World

SINGAPORE: A migrant worker who choreographed and performed a sequence of Silambam - a traditional martial art form practised in India - took home the top prize at a talent competition on Monday night (Jul 5). Mr Ganesan Sandhirakasan came in first place with the most number of likes and views for his video on the @sg4mw TikTok account, beating 19 other shortlisted individuals to take home the prize money of S$1,000. The competition is part of the Tamil variety series Chill Pannu Maappi!, which is commissioned by the Ministry of Communication and Information and produced by Cosmic Ultima Pictures. Silambam has been practised in India since 4th century BC. The 33-year old migrant worker, who teaches Taekwondo, started practising martial arts at the age of 12 and won a silver medal f...

An illustration showing the cryptocurrency bitcoin with a price chart in the background. STR | NurPhoto via Getty Images Funding for blockchain start-ups topped $4 billion for the first time in the second quarter, despite a sharp slump in cryptocurrency prices. Companies in the nascent industry raised a record $4.38 billion, according to data from analytics firm CB Insights, up more than 50% from the previous quarter and a nearly ninefold increase from the same period a year earlier. Blockchain is the underlying technology behind most cryptocurrencies. It's essentially a digital ledger of virtual currency transactions which is distributed across a global network of computers. The largest financing round for a blockchain company in the second quarter was a $440 million investment in Circle...

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd likely saw a 38per cent surge in profit for the April-June quarter thanks to strong chip prices and demand spurred by a pandemic-led consumer appetite for electronics as well as recovering investment in data centres. SEOUL: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd likely saw a 38per cent surge in profit for the April-June quarter thanks to strong chip prices and demand spurred by a pandemic-led consumer appetite for electronics as well as recovering investment in data centres. Operating profit for the world's biggest memory chip and smartphone maker likely jumped to 11.3 trillion won (US$10 billion), according to a Refinitiv SmartEstimate drawn from 20 analysts and weighted toward those who are more consistently accurate. The South Korean tech giant's strong performance...

BEIJING: China's President Xi Jinping visited the Tibet autonomous region on Wednesday (Jul 21) and Thursday, according to the official Xinhua news agency, in his first recorded visit as leader of the nation. It was the first such visit by the country's top leader in more than three decades. In footage released on Friday by state broadcaster CCTV, Xi was seen greeting a crowd wearing ethnic costumes and waving Chinese flags as he left his plane, in a red carpet welcome as dancers performed around him. Although he arrived on Wednesday at the Nyingchi Mainling Airport in the southeast of Tibet, there was no mention of his visit in official media until two days later.​​​​​​​ After a "warm welcome by cadres and masses of all ethnic groups", Xi went to the Nyang River Bridge to le...

Vietnam’s embrace of Western vaccines – and distrust of Chinese ones – reflect the country’s zeitgeist, says a researcher. SINGAPORE: Two similar events and yet a world apart when it comes to popular sentiment. On Jul 7, Vietnam marked the delivery of 97,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to the country. The delivery ceremony was graced by the country’s Vice Minister of Health and the US Chargé d’affaires. The modest amount is the first batch of 31 million doses that the Vietnamese government has ordered from Pfizer-BioNTech, an American-German tie-up. Just two weeks earlier, a similar ceremony was held to mark the arrival of 500,000 Sinopharm doses donated by China. Vietnam’s Health Minister and Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam were present. On balance, there is a semblance of parity in...

LIMA: Socialist Pedro Castillo, expected to be confirmed as Peru's next president, is drawing up a "hybrid" Cabinet of technocrats and political allies, with a moderate in line to run the economy ministry, three sources close to the plans said. Castillo's centre-left adviser, economist Pedro Francke, who told Reuters on Tuesday that he has had dozens of meetings with businesses and investors to reassure them since the Jun 6 run-off election caused market jitters, is in the driving seat to be named to lead the economy portfolio, said two of the sources. Markets and investors are seeking clues to how Castillo, a political novice, will enact his pledged reforms, which include plans to redraft the constitution and hike mining taxes in the world's no 2 copper producer. The socially conse...

TOKYO: Asia's factory activity saw momentum weaken in June as some countries struggled with rising input costs and the reintroduction of curbs to combat a new wave of coronavirus infections, surveys showed on Thursday (Jul 1). Vietnam and Malaysia were particularly hard hit. Manufacturing activity shrank in those countries in June due to stricter coronavirus restrictions, clouding the outlook for a region lagging western economies in recovering from the pandemic. "The June PMI data show clearly the impact of the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Vietnamese manufacturing sector, with company shutdowns in areas facing restrictions leading to sharp reductions in output and new orders across the sector as a whole," said Andrew Harker, Economics Director at IHS Markit. "While l...

As an early retiree, 39-year-old Steve Adcock and his wife Courtney, 36, have the vast majority of their $1.2 million net worth sitting in investments. But even though the couple expects to live off of this money for the rest of their lives, they rarely spend any time checking on it. That's because they made the decision early on to never try to time the market, instead opting to keep their money in targeted retirement funds. While timing the market successfully — that is to say, buying individual stocks in the hopes that they will increase in price and then flip for a profit — can be lucrative, Steve says it is "a recipe for disaster." "None of us can tell the future," Adcock tells CNBC Make It. "[People] suck at timing the market." Adcock says that his status as a retiree makes him ev...

related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani's US$10 billion entry into renewable energy could drive solar tariffs further to the ground and ignite bidding wars with fellow billionaire Gautam Adani, industry analysts say. CHENNAI: Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani's US$10 billion entry into renewable energy could drive solar tariffs further to the ground and ignite bidding wars with fellow billionaire Gautam Adani, industry analysts say. India's two richest men are vying to be at the forefront of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambition to ramp up green energy capacity in the world's second-most populous country more than four-fold to 450 gigawatts (GW) by 2...

Times are tough, especially for hawkers in the business district. The programme On The Red Dot meets two masters of the trade whose decades-old legacies might be lost if things do not change. SINGAPORE: Maxwell Food Centre hawker Ng Kok Hua started helping out at his father’s stall when he was in Primary Six. He took over when he was 16 and has been plying his trade ever since. In the beginning, he took a bus to China Street after school to help wash the plates and serve mainland Chinese cuisine to customers. At night when the stall had closed, his father took him to sample other hawker food in nearby Amoy Street, Boon Tat Street or Pickering Street. “So (it didn’t feel like) I was coming to help my father, (but rather like) I was coming for the good food,” he recalls. When he was...