News Today

Majors matter most to Woods
SAN DIEGO - TIGER Woods is more interested in a fifth Green Jacket at the Masters than 11 straight victories on the United States PGA Tour. At this rate, he might have a chance to get both. Woods resumed his improbable... [Read more]

Just fix it
Just fix it WHEN Changi Airport staff found a pothole in the runway one day in the 1980s, then permanent secretary of the Ministry of Communications Sim Kee Boon, who had taken on the mammoth task of building Changi Airport, went... [Read more]

Oil rig worker dies in Sarawak copter crash
KUALA LUMPUR - AN OIL rig worker died after a helicopter crashed off the coast of Sarawak, the second such incident in three months. In the high-seas drama on Tuesday, nine others were plucked from the sea after the Super Puma... [Read more]

World's wacky weather
CLEVELAND (OHIO) - ORANGES and grapefruits froze on the trees in California's citrus groves this month in a freak winter storm that could cost the state's farmers US$1 billion (S$1.5 billion). Bone-rattling blasts of sleet and snow also pelted Texas, Oklahoma... [Read more]

Companies in brief
ST ENGG WINS $68.5M TAIWAN TRAIN CONTRACTSINGAPORE Technologies Engineering (ST Engg) has won a $68.5 million contract from engineering firm Marubeni to supply communications and other electronic systems for a railway project in Taiwan. The company's electronics arm will design and... [Read more]

Smaller sites snapped up in new wave of collective sales
LARGE homes in prime areas may be all the rage, but some developers have quietly turned their attention to smaller sites outside the high-priced central districts. These bite-sized estates in popular residential suburbs are being swept up in a new wave... [Read more]

2nd tier cities on brink of property boom
BEIJING - WUHAN, Chongqing, Chengdu - these are the Chinese cities where the stage may now be set for the next big Asian property frenzy.As China tries to cool red-hot property markets in Beijing, Shanghai and other super-large cities, the attention... [Read more]

India's Hindalco to buy US aluminium firm for $9b
MUMBAI - INDIA'S largest aluminium producer, Hindalco Industries, announced yesterday it was buying the United States-based firm Novelis for US$6 billion (S$9.2 billion). The latest big-bucks foreign takeover by an Indian firm follows Tata Steel's £7 billion (S$21 billion) buyout last... [Read more]

Official who built China 'White House' gets life term
A CHINESE provincial Communist Party official who put up a building modelled after the White House has been sentenced to life in prison for bribery and embezzlement. Feng Liucheng was found guilty of taking bribes worth 3.7 million yuan (S$730,000) and... [Read more]

Protests 'won't stop reforms in W. Bengal'
CALCUTTA - PROTESTS by angry farmers will not deter India's communists from razing farms to build factories in the country's east, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has said. His comments came hours after a policeman was killed by demonstrators near... [Read more]

Factory output grows 5.1% despite slide in electronics
FACTORIES ended last year with a well-worn story - slumping output in the electronics sector dragged down Singapore's overall manufacturing output last month. Industrial production managed growth of 5.1 per cent in December despite the third consecutive month of decline in... [Read more]