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A random South-East Asian girl steps up to a karaoke machine in a store in front of a grocery shop and sings Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You. She absolutely floors everyone

Nigeria's navy says it has rescued a Singapore-owned oil tanker hijacked by pirates on Tuesday night with 23 Indian sailors on board. A navy spokesman told the BBC the crew was safe, the hijackers had fled and the vessel, the Abu Dhabi Star, was being escorted into the port of Lagos. Earlier, the navy denied reports that the tanker was seized in the port. There has been a significant increase in the number of pirate attacks in parts of West Africa. The BBC's Will Ross in Lagos says unlike the piracy off the coast of Somalia where hostages are held...

Louie Huang, a Porsche-driving, millionaire Shanghainese, has stumped up the sizeable investment needed to buy himself residency rights in Singapore.... Meanwhile, Chinese entrepreneurs with at least half a million dollars to spare are being encouraged to invest in the US economy at a seminar in a plush office suite with a spectacular view of Shanghai. Their reward is a green card under the EB-5 visa scheme, as long as the investment can be shown to have created at least 10 jobs. In 2006 Chinese nationals were granted just 63 visas under the scheme. [T]his year it is already above the...

If you enjoy peering inside the minds of the world's super rich, take a spin through the 2012 "Wealth Report." Compiled by Citibank, and a property consultancy called Knight Frank, it's a lengthy analysis based partly on interviews with the super rich. (Definition: people with more than $25 million in investable assets.) Yes, the report contains musings on why yacht sales are down and the pros and cons of buying a sports franchise. But that's not the most interesting part. The study predicts that Singapore -- that little Southeast Asian city-state with loads of Type A zeal -- will be...

China recently declared that most of the 3.5 million square kilometers South China Sea had become Sansha, the latest Chinese city. The area China claims is within the city limits comprises over two million square kilometers of largely open ocean and a few hundred tiny islands and reefs, many of which are only above water during low tide. Sansha is administered from one of the Paracel islands (Woody Island). The U.S. government responded by asking that China obey international law. China currently claims South China Sea areas close to neighboring nations, except for areas about 22 kilometers from the coast....

Earlier this month, I decided to see how hard it would be to set up my own offshore bank account. I figured it would be pretty difficult, because I’m not rich and don’t have a team of tax lawyers to oversee my money and because the E.U. and U.S. governments have been cracking down on tax havens by imposing stricter tax-sharing requirements. So I proceeded with some caution. First, I Googled “company registration tax haven” and randomly picked three firms that set up accounts in offshore jurisdictions. Then I called each and explained that I was hoping to minimize my...

Rising debt and regulatory constraints continue to damage the reputations of the U.S. and Europe as business-friendly locales, but America's northern neighbor is doing the right things to encourage entrepreneurship with robust tax reform, strong investor protections and a lack of red tape. 1 Canada 3.1 39,400 -3.1 34.0 2 New Zealand 1.5 27,700 -2.3 4.3 3 Hong Kong 6.8 45,900 6.6 7.1 4 Ireland -1.0 37,300 -0.7 4.7 5 Denmark 2.1 36,600 5.5 5.5 6 Singapore 14.5 62,100 20.8 4.7 7 Sweden 5.5 39,100 6.3 9.1 8 Norway 0.4 54,600 12.9 4.7

The United States on Thursday exempted China and Singapore from sanctions over purchases of oil from Iran, hours before restrictions would have entered into force against their banks.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – On the heels of the discovery of a 1991 publicity brochure stating Barack Obama was born in Kenya comes the unearthing of a 1990 Vanity Fair article stating Obama grew up in Singapore, not in Indonesia. In both instances, the question immediately arises: Who was the source of the information that contradicts Obama’s accepted narrative? In the case of the “born in Kenya” brochure, it’s almost certain that Obama was the source, -snip- Was Obama the source of the “raised in Singapore” statement in the Vanity Fair profile, or was it an error by the writer...

From a citizen: A relatively safe country as we have strict laws and practise a sensible approach to public liberty and freedom. One does not carry a knife with blade longer than 5cm or small arms in public. An assembly of more than five persons is also not legal. There has been no incidence of mass shootings, serial killing, etc. However do not take safety for granted ---it is better to go out at night with a partner and it is not recommended to go out drinking in sleazy spots after midnight.

Bankers have always been a worldly crew, and since Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore, we've thought that island deserved our attention. So we started digging and we found out that bankers are heading there in droves. In a recent Telegraph survey Singapore dominated a list of places that bankers said they wanted to work, with 27% of the vote it even beat out NYC. Boston Consulting Group recently named Singapore the country with the world's densest population of millionaires -- 17 percent of all households, to be exact. It's no surprise then that...

This horrifying footage serves as a reminder of the deadly potential of one of the world's fastest sports cars. Three people died when a Ferrari 599 GTO ploughed into the side of a taxi while speeding across a city centre junction in Singapore.

House Speaker John Boehner has become the latest politician to attack Facebook billionaire Eduardo Saverin for ditching his U.S. citizenship to avoid paying tax. Speaking on ABC's This Week, Mr Boehner labelled the move 'absolutely outrageous' and said he would support legislation to stop wealthy expats relocating to dodge tax. Mr Saverin, who pocketed more than $2billion when the social-networking site listed on the stock exchange on Friday, could avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxes after he relocated to Singapore.

<p>Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who moved to the United States at age 13 in order to escape being kidnapped by Brazilian gangs, has been in the news this week for renouncing his American citizenship in order to dodge taxes on his Facebook stock. He’s headed to Singapore to keep being rich in a place where he’s (a) safe, (b) can speak English, and (c) doesn’t have to pay a capital gains tax.</p>

Singapore gets new early-warning aircraft Singapore gets new early-warning aircraft as four Gulfstream jets went operational on Friday in a ceremony at Tengah Air Base, officiated by Minister of Defence Ng Eng Hen. With a detection range of more than 200 nautical miles, the Gulfstream 550 Airborne Early Warning (G550-AEW) aircraft allows the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) to see farther, and respond more effectively to aerial threats in various operational situations. The four Gulfstream 550s are the same business jets used by the rich. They were converted for military use and replace the RSAF's E-2C AEW Hawkeye that...

Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 88, is fighting for his life in a Singapore hospital after handing over power to Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa. The Australian said Mugabe was undergoing intensive treatment in a hospital in Singapore. Some of his family members joined him Saturday. When Mugabe was admitted to hospital has not been announced. There has been no official announcement of Mugabe’s illness, but the Zimbabwe Mail, reported his Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)-Patriotic Front (PF) party is pressing for early elections. A cabinet meeting set for today has also been postponed, the Mail said.

The Singapore health system – achieving positive health outcomes with low expenditure John Tucci explores the current set-up. In the 39 years since achieving independence, Singapore has developed into one of the wealthiest countries in Asia Pacific with annual GDP (on a per capita basis) being amongst the highest in the region. This is an impressive accomplishment for such a small country with very limited natural resources other than its people. What is equally impressive, although less well known, is that Singapore is generally acknowledged as having one of the most successful healthcare systems in the world, in terms of...

SINGAPORE - Singapore, better known for its clean-cut image and electronics exports, is seeking a place in the global arms industry by exploiting technological expertise honed on its own amply funded military. From armoured personnel carriers used by British forces in Afghanistan to ammunition and firearms, the city-state is trying to enlarge the overseas market for its homegrown weapons and defence systems. Its arms exports were in the limelight recently when India's defence ministry banned six weapons manufacturers for alleged involvement in a 2009 bribery case -- one of them a relatively little-known company from Singapore. ST Kinetics, part of...

Gripen: Long-Term, Cost Effective Multi-role Combat Aircraft (Source: Bernama; published March 7, 2012) BANGKOK --- As Malaysia listed the Swedish-made Gripen multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) as one of its possible choices for its new generation fighter jets, Saab, the manufacturer of the aircraft, is harping on its long-term cost effectiveness. Saab media relations manager Peter Liander said the cost of the whole life cycle of its MRCA in terms of maintenance, operations and flying was more effective as compared to other MRCA of its class. "Generally, potential buyers should not just look at the buying price only, but also the...

Fighters, radar, marine patrols top Asia's military wish-list (Reuters) - Singapore hosted military brass from across Asia this week at the region's biggest arms and aerospace bazaar, almost 70 years to the day since it fell to Japanese forces sweeping across Southeast Asia during World War Two. Japan has since become allied with most other Asian nations. It is now China which is the behemoth others are eyeing with unease. And bigger defense budgets, means sales of fighters, weapons and other tools of death and destruction are higher than ever before. At the Singapore Airshow, salesmen in business suits escorted...