Author: Press Room

The Associated Press caused a stir online Thursday after it updated its official Stylebook to discourage writers from using the word “the” as it said the word is “dehumanizing” when used as a label to describe certain groups of people, including “the French.” “We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the disabled, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses,” the guidance wrote.It further advised: “And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant.”The response was swift as people claimed the change was “woke” and even the U.S.…

SINGAPORE: The Malaysian government respects a 2008 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling indicating that Singapore had sovereignty over Pedra Branca, Attorney-General Idris Harun said on Friday (Jan 27).  He also said that a decision made by the Mahathir Mohamad administration back in 2018 to withdraw Malaysia’s application to revise the ICJ judgment was “improper”. This comes after the current administration, led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, asked Mr Idris last month to clarify Malaysia’s claims on Pedra Branca, or what it calls Pulau Batu Puteh. The government had convened a special task force to look into the issue, and…

SINGAPORE: The Malaysian government respects a 2008 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling indicating that Singapore had sovereignty over Pedra Branca, Attorney-General Idris Harun said on Friday (Jan 27).  He also said that a decision made by the Mahathir Mohamad administration back in 2018 to withdraw Malaysia’s application to revise the ICJ judgment was “improper”. This comes after the current administration, led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, asked Mr Idris last month to clarify Malaysia’s claims on Pedra Branca, or what it calls Pulau Batu Puteh. The government had convened a special task force to look into the issue, and…

BANGKOK: Thailand’s ruling pro-military Palang Pracharat party has chosen political veteran and former army chief Prawit Wongsuwon as its prime minister candidate, a senior official said on Friday (Jan 27), as parties gear up for an election that must be held by May. Prawit, an adept political dealmaker in Thailand’s conservative establishment and current deputy prime minister, will likely go against the Pheu Thai Party’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of self-exiled former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has declared her readiness for the top job. “He is the centre of the party … our members, parliamentarians all see him as talented…

Investors have raced back into Chinese tech stocks this year, encouraged by an apparent truce in a two-year battle between some of the country’s most powerful regulators and its biggest internet companies. But the enthusiasm may prove to be premature; Beijing is tightening its grip on household names such as Alibaba (BABA) by acquiring so-called “golden shares” that allow government officials to be directly involved in their businesses, including having a say in the content they provide to hundreds of millions of people. Earlier this month, a fund controlled by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) took a 1% stake…

Hasbro said it would stay on track to make $250mn-$300mn in annual cost savings © Ray Stubblebine/ReutersHasbro said it would cut 1,000 jobs and announced the departure of its chief operating officer as the US toymaker revealed preliminary results for the fourth-quarter that were worse than previously forecast.The job cuts, representing about 15 per cent of its global workforce, “are necessary to return our business to a competitive, industry-leading position”, chief executive Chris Cocks said in a statement on Thursday afternoon.Hasbro said they would help keep the company on track to achieve its goal, as part of a plan announced last…

Chairman and founder of the Adani Group, Gautam Adani, at the News18 Rising India Summit on Feb. 25, 2019, in New Delhi, India. Since becoming a billionaire in 2008, Adani is now one of the richest people in the world, with a $113 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.Hindustan Times | Hindustan Times | Getty ImagesShares of Adani Group companies continued to see sharp losses for a second consecutive trading session in India, after short seller firm Hindenburg announced its short position in the conglomerate’s firms earlier this week.In a lengthy report released earlier this week, Hindenburg detailed…

Otto Rohwedder gave the world an innovation by which all others are compared. Rohwedder, a native of Davenport, Iowa, invented sliced bread. It’s the greatest thing since …  Well, it’s the greatest thing, according to popular acclaim. “Sliced bread is the standard of all innovation, past, present and future,” said Ed Douglas, a businessman, local historian and county commissioner from Chillicothe, Missouri. MEET THE AMERICAN WHO FIRST RECORDED THE BLUES, NATION’S ORIGINAL POP DIVA MAMIE SMITHThe world’s first loaves of bread — sliced and packaged right out of the oven by Rohwedder’s unique innovation — rolled out of Chillicothe Baking Co. in 1928. Sliced bread…

Jay Newman was a senior portfolio manager at Elliott Management and is author of the finance thriller Undermoney. Benjamin Heller is a portfolio manager at HBK Capital Management, specialising in emerging markets.The world of distressed sovereign debt seems to attract bad ideas like no other, mostly generated by G-20 bureaucrats and the International Monetary Fund. The most recent is the Common Framework for Debt Treatment, which is neither common nor a framework, but, rather, a recapitulation of the ad hoc nature of the process for resolving sovereign defaults. Twenty years ago it was the Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism, a Trojan…

Good morning. Sherwin-Williams (a paint company) joined the bad guidance gang yesterday: it said 2023 sales will be flat to down. The stock fell nearly 9 per cent. Not every cyclical stock is providing negative surprises, of course. Seagate (computer memory) surprised to the upside, and its shares rose close to 11 per cent. But the two are different. Sherwin-Williams is an expensive stock that dashed investors’ hopes for growth. Seagate is a cheap stock in a washed-out industry, which said things were not quite as bad as investors had thought. There is a lesson in there somewhere. Email us:…