Questions of identity and citizenship have long vexed a vast number of people living in Assam, one of India’s most multi-ethnic states. Among the residents are Bengali- and Assamese-speaking Hindus, and a medley of tribespeople. A third of its 32 million residents are Muslims, the second-highest number after Indian-administered Kashmir. Many of them are descendants […]
SINGAPORE – A mass delivery of Merdeka Generation Package (MGP) welcome folders by mail started on Friday (June 28), kicking off the operation to deliver more than 400,000 folders to eligible citizens by end July. Friday’s batch of folders will be the first of roughly 30,000 deliveries to homes islandwide daily. This follows the distribution […]
BEIJING — By the time China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sees President Trump on Saturday, he will already have met with the leaders of Russia, India, Japan and some African nations, appearances the Chinese choreographed to portray Mr. Xi as a man of the world with enough friends to offset the animosity of the United States. […]
Collision of politics and trade making US-China trade deal increasingly difficult, say trade experts
BEIJING – When Mr Stephen Olson began his career as a United States trade negotiator in the 80s, trade was an arcane subject. It was the domain of number-crunchers, concerned with lowering sky-high tariff levels post-World War II, on such obscure items as industrial pumps. This was boring stuff, said Mr Olson, joking that speaking […]
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court yesterday ruled to uphold the results of the April 17 presidential election that handed President Joko Widodo a second term at the helm of the world’s third-largest democracy. The decision puts an end to months of political uncertainty, crushing yet another bid for high office by former army general Prabowo Subianto. The […]
OSAKA (AFP) – European Union President Donald Tusk on Friday (June 28) lashed out at his Russian counterpart in unusually undiplomatic language, saying he “strongly disagreed” with President Vladimir Putin when he said liberalism was “obsolete”. In an interview with the Financial Times, the Kremlin strongman said the “liberal idea” was now “in conflict” with […]
SINGAPORE – Small and medium-sized enterprises are set to get more financial support in training their employees, starting next Monday (July 1). The new Productivity Solutions Grant (SkillsFuture Training Subsidy), worth up to $10,000 for each firm, can be used to cover 70 per cent of out-of-pocket training expenses. This means that, coupled with existing SkillsFuture […]
SYDNEY (AFP) – The wife of an Australian man who has gone missing and is feared detained in North Korea said she had no hint that anything was wrong before his disappearance. Japanese Yuka Morinaga, 26, told Australia’s News Corp that Mr Alek Sigley’s disappearance in Pyongyang was “very concerning” and there was not “anything […]
Four million people have been effectively stripped of their Indian citizenship in Assam as part of a drive to rid the state of “illegal migrants”. Some facing possible deportation have taken their own lives, relatives and activists say. One day in May, 88-year-old Ashraf Ali told his family he was going to fetch food to […]
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Asia’s army of equity capital bankers are betting on a stream of listed companies seeking fresh funds, including Alibaba’s plans for an up to $20 billion Hong Kong share sale, as trade tensions continue to weigh on the big business of taking firms public. Proceeds from IPOs in Asia-Pacific halved in […]