members to withdraw their CPF monies for the healthcare needs of their loved ones and educational costs of their children. However, both men had reached limits set by the CPF Board.
HONG KONG — As anti-government demonstrations escalate in Hong Kong, each side is staking out increasingly polarised positions, making it difficult to find a path to compromise between the protesters and China’s ruling Communist Party.
[Realistically, compromise was never an option for the CCP. This report is by The New York Times. It has a certain perspective, which is not very useful in this case.]
The demonstrations, which began as a fight against a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland, have more broadly morphed into a call for free elections, which largely do not exist in China. To Beijing, it would be a direct challenge to the leadership, tantamount to losing control of Hong Kong.
The once peaceful demonstrations have now intensified, coming into conflict with Hong Kong’s reputation for order and efficiency. Protesters on Monday (Aug 12) filled the airport, crippling one of the world’s busiest transportations hubs.
SINGAPORE: In the battle against climate change, environment experts have urged individuals to look beyond single-use plastic and make bigger changes in their daily lives: Drive and fly less, and change what they eat and buy.
"Most of the individual actions people can do are often less visible than not using straws, and requires an effort to change behaviour for the long term," Associate Professor Winston Chow of the Singapore Management University (SMU) told CNA on Wednesday (Aug 7).
"Some steps would be to reduce consumption of goods, materials and services that generate carbon emissions."
A Mediacorp survey released on Wednesday showed that more than nine in 10 Singaporeans and permanent residents agreed that they would do their part to "minimise the impact" of climate change.
The unveiling of the unmanned Hunter a month after manned Hunters were commissioned into service with the Singapore Army shows that the work to adapt the Hunter for remote control probably began sometime during its 13-year development, the author notes.
12 August, 2019
Fifty years after AMX-13 light tanks first appeared at the National Day Parade (NDP), the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) showcased its newest armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) called the Hunter at this year’s parade.
The three 29.5-tonne vehicles which can carry three crew members and eight other soldiers stood out among the 171 vehicles in the Mobile Column as they cruised past President Halimah Yacob and the audience with their roof hatches shut and no one visible.
The crew’s no-show was deliberate. And the symbolism goes beyond simply demonstrating the Hunter’s ability to fight with hatches closed. To some observers, seeing the Hunter move with no crew in sight reminds one that the AFV can operate unmanned.
KLATEN (Central Java) — Mr Dery Sananya sits casually on a chair “watching” television – as carp, koi and pomfret swim past him. Later, he will upload a selfie of this pose to his Instagram feed, with a quip about how easy it is to find TV channels underwater.
He is one of the many tourists — Indonesian and foreign — who have flocked to Umbul Ponggok in Klaten, Central Java, Indonesia, to take tongue-in-cheek underwater selfies in a pond.
“Many visitors upload photos of themselves on motorbikes or bicycles, and even do pre-wedding photo shoots, which quickly become viral on their Instagram accounts,” says Umbul Ponggok’s 25-year-old manager, Mr Muhammad Abdul Rahman.
[News articles from 4 Aug 2019 onwards on the HK protests.
What started as a protest against a law, has escalated/deteriorated in anti-government protests and demonstrations for democracy. It has been more than 2 months now, and protests/demonstrations or "riots" if you prefer, have increased. What used to be weekend protests have extended to weekdays and strikes and disruption to business and work. And, China has now referred to the protestors as "violent separatists". So... they are now trying to separate from China? Hmmm... How will it end? Not well.]
Hong Kong braces for largest citywide strike in decades on Monday
Hongkongers have long put work as a priority. But now some people are defying that and supporting the five demands of the anti-extradition movement, including a full withdrawal of the now-abandoned bill and an independent investigation into police’s use of force on the demonstrators.
[The latest news about possible link between autism and Estrogen in the womb. The findings are promising, but not absolutely conclusive. But it does seem to point to further research in this direction.]
High levels of estrogen in the womb linked to autism
July 29, 2019
Source: University of Cambridge
Summary: Scientist have identified a link between exposure to high levels of estrogen sex hormones in the womb and the likelihood of developing autism.
The author notes that the Overseas Singaporean Unit's website addresses three specific issues: Going abroad, staying abroad and coming home. But there is nothing on retaining repatriates, ensuring they re-integrate into society.
08 August, 2019
“Our Singapore” is the theme for National Day Parade 2019 to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial and to emphasise Singaporeans’ collective ownership of their country.
As a Singaporean joining my country in marking 700 years of history and its 54th birthday, I would like to reflect on the idea of “our” Singapore being ours — a caring, inclusive society for everyone.
Mr Nuseir Yassin admitted that before he started Nas Daily, he was clueless on how to tell a story — a skill he says every human should have. Now, he believes he has hit the right formula, and wants to share it.
09 August, 2019
SINGAPORE — Close to four months from the day he landed in Singapore and made it his new home, popular travel vlogger Nuseir Yassin of the Nas Daily videos says life here has been “easy”.
In an interview at his home office near Stevens Road, Mr Yassin said: “You know what you have to do, you know what you can do, you know what you can’t do.”
Living here has also strengthened his initial positive assessment of Singapore’s traffic and transportation system, he said, though he acknowledged that some Singaporeans might not see eye-to-eye with him on this.
“There’s nothing that stresses you out, and I really like that.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday evening issued a statement countering claims made in an Asia Timesarticle on drugs and Singapore’s laws.
Article claimed K. Shanmugam peddled misleading statistics
Its author, Gen Sander, is a human-rights analyst at Harm Reduction international, a non-government organisation that works to “reduce the negative health, social and legal impacts of drug use and drug policies”.
Sander’s article, dated July 17, asserted that the statistics used by the minister to justify the harsh stance Singapore takes against drug use and abuse are wrong or cannot be verified by existing evidence.
[It started with a comment when China warned that if Taiwan tries to declared that they are an independent country, China was ready to defend their national interest with military force. This was the comment:
Ok, so here's the plan. 1) HK protesters escalate their... "protests" until Beijing sends in the Military.
2) When Beijing has committed troops to HK to quell the protests, Taiwan declares that they are independent and not just a "Rogue Province" of China. They may also want to send a diplomatic note Beijing: "nyah! nyah! nyah!"
3) When the Chinese begin military operations to... "re-take" Taiwan, Vietnam and Philippines will then move to occupy the contested islands in the South China Sea - Paracels, Spratley, etc.
4) I think Japan also has an island that they are contesting ownership with China? Dunno. If they do, they should move to... "protect" that island.
5) Xinjiang Uighurs should watch closely the developments, and when China is fighting HK, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, they should declare independence.
6) Meanwhile in Tibet, the people there should pray for peace... NAH! they can try to breakaway, too.
7) At this point, the orang utan in the White House will do what he usually does. Or maybe someone might advise him that this is an opportunity to be seized. Or not. Who cares.
Well, it's just a plan.
The tone suggests that this was not a serious plan, or at least not one to be taken seriously (certainly, the question would be whether the various factions are ready to breakaway). But part of China's problem is that even if it has almost a million soldiers, those soldiers are needed to keep the country together. Or Tibet might breakaway, Xinjiang might revolt, and... Hong Kong is already rioting. But I was curious. How would Taiwan defend against a Chinese invasion? Surprisingly, I found that Taiwan's chances were actually quite good!
BEIJING — As China considers ways to retaliate against President Trump’s mounting tariffs, it has increasingly acknowledged that it must first address its main obstacle to punching back: its own slumping economy.
Chinese officials have vowed to respond with measures of their own if Mr. Trump follows through on his threat to put 10 percent tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports a year. If Mr. Trump enacts the tariffs next month, as he said he would do on Thursday, the costs would rise for nearly everything China ships to the United States, from shoes to car parts to the latest gadgets.
SINGAPORE — The number of radicalised individuals on orders under the Internal Security Act is at its highest in the last seven years, the Ministry of Home Affairs said, as Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam stressed the importance of the Act, describing it as the single most important tool against terrorism.
This is due largely to the spike in the number of radicalisation cases dealt with from 2015 onwards, it added in an emailed response to queries from TODAY.
Self-radicalised individuals make up the bulk of the 50 currently issued with ISA orders, the ministry said. Of these, there are 22 issued with orders of detention, 26 with restriction orders and two with suspension directions for terrorism-related conduct.
Since 2002 the MHA has dealt with over 130 individuals who were found to be involved in terrorism-related activities, it added.
HONG KONG: Thousands of Hong Kong civil servants rallied on Friday (Aug 2) night to support protesters and urge authorities to rebuild confidence in the government as escalating protests rock the Asian financial hub.
The rally is the first time government employees have promoted a demonstration in Hong Kong. The civil servants assembled peacefully with protesters in the heart of the business district, many in black masks to hide their identity.
"I think the government should respond to the demands, instead of pushing the police to the frontline as a shield," said Kathy Yip, a 26-year-old government worker.
Civil servants attend a rally to support the anti-extradition bill protest in Hong Kong, China. (Photo: REUTERS/ Tyrone Siu)
Police said they had arrested eight people, including a leading pro-independence leader, after seizing weapons and suspected bomb-making material in a raid.
A wave of protests is planned across Hong Kong this weekend, along with a mass strike on Monday across sectors such as transport, schools and corporates that could bring the city to a standstill.
The protests in Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to China in 1997, pose one of the gravest populist challenges to Communist Party rulers in Beijing.
Academics travel a lot. Whether for fieldwork or conferences, we’re often encouraged to do it. Often internationally, invariably by aeroplane. But while globetrotting might make us feel important, a recent study suggests there’s no connection between academic air-miles and career advancement.
Within a broader campaign to encourage people to go “flight-free”, there’s a community of academics challenging the reliance on flying that’s typically sat uneasily at the heart of their careers.
I’m a member of that community. I pledged not to fly in 2019 and 2020, and then won a fellowship to study Chinese attitudes to sustainability which required me to go to China for fieldwork. Suddenly, the consequences of my pledge became very real.
While meritocracy is under siege and faith in it is weakening across the globe, it has not failed and will remain a key principle for recognising individuals, said Education Minister Ong Ye Kung at the 2019 Raffles Institution (RI) Founder’s Day on Saturday (July 27). Below is an excerpt of his speech, in which Mr Ong also offered three suggestions on how Singapore can overcome the limitations of meritocracy.
SINGAPORE — When Singaporeans think about a “good death”, an overwhelming majority imagine dying at home surrounded by loved ones.
But a new report released on Friday (July 12) notes that this ideal scenario is rarely the reality — and argues that much needs to be done to change the way end-of-life care is administered.
The report, titled “Leaving Well: End-of-Life Care Policies in Singapore”, published by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), calls for an urgent look at this reality gap.
“With over 200,000 Singapore residents currently aged 75 and above and hundreds of thousands of family members having to soon contend with the complex issue that is the end of life, this gap between preferences and reality must be addressed,” the authors stated.
In response to a video by rapper Subhas Nair and YouTuber Preeti Nair, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said that it is not acceptable to use four-letter words and vulgar language to attack another race and put it out in public.
SINGAPORE — A rap video, which called out a racially offensive advertisement, crossed the line because it contained vulgarities directed at Singaporean Chinese and could turn minorities against the majority community, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said.
[Stories about the heat. But it's probably a dry heat.]
Think the heatwave was bad? Climate already hitting key tipping points
28 July, 2019
LONDON — "Shall we all just kill ourselves?"
It was an odd title for a comedy night, but British stand-up Carl Donnelly turned out to have chosen an environmental theme with impeccable timing.
With temperature records tumbling daily in last week's European heatwave, a crowd in an east London bar seemed uniquely primed to appreciate his darkly humorous riffs on the existential threat posed by climate change.
That foretaste of a radically hotter world underscored what is at stake in a decisive phase of talks to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement, a collective shot at avoiding climate breakdown.
With study-after-study showing climate impacts from extreme weather to polar melt and sea level rise outstripping initial forecasts, negotiators have a fast-closing window to try to turn the aspirations agreed in Paris into meaningful outcomes.
"There's so much on the line in the next 18 months or so," said Ms Sue Reid, vice-president of climate and energy at Ceres, a US non-profit group that works to steer companies and investors onto a more sustainable path.
"This is a crucial period of time both for public officials and the private sector to really reverse the curve on emissions," Ms Reid told Reuters.
In October, the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned emissions must start falling next year at the latest to stand a chance of achieving the deal's goal of holding the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
[Start falling next year? 2020? That's nice. How're China's and the US plans for cutting emissions so far?]
With emissions currently on track to push temperatures more than three degrees higher, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is working to wrest bigger commitments from governments ahead of a summit in New York in September.
Telling world leaders that failing to cut emissions would be "suicidal," the Portuguese diplomat wants to build momentum ahead of a fresh round of climate talks in Chile in December.
By the time Britain convenes a major follow-up summit in late 2020, plans are supposed to be underway — in theory at least — to almost halve global emissions over the next decade. "In the next year-and-a-half we will witness an intensity of climate diplomacy not seen since the Paris Agreement was signed," said Ms Tessa Khan, an international climate change lawyer and co-director of the Climate Litigation Network.
[What is the strategy or gambit in a "tragedy of the commons" situation? Hope that everyone cooperates and don't defect? Sure. The world has always been that principled; that noble.] "REVOLUTION OR COLLAPSE"
As the diplomatic offensive intensifies, the latest scientific studies have offered negotiators scant comfort.
US climatologist Michael Mann believes emissions need to fall even more drastically than the IPCC assumes since the panel may be underestimating how far temperatures have already risen since pre-industrial times. "Our work on this indicates that we might have as much as 40 per cent less carbon left to burn than IPCC implies, if we are to avert the 1.5 Celsius warming limit," said Mr Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.
Mr Mann has urged governments to treat the transition to renewable energy with the equivalent urgency that drove the US industrial mobilisation in World War Two.
So far, no major economy has taken heed.
Although Britain boosted the Paris Agreement in June by committing to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the country, preoccupied by Brexit, is far from on a climate war footing.
Likewise, a push led by France and Germany for the European Union to adopt a similar target was relegated to a footnote at a summit in Brussels after opposition from Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
US President Donald Trump remains committed to pulling the world's second biggest emitter out of the Paris deal altogether.
Given the uncertain prospects for international cooperation to stabilise the climate on which life on earth depends, some are starting to steel themselves for the unravelling of the world they once knew. "Either we radically transform human collective life by abandoning the use of fossil fuels or, more likely, climate change will bring about the end of global fossil-fuelled capitalist civilisation," wrote US author Roy Scranton, in an April essay in MIT Technology Review.
"Revolution or collapse — in either case, the good life as we know it is no longer viable."
REUTERS
People cool off in the Trocadéro fountains near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Thursday, July 25, 2019. The temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius, breaking a record set in 1947, in the French capital on Thursday.
Record 42.6°C in Paris as heat wave scorches Europe
New York Times
26 July, 2019
LONDON — Never in recorded history has Paris been hotter than it was Thursday (July 25).
The same was true of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, as temperatures rose and records tumbled one by one across Western Europe, scorching the continent and sending residents scrambling to seek relief from a dangerous heat wave.
In Paris, the temperature soared to 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.6 Fahrenheit), breaking a record set in 1947, 40.4 degrees Celsius, according to the French national weather service, which said the temperatures could rise further. Some 20 million people in northern France were expected to be affected by the heat.
In the Netherlands, temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), shattering the record high set only a day earlier, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said. In Germany, the northwestern town of Lingen hit 41.5 Celsius (106.7 Fahrenheit).
And for the second time this week, Belgium measured its hottest day, with a temperature of 40.6 Celsius in Kleine Brogel (105 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, passing the mark set a day earlier, 40.2 Celsius. Authorities issued a code red alert for the first time since the weather warning system was put in place 20 years ago.
“It’s really shocking to have this heat in Brussels,” said Ms Francesca Van Daele, a student of political science at the Free University of Brussels-VUB. “Our urban planning is not really made for heat waves like this.”
The hottest summers in Europe in the past 500 years have all come in the past 17 years, scientists say. Several heat waves have been linked to human-caused climate change. In the years ahead, they say, many more are likely to scorch temperate zones like northern Europe.
Early Thursday, the No. 1 trending term on Twitter in Britain was #hottestdayoftheyear. The national weather service, the Met Office, had warned that temperatures were expected to break the national record, 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 Fahrenheit). By 4pm (11pm Singapore) , Cambridge, England, had measured 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.5 Fahrenheit), the hottest day recorded in July in Britain and the second hottest in general, according to the weather service.
“This is only the second time temperatures over 100 Fahrenheit have been recorded in the UK,” the Met Office tweeted.
Ms Nicky Maxey, a spokeswoman for the weather service, said in an email, “Heat waves are extreme weather events, but research shows that with climate change, they are likely to become more common, perhaps occurring as regularly as every other year.”
She said that a Met Office study into the heat wave that Britain experienced last summer showed it was 30 times more likely for a heat wave to occur now than in 1750 “because of the higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The Met Office placed five of England’s nine regions, including London, on a rare Level 3 heat health watch — one short of a national emergency. In a Twitter post Thursday, London’s ambulance service advised Britons to stay hydrated, avoid prolonged exposure to the sun, wear sunscreen and avoid travelling by train if they feel unwell.
Mr Owen Landeg, chief environmental public health scientist at Public Health England, warned that extremely high temperatures were most likely to affect older people, those with underlying health conditions and very young children.
“The extreme heat means that our bodies, especially our hearts and lungs, have to work harder to maintain a normal temperature,” he said Wednesday in a statement. “This is why our advice focuses on reminding people to keep an eye on those who are most at risk.”
In Germany, officials expected higher temperatures in the west Thursday, and all but the northeastern coastal region was under a heat warning, with officials urging people to drink enough fluids and avoid going outdoors in the afternoon hours.
The famed Wagner opera festival was set to open as scheduled Thursday in the southern city of Bayreuth, where temperatures were expected to reach 34 degrees Celsius (93.2). But it will be even hotter inside the 19th-century opera house, where air conditioning was rejected over fears that it would negatively alter the acoustics and endanger the singers’ voices. Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to be in the crowd for the opening performance of “Tannhäuser,” which is more than four hours long.
In Spain, the forecast was for temperatures to fall across the country Thursday night, with rain in the northwest. The same was expected in Portugal, where no major fires were burning.
In Austria, the national railway service began painting stretches of track in white, in hopes of preventing them from getting so hot that they bend. Similar projects were taking place in parts of Germany and Switzerland. A Eurostar train broke down Wednesday morning in Tubize, Belgium, en route to London from Brussels. Despite the heat, passengers were not allowed to open windows or leave the train for three hours because of safety concerns.
“Everything was suddenly down. No air conditioning, no electricity,” said Mr Paul De Grauwe, a Belgian economist who was on the train. “I have never been so hot in my life.”
Such high temperatures are rare in Belgium but are becoming more typical, experts say. In the 1990s and 2000s, heat waves of this magnitude occurred once every three or four years, but Belgium has experienced two heat waves in the past two months alone.
On Thursday in France, when the mercury rose to 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit) at 1.42 pm (7.42pm Singapore time) local time , Mr Olivier Proust, a forecaster for the French national weather service, said, “Such a situation is historic because all over France heat records are broken.”
By noon in Paris, the Trocadero fountains near the Eiffel Tower had morphed into public swimming pools as people were jumping under the water jets, seeking relief from a heatwave that started Monday.
“It’s too hot in my apartment; I can’t take it anymore,” said Ms Nadia Zouaoui, a 23-year-old woman who was bathing with her two children in the fountains. “My kids really need to freshen, otherwise it’s unbearable for them.”
French authorities had issued hundreds of warnings to avoid the devastating death toll the country suffered during the 2003 heat wave, which contributed to almost 15,000 deaths.
“Everyone is at risk with these kinds of temperature,” Health Minister Aghes Buzyn told reporters Wednesday.
Volunteers could be seen on the streets of Paris on Thursday handing out water bottles, and City Hall introduced restrictions on car use because of the high levels of air pollution.
The weather has led to some odd sights in London.
After a sweating man in a half-unbuttoned, pink-striped shirt opened a window in a crowded subway car on Wednesday, sweltering commuters made rare eye contact, trading looks of approval and relief.
And on the outskirts of Hampstead Heath, a vast park in northwestern London, hundreds of people flocked to a greenish pond to seek relief Thursday, sunbathing, picnicking, reading or listening to music. Dozens insisted on splashing in the pond, even after an announcement that broken bottles posed a danger to swimmers.
“On days like today, I can almost excuse climate change,” Mr Hylston Chambers, 52, said with a smile.
Mr Charlie Edmonds, a 22-year-old freelance choreographer who was spending the day at the pond on the edge of Hampstead Heath, said, “I’m sweating like crazy, but I’m pleased it’s hot in England,” he said.
The Met Office predicted a break in the heat wave: Temperatures are expected to cool Friday, said Mr Frank Saunders, chief meteorologist at the Met Office.
“Conditions will feel much more comfortable for western parts of the UK by the time we get to Friday,” he said.
The forecast even called for thunderstorms Friday. And about 6.30 pm Thursday local time, rain began falling in London.
