World Of Tourism

Asia Sentinel, 12 Apr 2011Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal. Is Singapore Inc quietly buying the Financial Times?It may seem that way judging from the 44-page insert that FT subscribers got with their morning edition on April 11 as the vaunted paper threw principles to the wind in what will surely be a boost to owner Pearson Plc.'s bottom line.The impressive-looking, perfect-bound 44-

CNNGo.com, 12 Apr 2011While construction-happy Singapore has decided to leave its two historic railway stations intact for now, where does their future lie?Come July, two pertinent pieces of Singapore and Malaysia's history will come to an end when the tracks of Singapore's Tanjong Pagar Railway Station and Bukit Timah Railway Station are shut for good. Full story

Malaysia Star, 9 Apr 2011Of the 18 newly recruited PAP candidates announced, only five hailed from the private sector – an assistant professor, two lawyers and two bankers, one of whom is an executive in the government-controlled DBS Bank.The remaining 13 – or 72% – were top people who had served and resigned from public office to contest under the PAP banner.They were from the civil service, the

Hedgeweek, 8 Apr 2011A recent industry report showed that Singapore’s market share in the Asian hedge fund space had risen year-on-year to 14.14 per cent. With assets under management also climbing 22 per cent from USD17.6bn end-2009 to USD21.5bn, there’s good reason to be optimistic on the scope of influence the Lion City will have in shaping the region’s alternatives industry. Full story

Asia Sentinel, 7 Apr 2011From a microeconomic perspective, one method of identifying an asset-price bubble is to spot self-fulfilling or reflexive dynamics underway. In China today, higher prices in many of its asset markets are generating demand more rapidly than supply. Such dynamics are rarely stable and create situations prone to rapid corrections.Consider property markets in which

Brisbane Times, 7 Apr 2011After the many years of the Lee regime, Singaporeans know the elite never make mistakes. But this play by Singapore Inc to walk off with a crucial pillar of Australia's financial architecture is precisely that, a hubristic reach too far with the government-linked ownership structure that Magnus Bocker and his SGX brought to the table, no matter how they tried spinning

The Malaysian Insider, 6 Apr 2011As at December 2010, there were 1,992,700 locals in employment, forming around two in three of the 3,105,900 persons employed in Singapore. The remaining 1,113,200 were foreigners.If say 20 per cent of the locals are PRs, then about 49 per cent or one in two workers in Singapore are foreigners. This, I believe, is the highest ever for the ratio of foreign workers

CNNGo.com, 6 Apr 2011Apparently, the local grassroots supporters, in their enthusiasm to clear the path for the ruling party candidate to do their house-to-house visits, took away her large collection of potted plants along the common corridor of her flat.It seems they thought it unsightly.Her subsequent comments under that Facebook status were also in caps. This coming from someone who says she

Malaysia Star, 5 Apr 2011As the republic prepares for its 14th general election, there’s a subtle shift in the city state’s mood. For a start, Singaporeans are more questioning.At the same time, they also have the means to question — namely the ubiquitous social media, the same engine that recently transformed Middle Eastern politics.Moreover, the government’s much-lauded investment in

Yale Daily News, 4 Apr 2011Many years ago, Yale added sexual orientation to the list of protections covered by its non-discrimination policy. In their announcement on Thursday, President Levin and Provost Salovey stated that “our agreement with NUS … affirms consistency with Yale’s policy on non-discrimination.” This is impossible. Non-discrimination cannot be ensured on a campus in Singapore,

Malaysia Star, 2 Apr 2011IN recent months, inflation – set to reach 6% soon – has seemingly been acting like a runaway bus, cutting into people’s hard work and savings.The rising cost of living is fast becoming the second biggest concern – next to jobs and earnings – among Singaporeans, who will go to the polls this year.Last week they received more bad news. Electricity costs will rise by 6.5%

The Atlantic, 1 Apr 2011Of all the holidays I've celebrated, the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts remained the trickiest. The Chinese in Singapore believe that August—the seventh month in the Chinese calendar—is when ghosts are released from Hell and allowed to roam the earth. (Who knew the Other World was so generous with vacation time?) Think of it as Halloween—on steroids—celebrated over an

The Malaysian Insider, 31 Mar 2011MARCH 31 — The public uproar over the photograph of a full-time National Serviceman walking in public with what appears to be his family’s domestic helper carrying his backpack has led to a great deal of discussion in the print media and online.The discussion and comments can be divided into two camps. The pro-SAF group argues that the picture does not portray

The Malaysian Insider, 29 Mar 2011A more recent survey by the five polytechnics showed that “more than 90 per cent of polytechnic graduates were in the workforce as at Oct 1, 2010”. And the Ministry of Manpower’s Report on Labour Force in Singapore, 2010, released in January, showed that the percentage of contract workers dropped from 12.7 per cent in 2009 to 11.5 per cent in 2010.Dig a little

CNNGo.com, 28 Mar 2011Singapore’s hawker centers were once wet, dirty and dim shelters crammed with all forms of street food.As the country took on a more modern face, its food spots followed suit, with many of the island’s hawker centers upgrading or moving indoors in the 1990s to air-conditioned food courts.While foodies bemoaned the loss of authenticity, diners with delicate constitutions and

Malaysia Star, 26 Mar 2011FOR the first time in years, Singapore’s opposition is seeing a little light in a dark tunnel, at least in recruiting the highly-educated.An impressive number of top scholars and professionals, including a dozen with Masters and Doctorates (PhD), will likely emerge to challenge the People’s Action Party in the elections expected in May.It is something Minister Mentor Lee

Asia Times Online, 24 Mar 2011SINGAPORE - Days before Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced the government's 2011 budget in parliament, the political opposition offered a glimpse of how it would allocate the national finances in a "shadow" budget. The state-controlled mainstream media gave the opposition announcement scant coverage, but it was picked up widely by a number of

The Australian, 21 Mar 2011IGNORE Wayne Swan's firm denials. The proposed takeover of the Australian Stock Exchange by Singapore Exchange has been receiving political last rites for some time. It's not yet officially dead. And certainly no one is publicly conceding the imminent demise of the original $8 billion deal. But any prospect of a miraculous recovery would require major surgery -- and so

Malaysia Star, 19 Mar 2011Singapore’s ambitious overseas investments have been hit by a series of crises – from the 9/11 attacks in 2001 to the 2007 global financial crisis and recession and now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and Middle East upheavals.AS Singaporeans’ concern mount over the safety of millions of Japanese, a small group of state investors are probably burning the midnight oil

CNNGo.com, 18 Mar 2011The President of Singapore is getting his salary, ahem, adjusted from S$3,376,800 (US$2,634,931) to S$4,267,500 (US$3,329,996).That’s a 26 percent jump.My fingers are cramping up just typing those numbers. Even the currency conversion website I typed these numbers into said “Daaaaaamn, that’s a lotta numbers!”In the newspapers, this piece of news was tucked away at the