While the world grapples with BIG issues...

Malaysia is trapped with four-decades-old time-wasting and energy-sapping diversions. Who weeps for NegaraKu?

I buy the NST and The Star as part of my job is media-monitering, including of the mainstream media (MSM), much derided by the populace and declining in circulation the past decade.

TWO ITEMS in the NST WORLD scetion today page 26 headline the following:

'Young immigrants will save S'pore economy', and Desi in saving time for his lazy, crazy and mazey readers goodled afp for its full version, whith NST rnning all but the last two paras. (Paras in press jargon means paragraphs,-- SEE how Desi pampers his Ignoramuses here/hear!:(

Back to Google News
Singapore needs young immigrants: Lee Kuan Yew

(AFP) – 23 hours ago

SINGAPORE — Singapore needs young immigrants to save its economy from long-term decline as a result of a falling birth rate, elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew said in remarks published Wednesday.

"At these low birth rates, we will rapidly age and shrink," the 87-year-old Lee said in comments released to the local media after the government disclosed that the city-state's birth rate fell to a record low in 2010.

"So we need young immigrants. Otherwise our economy will slow down, like the Japanese economy. We will have a less dynamic and less thriving Singapore. This is not the future for our children and grandchildren," he added.

Lee's defence of immigration came amid increasingly vocal criticism in web forums and local media directed at foreigners, who now make up more than 20 percent of the population of five million.

Most of the foreign workers and immigrants come from China, Southeast Asia and India, reflecting Singapore's own ethnic mix.

Lee stepped down as prime minister in 1990 after leading the city-state since 1959, when it gained self-rule from colonial ruler Britain, but remains a powerful figure as an adviser to his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The former leader said immigrants should be welcomed and integrated.

"The first generation will take some time to integrate, but their children will be completely Singaporean," he said.

"They will increase our population and talent pool. Singapore will be vibrant and prosperous, not declining and ageing," he added.

The resident fertility rate -- or number of babies born per woman -- dipped to 1.16 in 2010, down from the previous record low of 1.22 in 2009, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng, who coordinates population policy, said Monday.

The rate, which has fallen as more couples choose to have just one child and more people opt to remain single, is well below the 2.1 babies per woman needed for the population to replenish itself naturally.

Singapore rolled out the welcome mat for foreign workers during the 2004-2007 economic boom.

But after the 2008 global financial crisis, the government took a fresh look following complaints from citizens that foreigners were increasingly competing for jobs, housing, medical care and even space on metro trains.

The inflow of foreign workers has slowed and full citizens were given more social and other benefits over foreigners.

Copyright © 2011 AFP

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Item 2 in NST with a pic of the top two leaders of the superpowers of the world, is headed:

Obama, Hu strike RM140b deals

My Googling efforts did not yield the NST print version, so I hope my ER will jest make do with The Star online edition, OK! Beggars cannot be choosers, my Ipohlang helen whispers from afar...

Wednesday January 19, 2011
Obama, Hu vow cooperation, strike $45 bln in deals
By Chris Buckley and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and China unveiled $45 billion in export deals on Wednesday as Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao sought to paper over deep rifts about trade, currencies and security.
U.S.President Barack Obama (L) and Chinese President Hu Jintao shake hands during an official South Lawn arrival ceremony for Hu at the White House in Washington January 19, 2011. (REUTERS/Larry Downing)

Amid the pomp of a state visit, Obama and Hu vowed to seek common ground as they launched talks aimed at easing the strains of the past year over North Korea, economic imbalances, human rights, Taiwan, Tibet and a host of other issues.

Welcoming Hu to the White House, Obama hailed the event as a chance to demonstrate that the world's two biggest economic powers "have an enormous stake in each other's success."

"Even as our nations compete in some areas, we can cooperate in others," Obama said at the choreographed welcoming ceremony. "Let us seize these possibilities together."

The two countries used the summit to unveil a series of deals, including China's purchase of 200 Boeing aircraft. U.S. officials said the $45 billion in deals would support an estimated 235,000 American jobs.

"ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST"

Obama wants the visit to help highlight his efforts to boost the struggling U.S. economy and cut unemployment that has been persistently above 9 percent.

Offering another tangible achievement, the United States and China plan to announce a deal to create a jointly financed security center in China.

Obama and Hu were also due to attend a meeting of U.S. and Chinese business leaders at the White House.

But in a major concern for U.S. companies and lawmakers, Beijing has so far resisted demands for faster appreciation of its currency, the yuan , that would possibly help lower China's trade surplus with the United States, which Washington puts at $270 billion.

Gently raising China's human rights record, Obama said: "History shows that societies are more harmonious, nations are successful and the world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being."

Hu said he had come to "enhance mutual trust" and open a new chapter in relations but signaled he would bristle at any effort to push China on its currency practices, human rights and other disputes that it deems to be domestic matters.

"China and the United States must respect each other's choices in development and each other's choices in development paths and each other's core interests," Hu said.

Hu was greeted with a 21-gun salute, honor guards and the playing of both national anthems in a show meant to convey recognition of China's growing international stature.

The ceremony went off without a hitch. The last time Hu came to Washington, in 2006 during the Bush administration, the arrival ceremony was marred by heckling from a protester from the Falun Gong spiritual sect who had infiltrated the event.

But while handshakes and smiles set a positive atmosphere, the red-carpet treatment was not expected to make it any easier to achieve breakthroughs in Wednesday's talks or even narrow differences significantly.

Some in Washington and Beijing are treating the summit as a gauge of how well the two powers can work in concert as China's ambitions expand in line with its rapid economic growth.

COOPERATION AND FRICTION

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for more cooperation from China in dealing with North Korea's nuclear program and "provocative behavior." She also said the Obama administration was pressing Beijing "very hard to gets its entities into compliance" with U.N. sanctions on Iran.

Hu has been reluctant to give ground to U.S. demands to intensify pressure on China's ally, North Korea, to abandon its nuclear ambitions. North Korea recently caused alarm by shelling a South Korean island and claiming advances in uranium enrichment that could boost its nuclear weapons capability.

U.S. lawmakers, who will host Hu on Thursday, are impatient for results about China's economic policies. A meager outcome at the summit could raise congressional pressure on Beijing over the trade deficit and the way it manages the yuan.

A group of 84 lawmakers urged Obama in a letter on Wednesday to tell Hu that "America's patience is near an end" over China's failure to play by trade rules.

Obama wants to show he is serious about leaning on China for concessions that could boost the anemic U.S. recovery and reduce unemployment -- both seen as crucial to his chances of re-election in 2012.

Obama's challenge to China's human rights comes after critics at home accused him of being too deferential on the issue in his 2009 visit to Beijing.

Hu was likely to raise his worries about U.S. economic and security policies, including arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China deems a breakaway province.

The arms sales to Taiwan, even at the time when cross-Strait relations are improving, is the single most important factor jeopardizing U.S.-China military ties, Major-General Yao Yunzhu, a senior military researcher, wrote in the official China Daily on Wednesday.

Beijing also wants the Obama administration's reassurances that China's big holdings of U.S. government debt are not threatened because of what some critics describe as loose U.S. fiscal policies.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Ross Colvin, Caren Bohan in Washington, Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Copyright © 2011 Reuters

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DESIDERATA:

While the world moves on and mostly forward, in some cases by taking quantum leaps as defined by the above two news reports, I'm sad to observe that NegaraKu continues to waste enormouse time and resources on mind games and kindergarten kids' gallivanting things -- still spatting over azan prayers and "Interlok"; calling each other names like "pariah"; heaping scorn on others with challenges like "Don't like it here, BALIK TONG SAN (China) or BALIK INDIA!"

And the government goes after Opposition and NGO activists, and questioning Bloggers, using the Internal Security Act and other draconian legislative guns, but leaving out brazenly troube-generating and law-breaking Utusan Melayu/Malaysia and its shit-stirring columnists like Ridhuan Tee Abdullah and Awang Selamat/s weekly spaces to again yes, stir shit. Wanna cause another May 13? You purported convert as a "slave of God" does tremendous harm to Islam, a beautiful rligion oftem corrupted by human adherents who half-understand, but that's for another day/die!

Hey,Morons and Menaces, please leave the 1960s to 1980s political baggae and rhetorics behind at the National Museum, we are supposed to be in our 54th year of Independence, and not in our teenage years or kindie school of 1957-1963 OK!:(

And remember, stop quoting Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat and other "Hangs" as super Malay heroes from the Melaka Sultanate era of the 15th century, "you misguided gurus and pretender-historians and politicians" from UMNO and Utusan -- These were Chinese eunuchs sent by the then Emperor from China to serve as security guards and escorts to pretty princesses like Hang LiPoh to present as gifts to the then Sultan of Melaka in exchange for landing at the port during their trading expeditions by the Chinese traders, sailors, maybe even some pirates.