South Korea’s top envoy on North Korea left on Tuesday for a meeting in Washington with his US and Japanese counterparts, two days after Pyongyang proposed direct, high-level talks with the United States. After Washington, Cho Tae-Yong will travel on to Beijing – where he is likely to overlap with a visit by North Korea’s [...]
North Korea-US: The Korean Central News Agency broadcast an important statement on 16 June. “The spokesman for the National Defense Commission (NDC) of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued the following crucial statement on Sunday: The present US administration is now asserting that the development of the situation depends on the DPRK, urging [...]
A senior North Korean official who has been the country’s negotiator at denuclearisation talks will visit Beijing this week, China said on Monday, although analysts were sceptical Pyongyang was about to make concessions on its nuclear programme. On Sunday, North Korea offered negotiations with Washington to ease tensions after threatening to wage war on the [...]
US President Barack Obama said that China has understood his “blunt” warnings against cyber-hacking as he credited new leader Xi Jinping with accepting more global responsibility for Beijing. “We’ve had very blunt conversations about this. They understand, I think, that this can adversely affect the fundamentals of the US-China relationship,” Obama told “The Charlie Rose [...]
Heavy rains pounded parts of north India Monday, resulting in the deaths of at least 26 people, as the annual monsoon covered the country nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, officials said. The Press Trust of India put the death toll at 30 and a government minister in the rain-ravaged state of Uttarakhand told AFP [...]
Indonesian lawmakers on Monday approved a revised budget in a move that paves the way for the first hike in fuel prices since 2008 amid nationwide protests against the measure. As masked protesters hurling Molotov cocktails clashed with police outside the national parliament in Jakarta, lawmakers inside voted 338 to 181 in favour of the [...]
An electricity outage that blacked out large swathes of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon for up to eight hours last month has highlighted worries about a potential power crisis that could undermine Asia’s fastest-growing economy. Predictions that electricity demand will outstrip government forecasts have raised fears over the impact on the expansion of industries [...]
Belt-tightening in Japan’s diplomatic service is cutting the quality of canapes on offer abroad, the Foreign Ministry has said, leading to fears Tokyo is losing the battle of the buffets to Beijing. Diplomats in Tokyo say China appears to be ramping up its spending on its missions while Japanese diplomats are being forced to scrimp, [...]
Secrets were revealed by former security agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose whereabouts are unknown after he fled to Hong Kong. China called on the US to explain a surveillance programme that was revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose whereabouts the White House said remain unknown after he fled to Hong Kong. [...]
UN leader Ban Ki-moon will launch talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Tuesday, with North Korea and Syria set to top the agenda. Ban is set to meet with President Xi Jinping and other top leaders during a three-day stay in Beijing. “He is going to be meeting the president, the premier, senior officials. [...]
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Monday warned against engaging North Korea in a token dialogue that would only allow Pyongyang more time to develop its nuclear weapons programme. The warning came in a 20-minute telephone call between Park and US President Barack Obama the day after North Korea proposed opening direct denuclearisation talks with [...]
Taiwan and the Philippines are expected to hold another meeting early next month to continue negotiating on fishing operations in the overlapping waters of their exclusive economic zones, an official said yesterday. The second preparatory meeting – to pave the way for fishery talks between the two countries – is set to take place in [...]
Hong Kong actress Jessica Hsuan recently declined acting offers not only from TVB but also TVB’s rival station, HKTV. As reported on ON.CC, at a charity event hosted by her good friend Sharon Kwok, Jessica revealed that she had been busy filming a new drama at Hengdian World Studios in mainland China. The actress said [...]
China-based Hong Kong actress-director Diana Pang has received an offer from American producers to co-direct a flick together with the actor-director of “Argo”, Ben Affleck. According to Mingpao, Pang had already met up with them to discuss the details of the filming process. They are also in the midst of finalising the cast list, which [...]
Kamol and Manee Thongchum: ‘When I look at the children sleeping, one of them is not there.’ Life for the Thongchum family can be divided into two very distinct periods – before and after 18 September 2010. Up to that fateful day, husband and wife Kamol and Manee had lived a simple but happy existence. [...]
Thailand and Laos have stepped up bilateral cooperation on practical response to any possible outbreak of the new deadly H7N9 bird flu along their common border, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported. As part of the bilateral cooperation, a workshop was organised on Monday in Thailand’s northeastern Nong Khai province to jointly review and launch rehearsals [...]
Singapore has been hit by severe haze from forest fires in nearby Indonesia, prompting a health alert from the government. The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) reached 155 on Monday evening, well above the healthy limit of 100, and the highest level since 1997. Outdoor physical activity should be avoided, and vulnerable people should stay indoors, [...]
The 7th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention 2013 (IAS 2013) will be taking place in Kuala Lumpur in two weeks time, bringing an expected 4,000 delegates to the destination. Organised by the International Aids Society (IAS) in partnership with the Centre of Excellence for Research in Aids (CERiA) and University of Malaya, [...]
Asian markets were mixed yesterday, Tuesday June 18 2013 with traders sitting on the sidelines as they await the US Federal Reserve’s plans for its stimulus programme. The dollar enjoyed another positive day, with Wall Street also providing a strong lead thanks to upbeat US housing data. Tokyo stocks dropped 0.20 per cent, or 25.84 [...]
Asian shares eased on Tuesday as investors waited for Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke to clarify the US central bank’s plans for its stimulus programme – with the mere suggestion of fine-tuning it enough to unnerve market sentiment. European stocks are seen easing, with financial spreadbetters predicting London’s FTSE 100 (.FTSE), Paris’s CAC-40 (.FCHI) and [...]
Emerging-market stocks fell for the first time in three days amid concern rising Chinese home prices will limit the scope for monetary stimulus. Shares in the Philippines and Indonesia surged. GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd (3800) tumbled 12 percent in Hong Kong after a unit of China’s sovereign-wealth fund agreed to sell a stake in the [...]
India’s National Housing Bank invited bids on Tuesday to raise up to 5 billion rupees ($86.53 million) via 36-month bonds, a termsheet showed. The base size of the issue is 2.5 billion rupees. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/18/nhb-bonds-idUSL3N0EU17M20130618?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector&rpc=43
The United Nations refugee agency Monday said it was concerned by the at times “mean-spirited” debate about asylum-seekers in Australia, along with the country’s increasingly restrictive policies for those arriving by boat. Australia has faced a record influx of asylum-seekers making the sea journey to its shores, with authorities unable to intercept all vessels and [...]
Heavy rains pounded parts of north India Monday, resulting in the deaths of at least 26 people, as the annual monsoon covered the country nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, officials said. The Press Trust of India put the death toll at 30 and a government minister in the rain-ravaged state of Uttarakhand told AFP [...]
US President Barack Obama said that China has understood his “blunt” warnings against cyber-hacking as he credited new leader Xi Jinping with accepting more global responsibility for Beijing. “We’ve had very blunt conversations about this. They understand, I think, that this can adversely affect the fundamentals of the US-China relationship,” Obama told “The Charlie Rose [...]
Secrets were revealed by former security agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose whereabouts are unknown after he fled to Hong Kong. China called on the US to explain a surveillance programme that was revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, whose whereabouts the White House said remain unknown after he fled to Hong Kong. [...]
UN leader Ban Ki-moon will launch talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Tuesday, with North Korea and Syria set to top the agenda. Ban is set to meet with President Xi Jinping and other top leaders during a three-day stay in Beijing. “He is going to be meeting the president, the premier, senior officials. [...]
Sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) plans to raise about $1 billion through a public listing of its power assets in Malaysia next year, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The proposed initial public offering is the latest in a string of announced or rumoured listings that could return Malaysia to the ranks of top [...]
Land Rover (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, a member of Sime Darby Group, is positive on the possibility of reviving local assembly operations for several models here, including some top-range models to cater for the Asean market. Managing director Syed Mudzhar Syed Ali said the company is confident of the capability of its existing plants as well [...]
Only 28 per cent of the 12 million work force in Malaysia are highly skilled, said deputy Human Resource minister Datuk Ismail Abdul Mutalib. As such, he said the Human Resource Ministry would cooperate actively with the Education Ministry and the private sector to achieve the target of 50 per cent of the work force [...]
The Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI), the Direktorat Jenderal Sumber Daya dan Perangkat Pos dan Informatika of Indonesia (DG SDPPI), the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) have jointly announced a commitment to align with the Asia Pacific Telecommunity 700 MHz band plan. [...]
Indonesia-based price comparison site Telunjuk has landed an undisclosed round of funding from Japan-based Venture Republic, which marks the firms’s first deal in Indonesia. The investment is the latest in a series of e-commerce funding deals in Indonesia in recent times, which have included C2C marketplace Tokopedia’s latest round announced last week and GREE and [...]
The son of detained businessperson Patrick Alexander says Indonesian authorities have ignored high-level Australian requests for him to be freed. “I’m disappointed because our ambassador (Greg Moriarty) and embassy officials have been repeatedly ignored by the Indonesians,” Nick Alexander said today. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/indonesia-ignored-requests-to-free-patrick-alexander-says-son/story-fnb1brze-1226665736214
In spite of having no resources of its own, Singapore relies heavily on the oil and gas sector. That is because much of the oil produced by neighbouring Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia is processed and refined in the city state. This week, Singapore unveiled a new technology to help safeguard the country’s oil refining sector. [...]
Mark Baker, photographer and acting bureau chief for The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur, has been promoted to chief of bureau for Malaysia and Singapore. The appointment was announced Tuesday by Brian Carovillano, the AP’s Asia-Pacific news director. Baker joined the AP in 2003 in Sydney as chief photographer responsible for photo coverage for Australia, [...]
Singapore’s non-oil exports contracted more sharply than expected in May, continuing a regional trend, as demand within Asia and in key developed markets remains weak. Exports of goods made in Singapore dropped 4.6 percent in May compared with the same month a year earlier, according to figures released Monday by trade promotion-agency International Enterprise Singapore. [...]
The behaviour of Thailand’s Buddhist clergy has been thrust under the spotlight after footage emerged of three monks flying in a private jet, wearing earphones and sunglasses and travelling with a Louis Vuitton luxury bag. The video, which has been viewed nearly 200,000 times on YouTube, has prompted fevered debate in the Buddhist-dominated kingdom over [...]
Thailand plans to cut prices and limit the amount of rice bought in a controversial support scheme for the grain as it attempts to retain vital political support from farmers and sustain a budget-draining programme. Commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom told reporters a proposal will be put to the cabinet on Tuesday under which the price [...]
The Thai cabinet will on Tuesday discuss a cut in the rice intervention price in the next 2013/14 crop to between 12,000 and 13,500 baht per tonne from the current 15,000 baht ($490), the commerce minister said. “We plan to cut the intervention price and limit the amount of rice we will buy because we [...]
Oil firm Total Philippines on Tuesday followed the “Big Three’s” price hike for petroleum products. Total Philippines implemented a P1.45 per litre hike for diesel while P1.05 per litre increase on gasoline around 6 a.m. Chevron Philippines (fomerly Caltex), Pilipinas Shell, and Petron Corp. raised the prices of their products by P1.05, P1.45, and P1.30 [...]
System 91W appears ripe to become Tropical Depression 4 in the next couple of days as it continues moving north and parallels the east coast of the Philippines. NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a visible image of the developing low pressure area as it passed overhead in space on June 17. On June 16 at 2200 [...]
Sun Life of Canada (Philippines) Inc. (“Sun Life Philippines”), has been named the number one life insurance provider in the Philippines for the second consecutive year based on premium income in 2012. Official rankings released by the Insurance Commission (IC), confirmed Sun Life Philippines was first in the local life insurance market, recording P20.06 billion [...]
Japanese cabinet ministers welcomed the Group of Eight summit’s stance on Tokyo’s sweeping stimulus policies as a vote of confidence in the government’s strategy to end 15 years of entrenched deflation and revive a lackluster economy. Japan’s economics minister also moved to parry any suggestion that prime minister Shinzo Abe’s policies, known as “Abenomics”, are [...]
Japan’s industrial output rose 0.9 per cent in April, according to government data revised to reflect a change in the base year, showing a steady pickup in firms’ productive activity. The government changes the base year for the data every five years. For April’s revised figure, the base was shifted to 2010 from 2005, altering [...]
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s pledge to end 15 years of deflation has prompted the nation’s biggest banks to raise mortgage rates, mobilising people like Karin Abe to buy a home four years earlier than he had planned. “I wanted to take advantage of the low rate before it started going up,” said Abe, 26, [...]
South Korea’s top envoy on North Korea left on Tuesday for a meeting in Washington with his US and Japanese counterparts, two days after Pyongyang proposed direct, high-level talks with the United States. After Washington, Cho Tae-Yong will travel on to Beijing – where he is likely to overlap with a visit by North Korea’s [...]
North Korea-US: The Korean Central News Agency broadcast an important statement on 16 June. “The spokesman for the National Defense Commission (NDC) of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued the following crucial statement on Sunday: The present US administration is now asserting that the development of the situation depends on the DPRK, urging [...]
South Korean regulations aimed at diversifying the nation’s crude supply will reduce freight costs for cargoes shipped from non-Middle East countries, including those in the European Union. The government cut the minimum amount required for a buyer to claim the deduction of shipping charges for oil shipped from non-Middle East regions to 2 million barrels [...]
Rogue US intelligence tech Edward Snowden issued a defiant rebuke to his critics in Washington on Monday and warned more leaks were on the way, declaring: “Truth is coming and it cannot be stopped.” The 29-year-old former contractor for the National Security Agency dismissed allegations he was a traitor or a Chinese agent, and insisted [...]
Hong Kong has widened an investigation into possible manipulation of the city’s benchmark inter-bank lending rate that initially targeted only Swiss banking giant UBS AG. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has “commenced follow-up actions on a number of banks to ascertain whether there have been any inappropriate market conducts in their benchmark rate submissions,” the [...]
Sinosoft Technology Group, an export-services software firm in which Alibaba Group owns a 25 percent stake, is planning to raise around $60 million in an initial public offering in Hong Kong, a person familiar with the situation said Monday. The firm will start taking institutional investors’ orders from Wednesday and plans to list on the [...]
Taiwan will ease rules for companies to sell China yuan bonds this week as it aims to compete with Hong Kong’s Dim Sum Bond market, sources at the island’s financial regulator said on Tuesday. Taiwan will waive the requirement for companies selling yuan bonds to get credit ratings before offering yuan bonds, the Financial Supervisory [...]
Washington, June 17 (CNA) Taiwan’s representative to the United States said Monday that the US’s stance toward Taiwan remains unchanged following President Barack Obama’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping earlier this month. King Pu-tsung said the United States remains committed to providing Taiwan with defensive weapons as necessary as stipulated in the Taiwan [...]
Taipei, June 18 (CNA) African markets are relatively small and new to Taiwan, but their strong economic growth could turn them into drivers of the country’s exports, Taiwan’s main trade promotion body said Tuesday. Africa, along with other emerging markets, has great business potential and remains among the fastest growing markets in the world despite [...]
* Vietnam Infrastructure Development and Finance Investment Joint Stock Company (VIDIFI) has withdrawn from a project to construct four main roads in Thu Thiem new urban area in HCM City’s District 2 to focus its resources on the Hanoi-Hai Phong expressway project, according to Trang Bao Son, deputy head of Thu Thiem Investment and Construction [...]
Up to 41 percent of foreign investors joining a survey conducted by the audit and financial consulting company Grant Thornton Vietnam in the second quarter replied that Vietnam is an attractive investment destination, a strong rise compared to late 2012. Obviously, investors now are more confident in their business in Vietnam compared to 27 percent [...]
More Indonesian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will come to Vietnam in the near future to make investment and establish partnerships with local businesses, said Mayerfas, the Indonesian Ambassador to Vietnam. In the last two years, many Indonesian firms, including a lot of state-owned ones, have visited Vietnam to look for investment opportunities. Last year, cement producer [...]
