Business Times - 10 May 2008
 

By CHEAH UI-HOON

LIKE Illy and Lavazza, there’s another coffee company that has created a machine designed to work only with its own brand of coffee.

Enter Nespresso - one of Nestle’s ‘billionaire brands’ which has made its official entrance in Singapore despite being around for 20 years. The award-winning machines like Essenza and Le Cube - and endorsed by actor George Clooney - makes espresso from Nespresso’s hermetically sealed capsules.

These capsules are the heart of Nespresso, which contain the right portions of roasted and ground coffee blends. To discover your favourite blend, you can taste all you want at Nespresso’s new ’boutique’ coffee counter at Takashimaya’s basement. The staff will show you the beans and the different types of grinds they have in the capsules that look like gaily wrapped chocolates in a box.

When they’re popped into the machine, just a press of a button kicks off the patented high pressure extraction and brewing system, for that perfect brew. There’s no fussing around with filters, measuring your spoons of coffee powder, and figuring which buttons to press and when. Nespresso sources its coffee beans from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Togo, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Its experts then create blends with different proportions of arabica and robusta beans for different taste profiles.

The Nespresso boutique in Singapore is the first for the South-east Asian region, as the company is riding on the growth of the coffee market in key Asian cities, which has been rising by over 25 per cent in the last five years.

‘There is an unprecedented growth rate in the demand for premium coffee in the region,’ says Stanley Samuel, country manager for South-east Asia.

With this boutique, the company adds Singapore members - you automatically become a member of the worldwide Nespresso club when you buy a machine - to its nearly four million Nespresso Club members worldwide.

Business Times - 10 May 2008
 

By CHEAH UI-HOON

COOKING at home isn’t the same as in a restaurant where you’re surrounded with professional cookware - which celebrity chef Curtis Stone knows first-hand, thanks to his hit show Take Home Chef.

‘The mother usually has a three-month old baby in her arms, and a three-year-old running around, while she single-handedly tries to prepare dinner,’ he pointed out during his cooking demonstration in Singapore recently for the World Gourmet Summit.

The premise of Take Home Chef, after all, is that the Melbourne-born chef approaches female shoppers at grocery stores (only in Los Angeles, where the film production is based) and asks nicely if they will take him home to cook dinner AND do the washing up afterwards.

After cooking at hundreds of homes, he has now come up with a wide range of kitchen ’solutions’ - he doesn’t call them cookware - to help the home cook cope better in the kitchen.

‘I realised that there were manufacturers of kitchenware who didn’t cook, and chefs who didn’t know the technical side of the kitchen equipment,’ he says, explaining the partnership he formed with Bambis, an Australian distributor of kitchenware that deals with brands like Swiss Diamond in Australia.

Their joint venture company is called Foodfight, and the equipment offers unique, chef-designed solutions, rather than basic products merely endorsed by ‘celebrity’ Stone.

‘We started discussing this idea three years ago,’ recalls Harry Pourounidis, of Bambis. He met Stone about six years ago, when the company asked him to endorse Swiss Diamond.

Instead, Foodfight was formed, with Stone involved in every stage of design, he says. The top-seller today is the Chef’s Workbench, ‘because when you’re preparing ingredients, you’re constantly reaching over to throw things into the bin’, explains Stone, who used his own workbench during the cooking demonstration.

The workbench is a box-like chopping board, with a hole in the corner where you can shove your debris. On the other side, three one-cup-size stainless steel bowls collect your cut ingredients.

The ‘Bump & Grind’ is Stone’s take on the traditional mortar & pestle. The solid cast iron mortar is lighter than granite, and the boat shape makes crushing fresh herbs and spices easier and faster, while the spout is good for pouring wet marinades.

And then there’s the ‘Juicy’ Carving Board, which is set at a two degree angle so juices from a roast can flow into removable, stainless steel channel to use as gravy later.

‘Most people know you need to let meat sit before serving, but it usually sits in their own juices if you don’t drain it out,’ says Stone.

These and about 30 other items will be available at Takashimaya in July, says Pourounidis. Singapore is the second country to carry Stone’s cookware range, after it was launched in Australia last year. At the end of the year, the cookware will be launched in the United States and South Africa.

‘The workbench is the number one seller so far because it’s so functional,’ says Pourounidis. For an idea of prices, the workbench is expected to retail for around $350.

He has seen a lot of interest in the solutions from Singapore, which is the fourth or fifth country generating the most hits on Stone’s website.

You might not be able to take the hunky Stone home to cook for you, but soon you’ll be able to take home one of his designs. Which is a close - if not as satisfying - second, we think.

Business Times - 10 May 2008
 

(NEW YORK) American International Group (AIG) will seek to raise US$12.5 billion to shore up its finances after two straight record losses, adding to speculation that Martin Sullivan may be the next chief executive officer to lose his job amid the global credit crisis.

AIG, the world’s biggest insurer by assets, posted a first-quarter net loss of US$7.81 billion on Thursday compared with earnings of US$4.13 billion a year earlier. AIG disclosed more than US$15 billion in pretax writedowns.

Shareholders are chafing at AIG’s 24 per cent drop this year, which came after Mr Sullivan, 53, reassured them in December that writedowns would be ‘manageable’. The New York-based insurer has since reported more than US$19 billion in losses from contracts sold to protect fixed-income investors and said more are possible, causing analysts to question how much longer Mr Sullivan’s three-year tenure as CEO will last.

‘Management capability issues, which have been smouldering for a while, are likely to flare up,’ David Havens, a credit analyst at UBS in Connecticut, said in a report to investors. ‘One of AIG’s constant weaknesses has been its complexity. It’s come back to bite them.’

AIG wrote down contracts it had sold to protect investors by US$9.11 billion in the first quarter to comply with rules that require the company to estimate their present market value. Mr Sullivan said as recently as March that those losses were temporary, and the actual amount in a worst-case scenario might be US$900 million over a period of years. On Thursday, AIG said the losses might reach US$2.4 billion.

The loss of US$3.09 a share, reported after the market’s close on Thursday, was four times worse than Wall Street analysts had expected.

The venerable insurer now joins the ranks of other industry giants that have suffered huge losses because of the recent tumult in the financial markets. This is the first time AIG has lost money in two consecutive quarters.

Despite the painful quarter, the company plans to raise its dividend by 10 per cent - half its usual increase - which will cost an additional US$202 million on an annualised basis.

The company’s chief executive admitted that AIG badly underestimated the extent of the problems in the credit market.

‘The severity of the unrealised valuation losses and decline in value of our investments were beyond our expectations,’ Mr Martin wrote.

Mr Sullivan, who took over his post in early 2005, wrote that the dismal results ‘do not reflect the underlying strengths and potential of AIG’. He blamed the ‘extremely adverse external conditions’ in the housing and credit markets, but defended the performance of his company’s core insurance business.

A year ago, AIG appeared in solid shape. The company reported a profit of US$4.13 billion in the first three months of 2007, or US$1.58 a share.

But in trying to expand its fortunes, the company placed big bets on an arcane corner of the fixed-income market, where companies traded sophisticated instruments known as credit default swaps.

For awhile, those swaps rewarded investors with enormous returns. But as securities tied to sub-prime mortgages began to collapse and a growing crisis of confidence spread throughout the nation’s financial structure, the instruments rapidly lost their value.

The result for AIG was, in the words of one analyst, ‘gruesome’: its assets lost US$9.11 billion in value in the first quarter alone.

That hit, coupled with a US$6.82 billion loss on investments, decimated the company’s bottom line.

AIG, which still holds those battered assets, is hoping that the market for credit default swaps improves in coming months\. \– Bloomberg, NYT

Business Times - 10 May 2008
 

By MICHELLE QUAH

SINGAPORE’S Subordinate Courts are looking into fast-tracking the handling of motor accident claims, by concurrently managing civil personal injury claims arising from traffic accidents where there are related criminal proceedings.

The Sub Courts found, from a 2007 study, that almost one-fifth of personal injury motor accident civil claims filed with the Sub Courts have a prior related criminal proceeding. Such duplicity results in extra time, effort and cost for all parties involved.

It will thus spearhead a dialogue session with key stakeholders - such as the Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Traffic Police, the Law Society and the Motor Insurers Bureau - to determine how to streamline current practices. There will also be a joint working group to establish the conventional quantum of damages for more common types of personal injuries.

These are but some of the several changes the Sub Courts will be embarking on this year, as it aims to enhance the public value of justice. It also intends to make changes to the family justice and juvenile justice divisions, and have a greater emphasis on continuing judicial training.

These were announced yesterday by Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, in his keynote address at the Subordinate Courts Workplan 2008/2009 Seminar. He had noted that the public’s perception of Singapore’s judicial system has improved - according to an independent survey commissioned by the Sub Courts.

The survey, conducted in 2007, showed that 97 per cent of survey respondents have trust and confidence in the fair administration of justice here, up from the 95 per cent who thought so in the survey conducted the year before.

But CJ Chan believes the Sub Courts can set the bar higher and build on the improved results from the public perception survey. ‘There is more we can do and must do to ensure and sustain fair and just outcomes for every case that comes before us,’ he said.

The Sub Courts will introduce the CHILD (CHildren, best Interests, Less-aDversarial) programme this quarter. The programme will focus on the best interests of the child and parental duties and responsibilities, rather than the rights and interests of the parents. Some of the key features include having a dedicated judge, deputy registrar and family counsellor assigned to the case, and having the same team deal with parties from beginning to end.

A specialised Children Care Court will also be established to hear certain cases of criminal offences committed by youthful offenders.

The Sub Courts will also intensify its current training programme for judicial officers - and has already been sending a number for overseas attachments with leading courts in developed countries, since the beginning of this year.

AFP - 2 hours 40 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - - Albert Einstein described belief in God as “childish superstition” and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they “have no different quality for me than all other people”.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

“No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this,” he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house’s managing director Rupert Powell.

In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel’s second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions,” he said.

“And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.”

And he added: “As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Previously the great scientist’s comments on religion — such as “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” — have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein’s real thoughts on the subject. “He’s fairly unequivocal as to what he’s saying. There’s no beating about the bush,” he told AFP.

Kelvin: I’d rather believe now and Einstein be proven right than believe in Einstein only to realise he’s wrong!

“Understanding the implications of inflation on your investments and the labour market”

For more information on this Free Seminar, do refer to the attachments!

forum-one-page-details.doc

I received this together with one of the magazines and thought it would be good to share with all Singaporeans on whats in store for you, thanks to the Government’s Giving!

sg-2008.PDF