Current Affairs

Last Sat (22 Jun), ST Forum reader Isaac Neo Yi Chong wrote that even as Singapore’s economy has been consistently growing, the rise in income inequality has been accompanied by “middle-class incomes stagnating, and even real wage declines for the lower class”. He also noted that inter-generational income elasticity (the disparity between incomes among generations) is heavily correlated with social …

On 22 June (Saturday), a concerned son named Cheong CT took to his Facebook to highlight the horrible experience that his elderly mother had to endure at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH). It appears that a nurse at the hospital accidentally injected the woman with wrong medication which caused dehydration. As a result, the poor woman’s hand was badly swollen …

The relationship between media and the government – especially independent and alternative media – is oftentimes in most countries rather strained. A country like the United States where ‘freedom of the press’ is a constitutional right which is so staunchly guarded sees a media that can be brutally honest and sometimes just brutal. Such is the price of free speech. …

On 14 June, renowned veteran journalist PN Balji launched his book Reluctant Editor in which he shares stories from his time as editor of The New Paper and Today with a look behind the scenes on the relationship between the government and mainstream media. Nicholas Yong of Yahoo! News Singapore says the 70-year old “paints a portrait of a thin-skinned …

It was recently reported in the media that a young Singaporean in his late 20s lost his engineering job and was unable to secure another job. Feeling hopeless, he holed himself up at home, mostly playing computer games and eventually developed the “hikikomori” syndrome. The term “hikikomori” was coined by Japanese psychologist Tamaki Saitoō in the late 1990s, referring to …

Stiffer fines will be imposed for parking offences to ensure parking fines remain an effective deterrent starting from 1 July 2019, the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) announced in a joint press release on Monday (24 June). The authorities stated that fines revision will only affect errant motorists, and will not impact those who abide by …

Malaysia should impose an e-commerce tax against online businesses, given how their growth presently exceeds that of businesses utilising ‘traditional’ models such as physical retail stores, said Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Speaking to reporters after the 34th Asean Summit gala dinner on Sat (22 Jun), Mahathir said that governments have been collecting “less tax” as many brick-and-mortar stores have …

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen have agreed to cease revisiting past issues in the spirit of preserving diplomatic relations between the two nations at this year’s Asean Summit, which took place in Bangkok last weekend. The prime ministers’ move took place in the aftermath of the diplomatic rift surrounding Mr Lee’s remarks regarding the …

In the beginning of this year, during the 2019 Budget speech, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced the Merdeka Generation Package which aimed at helping those born in the 1950s with their medical bills. The Package basically will include an annual S$200 top-up to the Medisave accounts of eligible Singaporeans from 2019 to 2023, and the first top-up will be …

In April this year, the Information Office of the State Council of China invited eight overseas media outlets, including BBC and Singapore’s Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, to visit two of China’s vocational skills education and training centres in Xinjiang. This is done in an attempt to paint a positive image of Xinjiang’s Muslim Uighurs after human rights organisations and some …