World

SINGAPORE: With prices rising on multiple fronts, the Government is striving to maintain wage growth and diversify food imports to lessen the impact of inflation, said Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling on Tuesday (Jan 11). She was responding to questions from Members of Parliament Ang Wei Neng (PAP-West Coast) and Jessica Tan (PAP-East Coast) about what can be done to manage the impact on consumers. Singapore’s core inflation rose to 1.6 per cent year-on-year in November, up from the 1.5 per cent recorded in October. The headline consumer price index, or overall inflation, jumped to 3.8 per cent year-on-year in November - the highest in more than eight years - compared with 3.2 per cent in the previous month. In the near term, Ms Low said Singapore is likely to cont...

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s two eldest children have been subpoenaed by New York authorities probing whether his real-estate business manipulated the value of key assets for tax and insurance purposes. Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., longtime business associates of their father, on Monday night filed a joint motion in New York state court to block the subpoenas, accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James of making an unconstitutional attempt to get testimony from the family members while they still face a separate criminal investigation. James had revealed the existence of the subpoenas in a court filing earlier on Monday, saying she anticipated a motion to block them. Donald Trump is also fighting an earlier subpoena, she said. The Trump Organization has balked at com...

SINGAPORE: A workgroup has been formed to review the Maintenance of Parents Act to better meet the needs of the elderly, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) announced on Friday (Jan 7). Comprising nine Members of Parliament (MPs), the workgroup - to be led by Mr Seah Kian Peng (PAP-Marine Parade) - will consult members of the public and other stakeholders with a series of focus group discussions and an online survey this month. These will culminate in the tabling of a Private Member’s Bill to amend the Act, targeted for the end of this year, said MSF. The Act, which came into effect in 1995, serves to provide elderly people, who are unable to maintain themselves adequately, with a legal channel to seek maintenance from their children. It was last amended in 2010 through...

BEIJING: China topped the medals table at its 2008 Summer Olympics but expectations are much lower for next month's Beijing Games as the country attempts to build a winter sports industry nearly from scratch. China did not appear at a Winter Olympics until 1980 at Lake Placid and has hardly sparkled since, winning one gold medal - in short track speed skating - at the last Games, in South Korea's Pyeongchang, in 2018. Cold weather sports have not historically been popular in the country, where the prohibitive cost and relative lack of infrastructure had kept the pool of athletes small. But a huge government-led push to promote snow and ice activities and a soaring middle class looks set to yield some results when the Games begin on Feb 4 and home athletes always tend to overperform at t...

Business sentiment rose in December among workers in Japan with jobs sensitive to economic trends, reaching their highest level in 16 years, as confidence among retailers grew toward the year-end holidays amid relatively subdued coronavirus case numbers, government data showed Wednesday. The diffusion index of confidence in current conditions compared with three months earlier among “economy watchers,” such as taxi drivers and restaurant staff, rose 0.1 point from November to 56.4, the highest reading since December 2005, according to the Cabinet Office. The figure, further improving from the eight-year high in November, advanced for the fourth consecutive month. It was the second-highest level since comparable data became available in January 2002. A reading above 50 indicates that mor...

HONG KONG: The United Arab Emirates kept their slim hopes of automatic qualification for the Qatar World Cup alive on Thursday with a 2-0 win over Syria in Group A of Asia's preliminaries in Dubai. Failure to defeat Tita Valeriu's Syria side would have left the UAE 11 points adrift of South Korea and out of the running for second place in the group after the East Asians claimed a 1-0 win over Lebanon earlier in the day. But Caio Canedo scored two minutes before halftime to give Bert van Marwijk's UAE team the lead and Yahya Al Ghassani doubled his side's advantage 20 minutes from time to earn the UAE a win that puts Korean qualification on hold. The UAE remain third in Group A, eight points behind the second-placed Koreans and a further two points adrift of Iran, who confirmed their spo...

AMSTERDAM: ASML forecast sales growth of 20 per cent in 2022 despite a fire this month at its Berlin plant as the supplier to chipmakers on Wednesday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit. Europe's largest technology company by market capitalisation said that the Jan 3 fire had damaged part of one building and caused smoke damage at a second. ASML Chief Executive Peter Wennink said "the expected impact of the fire in part of a building at our Berlin site is included" in the 2022 growth forecast. An initial assessment on Jan 7 said shipments of ASML's DUV products would not be affected, but left open the possibility EUV shipments could be impacted as the facility in Berlin made one part needed for the systems. "Based on our current insights, we believe we can manage the co...

BANGKOK : Thailand's central bank said on Monday the country's economy could see lower growth in the first half of 2022 than a baseline scenario due to uncertainties caused by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. While Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy has been supported by domestic spending and a rebound in tourism, a growing outbreak of Omicron remained a key risk, the Bank of Thailand said in a statement. Thailand is expected to bring the Omicron outbreak under control within the first quarter of 2022, it said. "There are great downside risks in the first half of 2022 because of the Omicron outbreak, which could be more severe and longer than expected," Sakkapop Panyanukul, a senior director at the Bank of Thailand, told a meeting with analysts. Thailand's economy is foreca...

JAKARTA: Indonesia's government is hoping to reach a decision on resuming coal shipments in the coming days, its energy minister said on Monday (Jan 10), as pressure mounts on the world's biggest thermal coal exporter to end a ban imposed at New Year. "We have done stocktaking and we hope in coming days there will be more clarity so we can have coal security and resume exports," energy minister Arifin Tasrif said in a meeting with Japan's industry minister, Koichi Hagiuda, which was broadcast virtually. Japan is among several countries which have pressed Indonesia to ease its coal exports suspension, which was imposed on Jan 1 after state power utility PLN reported critically low inventory levels of the fuel, putting it on the brink of widespread power outages. The Philippines on Monday...

China has accelerated settlement-building along its disputed border with Bhutan, with more than 200 structures, including two-story buildings, under construction in six locations, according to satellite image analysis conducted for Reuters. The images and analysis supplied by U.S. data analytics firm HawkEye 360, which uses satellites to gather intelligence on ground-level activities, and vetted by two other experts, provide a detailed look into China’s recent construction along its frontier with Bhutan. Construction-related activity in some of the locations along Bhutan’s western border has been underway since early 2020, with China initially building tracks and clearing out areas, based on material provided by satellite imagery firms Capella Space and Planet Labs, said Chris Biggers, t...