Singapore

She's won tournaments in Asia in the past.

Including in Singapore this year.

And regarding their matchup and their head-to-head, well, it is one match each, one win each.

For these two players, of course, Leila Fernandes, again, in terms of top-end experience on the torch, former US Open finalist.

And finally, wrapping up with some regional news.

The Asian Development Bank, or the ADB, is strengthening its presence in Singapore as it steps up efforts to channel more private capital into Asia's infrastructure and development projects.

This comes amid a widening gap between the region's financing needs and available public sector resources.

The lender doubled its specialists in Singapore last year to around 30 as it works towards its target of US$13 billion annually in private capital by 2030.

In an interview with the Business Times, Isabel Chatterton, who's ADB's Director General for Private Sector Operations, said Singapore offers an unparalleled first-row seat to conversation with investors, helping it match their financing requirements with projects across the region.

ADB's private sector financing rose from US$6.8 billion in 2024 to US$8.5 billion last year, with Chatterton expecting the figure to rise further this year.

Still, a key challenge is bridging the gap between what investors want and what the region needs.

Chatterton said different investors have varying expectations of risks and returns, making it difficult to depend on any single source of capital.

I'm Jamin Singh.

Retrenchments in Singapore have risen to their highest level since late 2020.

Preliminary government data shows 4,800 workers were laid off in the third quarter, up nearly 4% from the previous quarter.

Business reorganisation remained the main reason, with layoffs staying elevated in manufacturing, financial services and information and communications.

Still, total employment grew by 27,700, more than double the increase in Q2, driven mostly by non-resident workers.

The overall unemployment rate held steady at 2%, but the rate among citizens aged up 0.1 percentage point to 3.1%.

Singapore's three public healthcare clusters are consolidating their digital services under the Health Hub app from November.

The move brings together the separate apps run by NHG Health, the National University Health System and SingHealth.

The Bolsheviks killed and exiled the Mensheviks, then implemented the Mensheviks program.

Mao tortured and killed millions, then his successors implemented Deng's reforms, which drew heavily on the East Asian developmental state model exemplified by Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore and by Taiwan, the same Taiwan whose rapid post-war growth had become a recognized embarrassment to the Chinese Communist Party under Mao.

Deng's pragmatism is not a refutation of reformism.

It is reformism, just without the democracy that gives reformism its moral and political legitimacy.

And there's another thing here, I think, sorry, Nicholas, which is the strength and weakness argument, right? So I think there's this risk that being too tolerant and too forgiving and too accommodating leads to these kinds of consequences.

So if you say, we're not going to crack down hard on people spitting out their chewing gum on the sidewalk, then that can escalate to what we've got now, where Singapore says, well, we're going to stop the chewing gum, and then all the other stuff also won't happen.

So yeah, I think you do need to be a bit decisive if you want to have a well-governed polity.

right um and i think this this is going to be i i increasingly think that that sort of mafias and crime because i think we've reached the point now where some of these these organizations are are and some of this this the influence of crime the destruction of value being caused by crime is now um a really serious break on economic growth to the extent that if you try to do, you know, if you open a new factory in South Africa, even if you can jump through all of the regulatory loopholes and get all of your taxes and your PEE and all these other things, you then will have some local extortion mafia showing up and saying, well, you know, we want to decide who gets appointed in the factory and we wanted this cut of the profits and that sort of thing.

So Alice Wong, sometimes called Huang Li, she is a Chinese citizen.

She's also a senior top executive at a data center company called Megaspeed, and they are a Singapore-based data company.

Now, the Times big explosive story does not I want to be very clear, and I know you're always, as our editor-in-chief, always focused on the facts.

There is no allegation of any kind of personal romantic relationship that was made in the Times piece.

Okay.

Imagine a wealthy banker who is conducting his day-to-day international business from an ARCPAD platform that is flagged in Singapore.

Right.

He chooses the Singapore flag because it offers incredibly streamlined business regulations and favorable corporate structuring.

Very common.

But let's say this banker decides he wants to trade cryptocurrencies.

Because of that privacy, many strict financial jurisdictions view it as a regulatory nightmare.

Right.

Yeah, all kinds.

I mean, they do the barbecue pork and the pork belly and Chinese barbecue, but their Singapore noodles, their various noodle dishes, hand-cut noodles, they're fantastic.

Yun noodle also is one I forgot.

Why Yun?

Oatly committed half a billion dollars a year to building and scaling their own factories around the world to ramp up production capacity for the next decade.

The company broke ground in Texas, the UK, Sweden, China, and Singapore under the conviction that the growth rates would hold at 20 to 30% every year.

Having two self-owned production hubs in every major continent would mean not only greater production but also faster distribution into the heart of big dairy's biggest markets.

This would permanently also address the company's long-running issues around supply, contamination, and congestion.