
Singapore still subject to 10% baseline tariff, DPM Gan to visit US next month for talks
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


AsiaOne
4 minutes ago
- AsiaOne
North Korea warns of reprisal against South Korea-US drills amid signs of tensions easing, Asia News
SEOUL — North Korea has denounced a major joint exercise planned by the South Korean and US militaries as "direct military provocation" and warned of counteraction, despite signs of easing tension across the border under a new leader in Seoul. North Korea's Defence Minister No Kwang Chol said its military has an "absolute mission" to defend national security against the large-scale 11-day drills by South Korea and the United States, which he said posed a real and dangerous threat. "The armed forces of the DPRK will cope with the war drills of the US and the (South) with thoroughgoing and resolute counteraction posture and strictly exercise the sovereign right," No said in a statement issued via the KCNA state news agency on Monday. DPRK is short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. No said the drills staged under the pretext of defence against threats were additional proof of the confrontational intent by the two countries that raises hostility and further destabilises regional security. North Korea routinely denounces military drills by the South and the United States, having called some previous exercises "a rehearsal" for nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, even as Pyongyang conducted a range of missile tests and live fire artillery exercises. South Korea and the United States said last week the annual exercise would begin on August 18 to test command control and troop mobilisation under an upgraded security strategy against a heightened threat of nuclear warfare by North Korea. However, the allies said a major part of the field exercise would be postponed and conducted separately next month, citing weather conditions. The postponement was widely seen as prompted by South Korea's liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who won a snap election in June, to ease tension with Pyongyang. Ties between the rival Koreas had plunged to some of the most hostile points in recent years, as the North pressed on with developing nuclear attack capabilities and dramatically boosted military ties with Russia. While Pyongyang has publicly rebuffed renewed outreach by Lee and Washington for dialogue, it was making moves seen as reciprocating some South Korean actions to ease tensions. South Korea said on Saturday it had detected the North's military removing some loudspeakers at the border, days after the South began dismantling similar equipment that had blared propaganda across the Korea also seemed to have used a more restrained tone in criticisms about the US-South Korea joint exercises, said an official at Seoul's Unification Ministry, which oversees ties between the Koreas. Pyongyang "appears to focus on expressing its position on the drills, rather than making military threats," ministry spokesperson Koo Byoungsam said at a briefing on Monday. [[nid:721165]]
Business Times
4 minutes ago
- Business Times
Chinese flu shot maker soars in Hong Kong trading debut
[HONG KONG] Ab&B Bio-Tech soared as much as 169 per cent in its trading debut in Hong Kong, after retail investors flocked to the Chinese vaccine maker's initial public offering (IPO). The stock climbed to as high as HK$34.64 per share on Monday (Aug 11) morning, more than double its HK$12.90 IPO price, which was set at the low end of the marketed range. The share sale's success builds on the rally of health-care stocks, which have been the best performers on the Hang Seng Composite Index this year. Ab&B, which sells an influenza vaccine, was so sought after among retail investors that they applied for more than US$20 billion worth of margin loans to bid for the stock. That's thousands of times the number of shares available to them. Ab&B is also the last company to go public in Hong Kong under listing rules that allowed retail investors to grab as much as half of all allocated shares in an oversubscribed new listing. Starting this August, mom-and-pop investors will only be able to get up to 35 per cent of such deals. Aside from flu shots, Ab&B is also developing vaccines for rabies, herpes and other respiratory diseases, with plans to commercialise them in China and beyond. Though much smaller in scale, Ab&B follows other health-care companies in starting out with a bang in Hong Kong this year. Cancer drugmakers Duality Biotherapeutics and Nanjing Leads Biolabs saw their stocks more than double on their trading debuts. BLOOMBERG


CNA
4 minutes ago
- CNA
CNA938 Rewind - New US$15,000 visa bond: What to know about travel visa and its significance
Following the US' announcement that bonds of up to US$15,000 for some tourist and business visas could be required under a pilot programme, Hairianto Diman and Susan Ng find out more about travel visas and their significance in today's highly inter-connected world from Scott Moore, Managing Director, Henley and Partners