Singapore could become launch pad to space

A French aerospace giant wants to make Singapore a launch pad for commercial space flights.

European Aeronautic Defence and Space (Eads), a leading defence and military contractor, is working on the ambitious plan, which it hopes will eventually rival British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which is to launch the world's first commercial space flight this year.

Mr Hugues Laporte-Weywada, Eads senior vice-president for international sales and marketing for the Asia-Pacific region, said a detailed feasibility study was done here last year, with positive results.

First, he said, there is a readily available pool of people in the region with deep-enough pockets to pay the €200,000 (S$350,000) it will cost for an hour-long ride into space.

Secondly, the infrastructure to house the planes and take-off site are available.

Singapore third on globalisation index

Singapore is third in a ranking of the world's most globalised economies, trailing Hong Kong and Ireland.

The Ernst Young's Globalisation Index 2010 found that the Republic continued to perform strongly in terms of openness to trade and capital movements, with improvements also seen in cultural integration.

Singapore posted reduced scores, however, in the areas of labour and technology compared with the year before - when it had claimed top spot in the index's inaugural 2009 survey.

The index measures the world's largest 60 economies according to their degree of globalisation relative to their economic output or gross domestic product. It has five criteria: openness to trade, capital movements, exchange of technology and ideas, labour movements and cultural integration.

Singaporeans No. 2 on CNN's 'coolest' list

Singaporeans have been named the second 'coolest nationality' in the world by travel website CNNgo - and it all has to do with the Republic's burgeoning geek culture.

'With its absurdly computer-literate population, Singapore is geek central and its people can therefore claim their rightful place as avatars of modern cool,' wrote Mr Barry Neild, the author of the report, which was published last Friday.

Brazilians clinched top spot as the coolest people on the planet. The Jamaicans came in third, followed by the Mongolians, the Americans and the Spanish.

The report proclaimed geeks as no longer the laughing stock in a digital age where 'old school notions of cool have been rebooted'.

And the travel website's Singaporean icon of cool? Twelve-year-old primary school pupil Lim Ding Wen, who was the world's youngest iPhone application developer at the age of nine.

He developed a drawing application called Doodle Kids which lets users draw on the touchscreen of the iPhone using their fingers.

He was ranked alongside other icons of cool such as Spain's Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem and the United States' actor and sex symbol Johnny Depp.

Lien Aid gets China charity award

A Singapore non-profit organisation has been awarded one of China's top charity awards for bringing much-needed water and sanitation to more than 30,000 Chinese in drought-prone rural areas.

Lien Aid, a collaboration between Lien Foundation and Nanyang Technological University, received the Global Charity Award in the Great Hall of the People yesterday at one of China's major events of the year honouring philanthropic work.

Held by the Chinese ministry of civil affairs and the prestigious Soong Ching Ling Foundation, the ceremony honoured more than 50 individuals and organisations for their contributions to Chinese society.

Lien Aid, the only Singapore recipient at this year's awards, was ranked by popular vote as an outstanding contributor among the top non-profit organisations for its 14 projects in Yunan, Sichuan and Shanxi.

Singapore 2nd Country to legislate re-employment

That is official, after Parliament yesterday passed the Retirement and Re-employment Act.

Singapore is now the second country in the world - after Japan - to legislate re-employment, and the first to spell out eligibility criteria, a dispute-resolution mechanism and penalties for errant employers.

To qualify for re-employment, workers must be medically fit and have at least satisfactory work performance. The onus is on employers to prove that a worker is not eligible for re-employment.

HK, S'pore best governed Asia-Pac economies: Index

HONG Kong and Singapore are the best governed economies in the Asia Pacific in terms of their openness to international business, a new index has found.

Singapore-based consulting firm Vriens Partners' inaugural Good Governance for International Business index in Asia Pacific for 2010 saw Hong Kong in top spot with Singapore a close second.

In all, 18 economies were ranked for the index, which was based on surveys of 100 business leaders from the various economies.

The Republic was praised for its 'openness to international trade and business, good local infrastructure, public sector quality and effectiveness and favourable taxation policies'.

It was ranked first in fiscal and monetary administration, and public sector quality and effectiveness, second in taxation, corruption and openness to international trade, and fourth for rule of law.

While lauding Singapore's successful transformation into a regional hub for multinational corporations, Vriens Partners also highlighted the Republic's restrictions on foreign investments in areas such as telecommunications, domestic media and financial, legal and professional services.

Singapore patently ahead in Asian tech innovation

The number of high-tech breakthroughs by Singapore researchers helped the country beat 12 other regional markets in terms of patent quality, according to the second Asia-Pacific Intellectual Property Scorecard released yesterday at the Global IP Forum.

The Republic also took top spot in 2004 in the first study carried out by the National University of Singapore's Entrepreneurship Centre.

The research team analysed patents filed annually with the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) by 13 markets, including China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, said the centre's director, Professor Wong Poh Kam.

USPTO data was used as 'the US is the biggest market in the world'.

The team also examined data from the European patents office and found largely similar trends.

Quality was calculated based on how many times local patents were cited by other patents.

In particular, Singapore's patents in two technological classes, electronics and infocomm technology, were among the most highly cited in the region, said Prof Wong. This is at least in part due to the country's focus on these two fields.

Half of the 622 patents filed by Singapore inventors were in the electronics field, like semiconductor chips, and a quarter were in computers and communication products, like wireless antennas.

Only 1 per cent were design patents protecting the look of, say, a toy, shirt or the casing of a new media player, Prof Wong said.

In terms of quantity, Singapore's 622 patents put it in seventh place in the region. The 622 figure accounted for 0.32per cent of the 192,000 patents granted worldwide in 2009.

United States patents accounted for about half of the global total, and Japan, one-fifth.

Singapore's relatively small contribution was a function of its small population, said Prof Wong.

But, on a per capita basis, it did better, garnering nearly 134 patents per million people. This placed it in fourth place in the region - behind Taiwan (358.7), Japan (303.9) and South Korea (201.7).

The number of Singapore patents is also rising, albeit at a relatively slow clip of 8 per cent annually, making it ninth in Asia.

To boost R D, the Government said last September that it would set aside $1.6 billion to fund R D projects in the next five years.