World

The world needs to be more ambitious and step up efforts to boost global technological cooperation, say Hoe Ee Khor and Suan Yong Foo. SINGAPORE: Heightened US-China tensions have raised the prospect of a deep global technology divide, potentially forcing other countries to choose which camp to join. There are plenty of grim scenarios involving irreconcilable splits between core technologies that power a wide range of products and services, from aircraft and automobiles to precision engineering for robotics and payment systems for e-commerce. Should these scenarios materialise, the world’s two largest economies will pour huge amounts of resources into a zero-sum race to control the cutting edge. Both the United States and China understand the central role of technology in driving t...

NEW YORK: Ether investment products and funds posted record outflows in the last week of June, bearing the brunt of negative sentiment on cryptocurrencies, according to data on Monday from digital asset manager CoinShares. Institutional investors took out US$50 million from investment products and funds on ether, the token used for the Ethereum blockchain. Ether suffered outflows for a fourth consecutive week, data showed. For the month of June, ether has lost roughly 22 per cent of its value against the dollar. On Monday, however, ether was up 5.4 per cent at US$2,091.96. Bitcoin products and funds, meanwhile, suffered a seventh straight week of outflows, totalling US$1.3 million. For the year, bitcoin outflows hit about US$490 million. The world's largest cryptocurrency was down ...

Two days ago, I spent six hours on encrypted apps with contacts inside the country trying to locate one – just one – oxygen concentrator for the mother of my friend, whom I will call “Ma Moon.” Her mother’s oxygen saturation rate had dropped precipitously in one day from 95 to 70. I do not know this for sure – in these circumstances, we know we cannot ask this question – but I think the family is being treated on a daily basis by doctors who have “gone underground” in a civil disobedience campaign. Medical professionals are among the most respected individuals in the country, and so their decision to oppose the February 1 military coup d’etat that took down the elected civilian government carried immense weight among the population. One estimate provided by public health experts in Mya...

SINGAPORE: Health Minister Ong Ye Kung spoke in Parliament on Tuesday (Jul 6) to address "false" statements surrounding free trade agreements (FTA) and the Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA). He was speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) to "put into context" the parliamentary questions that have been posed to the ministries concerning foreign professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMET), FTAs and CECA. The speech is reproduced here in full: I am delivering this ministerial statement for two purposes. First, even before the General Election last July, the PSP (Progress Singapore Party) has repeatedly alleged that the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) between S...

The U.S. dollar hovered near its strongest level since early April against the euro on Monday, as financial markets looked ahead to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this week for clues on the timing of stimulus tapering. TOKYO: The safe-harbour yen and dollar started the week firmer against riskier currencies like the Aussie as rising COVID-19 cases and a decline in Asian equities set a cautious tone ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting this week. The yen rose about 0.5per cent to 81.08 per Australian dollar on Monday, while the dollar gained 0.2per cent to US$0.7351 per Aussie, approaching an almost eight-month high of US$0.72895 reached last week. Against the dollar, the yen added 0.2per cent to 110.32, helped by a decline in U.S. Treasury yields. The euro rose ...

Waging the tariff war may temporarily deflect attention away from structural problems in the US economy. But keeping the tariffs is a mistake, says a professor. SALEM, Oregon: US President Joe Biden wasted no time reversing many of the damaging policies introduced during the Trump presidency, with exception to trade. US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is expected to meet her Chinese counterpart to review the Phase One trade deal, but expectations for the talks are low. Biden lacks the political will to reverse course on Donald Trump’s trade policies, with bipartisan support for “being tough” on China and using the tariff war as leverage to demand structural change in China. Nonetheless, keeping the Trump tariffs is a mistake. First, the tariff war is based on a flawed economi...

SINGAPORE: She survived an early scare but Olympic veteran Feng Tianwei progressed to the fourth round of the table tennis women’s singles at Tokyo 2020 on Monday (Jul 26) after a 4-1 win over Spain’s Maria Xiao. At the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, Feng got off to an uncharacteristically poor start as she lost the first game 8-11 to Xiao, who is ranked 72nd in the world. “It was the first game, and I was behind in the very beginning so I was rather nervous,” said Feng after the match. The second game was just as tight as the first, but just as the Singaporean looked as if she was in danger, she recovered and recorded a 12-10 win. “I’ve never met this opponent before, this is the first time. So I’m not familiar with her style, even though we made a lot of preparations. In the f...

WASHINGTON: The United States is shipping 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Indonesia, with another 1.5 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine heading to Nepal and 500,000 Moderna doses to Bhutan, a White House official said on Friday (Jul 9). The shipments are part of the Biden administration's pledge to share an initial batch of 80 million U.S.-made vaccines globally amid concern about the wide disparity in vaccination rates between advanced and developing countries. Last week, the administration announced plans to ship 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech to Malaysia. The shipment to Indonesia is part of 4 million doses promised last week and is one of the largest U.S. shipments of donated vaccines thus far. The re...

Private jet company Wheels Up made its market debut Wednesday after completing its SPAC merger, and the company's CEO is looking to take the business to new heights with technology. Company shares closed at $11.55 on Wednesday, rising 16.31% on the session. Trading was paused temporarily on Wednesday morning due to volatility. "Up a nickel, down a nickel, up 50 cents, down 50 cents — I'm not worried about it. I think the stock price, if we execute, is going to take care of itself in the long haul," Wheels Up founder and CEO Kenny Dichter said in an interview Wednesday on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "We're looking for great short-term, medium-term and long-term holders that believe in us, and we're going to stand in there and deliver for them," he added. For Wheels Up to deliver, Dic...

WELLINGTON: Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group, including US President Joe Biden, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and China's Xi Jinping, pledged on Friday (Jul 16) to work to expand sharing and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines to fight the global pandemic. The leaders, struggling to tame outbreaks exacerbated by the Delta variant, said they would encourage the voluntary transfer of vaccine production technologies "on mutually agreed terms" as the region prepared for future health shocks. "The pandemic continues to have a devastating impact on our region’s people and economies," the leaders said in a joint statement issued after a virtual meeting chaired by New Zealand. "We will only overcome this health emergency by accelerating equitable access to safe, effec...