How to cool the HDB resale market

A property agent friend rang last week with two bits of news she wanted to discuss.

US town duped by sad tale of cancer boy

GYPSUM (Colorado) - For a brief, poignant stretch of autumn, people in this mountain town found inspiration in a dying boy named Alex Jordan.

UN stung by failure to protect Sri Lanka war victims

UNITED NATIONS - A United Nations (UN) report just released said inadequate efforts by the world body to protect civilians during the bloody final months of Sri Lanka's civil war marked a "grave failure" that led to suffering for hundreds of thousands of people.

Japan's nationalist turn

JAPAN has been in the news lately, owing to its dispute with China over 6 sq km of barren islets in the East China Sea that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu Islands.

Avoid feast and famine in housing

When I bought my first property, I didn't know I would still be living in it 27 years later. I had bought it soon after getting married after a year of house-hunting.

The other Raffles

It is not uncommon to hear Indonesians say that their country would likely have been far better off today had it been colonised by the British rather than the Dutch, but few are aware that, for five years in the early 1800s, the British were in charge of Java and left a legacy that continues to rankle.

Sunset in the land of the rising sun?

JESPER Koll, an economist who has lived in Japan for 26 years, says it is not easy for him to keep faith in a country that is shrinking, ageing, stuck in protracted economic gloom and losing fast ground to China as the region's dominant power.

It's nice, says George Yeo of his new job

HONG KONG - As Singapore's foreign minister, Mr George Yeo was a tireless advocate of engagement with a recalcitrant Myanmar junta within the Asean fold, chivvying it along the path of reform.