Turkey - Corona Virus: Is Turkey holding back on reporting corona cases ? Singapore sends Turkish Airlines flight home empty after a passenger tested positive for Corona Virus

 A Turkish Airlines aircraft was flown back to Istanbul with no passengers on board on Thursday on orders from Singapore authorities after a passenger who had arrived on the same plane on Tuesday tested positive for coronavirus.

The infected passenger was a French national traveling from London to Singapore, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said, and the plane’s crew would be held in quarantine for 14 days as a precaution.

A Turkish aviation official told Reuters earlier that there were 143 passengers, three pilots and 10 crew members aboard the flight to Singapore. Last month, Nigeria said its first case of the virus entered the country on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, when a man traveling from Italy landed in Lagos.

“The passenger diagnosed with coronavirus in Singapore is a French citizen. The person was a transit passenger going from London to Singapore. Our plane returned without passengers. The crew will be protectively held in quarantine for 14 days,” Koca said on Twitter.

Singapore’s CAAS aviation regulator said that the pilots and crew of flight TK54 that arrived on Tuesday had been come into close contact with the passenger, but the aviation official said the crew tested negative for the virus in Singapore.

Turkish Airlines declined to comment. 

Read more at: Singapore sends Turkish Airlines flight home empty after coronavirus case - Reuters

Singapore - ASEAN Meeting: The Trump Administration: What effect does the Trump circus have on the world? - by Fareed Zakaria

 Attended by all of the major Asian countries, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia summits in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Papua New Guinea are particularly important, because countries in the region are trying to navigate the once-in-a-lifetime power shift taking place: the rise of China. For this, it is crucial that they understand the role of the world’s current superpower, the United States.

But the president of the United States is MIA. Donald Trump chose to skip the summits and send Vice President Pence in his place. Yet China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi are all visiting either Singapore or Papua New Guinea, while Japan’s Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in are traveling to both. Really, everyone except President Trump is going.

A persistent complaint from Asian countries has been that while the United States worries about the rise of China — as Pence did in his speech at the ASEAN summit — it is abandoning the field to Beijing. It does not take the time to attend meetings, shape the agenda, shore up its alliances or deepen its ties in the region. Trump’s continued lack of interest will only feed this fear.

Read more:What effect does the Trump circus have on the world?

EU-Singapore: Trade and Investment Protection: EU and Singapore successfully on Trade and Investment Protection Agreements

The European Commission has given the green light to clear an EU-Singapore trade and investment agreements that aim to take bilateral relations to a new level and comes on the heels of the recently signed EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement,

The speed by which Brussels moved to wrap-up both agreements is being seen as an effort to send a strong message to US President Donald J. Trump about the EU’s approach to fair and rules-based international trade.

The EU-Singapore pacts are the first bilateral trade and investment agreements concluded between the EU and a Member State of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and will serve as a reference point for other trade and investment agreements, including negotiations between the EU and Malaysia that were launched in 2010, as well as similar ongoing talks between the EU, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia that began in 2012.

The EU-Singapore deal is the most significant as the wealthy city-state is by far the EU’s largest ASEAN partner, with total bilateral trade in goods at €53.3 billion in 2017 and services at €44.4 billion in 2016.

Read more: EU and Singapore successfully on Trade and Investment Protection Agreements

Offshore Banking: Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore - by David Leigh

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.

The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as euro 28 billion ( US $32billion) stashed in overseas havens.

In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.

The British Foreign Office depends on the BVI's company licensing revenue to subsidize this residual outpost of empire, while lawyers and accountants in the City of London benefit from a lucrative trade as intermediaries.

The new BVI data contains more than 200 gigabytes, covering more than a decade of financial information about the global transactions of BVI private incorporation agencies. It also includes data on their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.

Read more: Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore | UK news | The Guardian

Cruise Industry - Singapore: Hub for cruise ships

Now that Singapore has so successfully reinvented itself as a switched on "must-see" Asian city, that nation's focus has turned to becoming a leading Asian hub for international cruise ships.The state-of-the-art International Cruise Terminal, only minutes from the buzzy downtown area, is a glorious backdrop for any cruise ship's arrival.

The new terminal on Marina Bay has berths on either side of a roomy finger pier and will become an important gateway to Singapore with facilities to accommodate the world's biggest cruise ships from companies such as Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Lines.

One of the first mega-liners to use the new terminal is Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas which spends summer in Australasian waters from November this year.

Voyager of the Seas carries 3000 passengers and is the biggest cruise ship to home-port in Australia. An ice-skating rink, rock-climbing wall, basketball court, mini-golf course, and promenade deck for street theatre, dancing, and duty-free shopping are among its attractions.

Read more: Hub for cruise ships - The West Australian

The Netherlands: Heineken makes euro 3.8 bn bid for Singapore brewer

Dutch beer group Heineken said Friday it had made a Sg$5.1 billion (euro 3.8 billion) takeover bid for Singapore-based Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) as part of its expansion in the region.

Trading of shares in APB, the maker of Tiger Beer, was halted at the Singapore Exchange pending an announcement.

"Heineken's offer is in line with the company's strategy to expand its presence in emerging markets," it said in a statement issued from Amsterdam.

Read more: Heineken makes $4.1 bn bid for Singapore brewer | Radio Netherlands Worldwide