more than 50 buildings

WELLINGTON

And there could be more aftershocks to come, the authorities warned.

In Christchurch’s cordoned-off city centre, where only workers have tread since the major earthquake of Feb 22, bricks crashed down in the streets and two people were briefly trapped in a church.

About 200 people were in the city centre when the quakes struck yesterday, and more than 40 people have been taken to hospitals with minor injuries from falling debris, the city council said.

There were no deaths reported.— Less than four months after it was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, Christchurch was rocked again yesterday by a pair of temblors which brought down more than 50 buildings.

Priority 7.2 (with Priority Pass)        7.2Mbps                                            1.4Mbps to 3.7Mbps

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Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

No other details have emerged, leaving military experts to speculate whether the revamped hulk will indeed mark a significant projection of Chinese military power as a “blue water” force, or hold only symbolic value, lacking the technology and operational experience to challenge the United States Navy.

— China has moved a step closer to launching its first aircraft carrier (picture) with senior generals in the People’s Liberation Army finally confirming on Tuesday one of the world’s worst kept military secrets.Varyag that was bought in 1998 from Ukraine by a Hong Kong company on the pretext that it would be used as a floating casino off the shores of Macau.Hong Kong Commercial Daily on Tuesday, saying the 300m-long carrier “is being built but has not been completed”.The Guardian

Despite woes, Thomson Medical in running for service award

SINGAPORE

Along with 12 other organisations in healthcare and other sectors, Thomson Medical Centre is up for the inaugural Singapore Service Excellence Medallion, an initiative of the national GEMS Up movement to cultivate better service here.

Other nominees include Raffles Hospital, Cathay Pacific, Changi Airport, Singapore Airlines and The Ritz-Carlton hotel.

TMC made the news last November for its fertility centre’s botched in-vitro fertilisation procedure, coinciding with one survey done between October and December for the healthcare segment of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore.

SPERM  MIX is nOt  a servIce  ? ? ? ?— Its sperm mix-up last year and the subsequent suspension of new assisted reproduction procedures at its fertility centre, have not dented Thomson Medical Centre’s (TMC) reputation for service, if its nomination for a new service award announced yesterday is any indication.

Printing glitch in some passports

SINGAPORE

The ICA said in a press release last night that the affected passports are among a total of 1,280 passports that could be affected.

“The printing problem affects a security feature of the passport and those affected may face inconvenience when they travel overseas if the problem is not corrected,” the ICA said.

It added: “The ICA sincerely apologises for the technical glitch that has caused this problem and for any inconvenience to those who are affected.”

The ICA is contacting those who have been issued these passports to arrange for the documents to be examined and verified.

All affected passports will be corrected on the spot. Counters will be set up at Level 3 of the ICA Building to handle those with affected passports.

The counters will be open from 8am to 8pm from Monday to Friday, and from 8am to 3pm on Saturday.

The counters will remain open until all affected passports have been rectified.

Singaporeans who are unsure if their passports are affected can call 6391 6611 (24-hours) or visit — The Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) has found “printing alignment problems” in some passports from a batch that were printed and issued to Singaporeans between May 23 and June 3.www.ica.gov.sg.

MEDIAN  SALARY  ONLY  S$2,500  ? ? ? ?— Television host and radio deejay Marcus Chin (picture) must now pay his estranged wife S$4,000 monthly for her maintenance and loan instalments for their matrimonial HDB flat. He had been paying her S$1,500 since June 2009.

It’s bubble time for Asia

... as it braces for the Fed’s QE3, leaving authorities with the quandary of how to handle all that hot money influx

Pretend you’re Mr Darmin Nasution, Indonesia’s central bank governor, and inflation is running at about 6 per cent. BLOOMBERG

William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Will iam pesek

Do you raise interest rates or cut them?

This isn’t a trick question but one facing Asia’s monetary authorities as they brace for a possible third round of United States quantitative easing, an effort by the central bank to get more money into the economy. No matter what Federal Reserve officials say, waning US growth has many here convinced that QE3 is on the way.

Asian currencies are rising in anticipation.

Here’s where things get tricky for Dr Nasution and his peers. Normally, they would raise borrowing costs to cool prices and contain asset bubbles. Yet that may only attract more hot money as investors rush to higher returns. Lowering rates might ease the speculative capital flows but also fan inflation.

These times are anything but normal as the Fed, Bank of Japan and European Central Bank have rates at or near all-time lows. Asia is on the front line of the struggle with cheap money and unprecedented liquidity.

Things are about to get even more unsettling.

Even if Fed Chairman Ben S Bernanke opts against tripling down on quantitative easing, it’s now clear that rates everywhere will stay unusually low for longer than many investors expected. And with the most developed economies barely growing, Asia will be getting an even bigger share of the loose cash careening around the world financial system.

There’s no doubt that Asia is a different place than it was in 1997, the last time it wrestled with too much hot money.

It has since strengthened financial systems, built more liquid bond markets and amassed trillions of dollars of currency reserves.

This bulwark will be seriously tested in the next six to 12 months.

Before the weak economic news of the past month or so, markets buzzed about exit strategies — withdrawing the monetary easing that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Fears of a double-dip US recession have returned, though, and so has talk of closing the monetary floodgate.

Europe is reeling, too, with no end in sight to Greece’s debt crisis or the risk of contagion emanating from the euro zone.

Japan is in bad shape as the fallout from the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis hamper spending and investment. China is stepping up efforts to slow growth and contain inflation.

These days, when the Fed says it will keep rates “exceptionally low” for an “extended period”, it sounds suspiciously like “indefinitely”.

That’s dangerous for Asia, which has resorted to controls to tame the capital influx. But those tools are far from effective.

One reason many in Asia are convinced that Mr Bernanke will do more is because America’s funk is so persistent, almost reminiscent of Japan.

The first round of quantitative easing stabilised the US financial system and calmed nerves around the globe.

The second one disappointed, as evidenced by the slowest pace of growth in US payrolls in eight months during May.

Congress is gridlocked, making new fiscal stimulus measures unlikely. That leaves the onus on Mr Bernanke to pump liquidity into the economy.

He will face huge resistance from those worried that he’s debasing the dollar, yet Mr Bernanke may have no choice. In that way, the Fed’s experience is becoming a bit like that of the BOJ, which engaged in roughly two decades of quantitative easing.

In Asia, traders have been anticipating QE3, sending the Singapore dollar, Malaysian ringgit, Indonesian rupiah and Thai baht higher.

Even Japan’s yen is gaining in spite of post-tsunami radiation leaks, a leadership void and a deepening recession.

Yen bulls even ignored a May 31 move by Moody’s Investors Service to put Japan’s debt rating on review for a downgrade, citing concerns about public debt levels.

“It says a lot about where we are that so many look at the yen and decide it seems the most stable,” Mr Donald Amstad, director at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, told me in Tokyo last week.

Dr Nasution’s plight in Indonesia tells another part of the story. Gross domestic product in Indonesia may rise more than 6.5 per cent from a year earlier this quarter because of an increase in foreign direct investment. Yet inflation is uncomfortably high. Consumer prices rose 5.98 per cent in May from a year earlier after having increased 6.16 per cent in April.

Indonesia has refrained from boosting interest rates since February amid hopes inflation would cool. The risk is that officials underestimate the effects of increased monetary stimulus by the US central bank or others in the developed world.

If higher inflation takes hold, containing it won’t be easy. Asian policy-makers must be mindful of the bubble fix.

Massive capital inflows have a way of boosting growth and offering a false sense that recovery is afoot.

In reality, they just create new bubbles.

Asia has done an impressive job of weathering the global financial crisis. Yet its performance of the past two-and-a-half years is no guarantee it can continue to do so.

PUB installs railings across Singapore

 

Workers installing railings

SINGAPORE: In the wake of one of Singapore’s worst floods, national water agency PUB has installed some 700 metres of railings at six locations across the island.

They include Sixth Avenue, Clementi Road, Marsiling Drive and Commonwealth Lane.

The new railings visually demarcate the drains from the footpath.

PUB told Channel NewsAsia it has inspected drains at more than 70 locations so far, and found some 30 of them may have safety issues.

Checks and installation work is ongoing.

PUB catchment and waterways department executive engineer James Koh said they are considering installing CCTV cameras and water—level sensors to monitor the drains.

The agency added that the widening of Bukit Timah Canal will be fully completed by the end of next year.

PUB best sourcing department deputy director Lim See Gan said: " The canal capacity will increase by 70 to 100 per cent.

" That will certainly help to alleviate the flooding situation here.

" We have started work here beginning of this year.

" (For) the first stage of the work, we needed to carry out traffic diversion, to give us space to drive in the sheet pile that is necessary to hold the earth.

" Once the sheet pile on both sides of the canal are riven in, we then can carry out excavation work" .

—CNA/wk

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S’pore now sixth most expensive location in Asia for expats

Julie Quek

juliequek@mediacorp.com.sg

SINGAPORE — The continued strength of the Singapore dollar has pushed the Republic up to sixth place on the list of the most expensive locations in Asia for expatriates to live, according to the latest Cost of Living survey from ECA International.

Ten times is alright but not 100 times (more).

Presidential hopeful Tan Kin Lian does not think that the job’s responsibilities warrant the size of the pay packet