SINGAPORE: A S$9 billion expansion by Singapore’s two integrated resorts will see Marina Bay Sands (MBS) add a new entertainment arena and hotel tower, while Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) will extend Universal Studios Singapore to include two new attractions - Minion Park and Super Nintendo World.
This additional investment by the integrated resorts is almost two-thirds their initial investment in 2006, which was about S$15 billion.
“Since the expiry of the exclusivity period for the two casino licences in 2017, we have been in intense negotiations with the two IRs to keep their non-gaming offerings fresh while limiting the potential downsides of the gaming components,” said Singapore’s Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing on Wednesday (Apr 3).
“In exchange for the exclusivity period to be extended to end-2030, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa will invest around $9 billion to expand and refresh their non-gaming components.”
The expansions will create up to 5,000 jobs directly, said the Ministry of Trade and Industry in a joint press release with the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Social and Family Development.
Butterflies have declined by at least 84% in the Netherlands over the last 130 years, according to a study, confirming the crisis affecting insect populations in western Europe.
Researchers analysed 120,000 butterflies caught by collectors between 1890 and 1980 as well as more recent scientific data from more than 2 million sightings to identify dramatic declines in the country’s 71 native butterfly species, 15 of which have become extinct over the last century.
“We are quite sure that the real decline must be much larger,” said Chris van Swaay, of Dutch Butterfly Conservation and one of the co-authors of the study.
The research follows warnings of catastrophic insect declines after a global review calculated that the total mass of insects was falling by 2.5% each year, and a German study found average flying insect abundance had declined by 76% over 27 years.
Since the scientific monitoring of British butterflies began in 1976, there has been a 77% decline in “habitat specialists”, which are found only in certain areas, such as woodland or chalk grassland, while...
US consumers would run out of avocados in three weeks if Donald Trump makes good on his threat to close down the US–Mexico border.
Trump said on Friday that there was a “very good likelihood” he would close the border this week if Mexico did not stop immigrants from reaching the United States.
But a complete shutdown would disrupt millions of legal border crossings in addition to asylum seekers, as well as billions of dollars in trade, about $137bn of which is in food imports.
From the avocados on avocado toast, to the limes and tequila in margaritas, the US is heavily reliant on Mexican imports of fruit, vegetables and alcohol to meet consumer demand.
Nearly half of all imported US vegetables and 40% of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Avocados would run out in three weeks if imports from Mexico were stopped, said Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, the largest distributor and grower of avocados in the world.
“You couldn’t pick a worse time of year because Mexico supplies virtually 100% of the avocados in the US right now. California is just starting and they have a very small crop, but they’re not relevant right now and won’t be for another month or so,” said Barnard....
TOKYO -- The government decided April 1 that the new era name when Crown Prince Naruhito accedes to the Imperial Throne one month from now will be Reiwa.
The Cabinet approved a government ordinance regarding the change from the current Heisei to Reiwa after hearing opinions on the proposed era name from a panel comprising experts from various fields, the heads and vice heads of both chambers of the Diet, and all Cabinet ministers.
The name is composed of two Chinese characters, or kanji. The first, "rei," has meanings including "good" or "beautiful," as well as "order" or "rule." The meanings of the second character, "wa," include "harmony," "peace," and "Japanese style."
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced on April 1 that the name comes from the "Manyoshu" (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a news conference the same day, "The era name represents a culture being born and nurtured by people's hearts coming together beautifully." He said that the name "Reiwa" was selected "in the hope that Japan will be a country where each Japanese person can achieve success with hopes for the future like plum flowers that bloom brilliantly after the severe cold."
In the passage of the "Manyoshu" from which the characters were selected -- a prologue to poems on plum blossoms -- the character for "rei" appears in the phrase "reigetsu," meaning "auspicious month," while the one for "wa," which...
The Internet may have already begun exploding due to April Fools' Day pranks, but one site's April 1st gesture is decidedly not a joke: the temporary closure of Reddit's "r/games" channel.
An 8pm ET post on Sunday confirmed a united front by r/games' moderation team to shed light on the "condescending, dismissive, vindictive and pessimistic attitudes we see in our day-to-day activity." Instead of being able to create new topics or post comments, the community's 1.6 million subscribers will be left reading a locked moderator post that describes an average day's discourse on the site—along with the mod team's hopes for change.
"By showing disdain or outright rejecting minority and marginalized communities, we become more insular," the moderation team wrote after describing the community's "vitriolic" state in general. "In this, we lose out on the chance to not only show compassion to these people, but also the chance to grow our own community and diversify the demographics of those involved in it."
The mods came with plenty of evidence in hand: a NSFW gallery of 71 bigoted, transphobic, racist, misogynistic, pedophilic, and otherwise hateful comments that the r/games team has moderated over a span of roughly six months (if its timestamps are to be believed). "These kinds of comments occur on a daily basis," the moderators...
Researchers have independently confirmed, for the first time, the detection of methane on Mars. For fifteen years, various research groups have claimed to see traces of methane in Mars’ atmosphere. Intriguingly, these often appear as puffs of gas that appear and disappear over short timescales. Groups have hotly debated whether the methane might be evidence of life, or merely geologic processes. Other researchers have argued whether the methane truly exists at all, or if the detections are merely errors.
Now, a group using data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft says they identified methane above Gale Crater on June 16, 2013, just one day after NASA’s Curiosity rover noticed a methane spike from the ground in Gale Crater. This marks the first confirmed finding of an important substance in the hunt for life on the Red Planet.
Researchers, led by Marco Giuranna from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Rome, used an instrument called the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) to look at the area above Gale Crater in the middle of June, 2013. This was when the Curiosity rover reported methane from its location within Gale Crater. In the days before Curiosity’s observation, Mars Express saw no methane. But in the orbits closest in time to Curiosity’s discovery, Mars Express did observe a similar spike in methane, over the same region of the Red Planet. Within a few days, the signal had disappeared for both Curiosity and Mars Express.
The meat substitute manufacturer Impossible Foods and fast food giant Burger King are launching an Impossible Whopper.
According to a report in The New York Times, Burger King is launching the Impossible Whopper in stores in the St. Louis area with plans for a broader rollout later — and not as part of some elaborate April Fools’ Day prank.
Burger King isn’t the first fast food chain to bring an Impossible burger to market. That’d be White Castle, which is selling Impossible sliders at stores in the Northeast.
Giant inflatable breasts have been spotted around London – and no, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. It’s actually for an important cause.
The boobs, which vary in size, shape and colour, appeared in four locations in the early hours of Sunday morning to coincide with Mother’s Day. They form part of a campaign to fight the stigma around breastfeeding and pumping milk in public.
Tania Boler, CEO of femtech firm Elvie, which came up with the campaign, said: “The #FreetheFeed campaign is an invitation to everyone to stand with all those women that have felt shamed or confined when breastfeeding or pumping.
“We know the giant boobs will raise a few eyebrows, but we want to make sure no one overlooks the way that this stigma has been used to repress women.”
The orders seek information about the companies’ privacy policies, procedures, and practices. The orders were sent to: AT&T Inc., AT&T Mobility LLC, Comcast Cable Communications doing business as Xfinity, Google Fiber Inc., T-Mobile US Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., and Cellco Partnership doing business as Verizon Wireless.
The FTC is initiating this study to better understand Internet service providers’ privacy practices in light of the evolution of telecommunications companies into vertically integrated platforms that also provide advertising-supported content. Under current law, the FTC has the ability to enforce against unfair and deceptive practices involving Internet service providers.
April 1 has long been a spectacularly annoying day to be alive, with brands falling over themselves to be "funny" and usually revealing themselves to be anything but. This was almost tolerable in the days when we were talking simply fake advertisements in print media, but it has taken on a new dimension online, as companies have actually modified the services that we rely on daily in an attempt to be "funny."
This was particularly striking in Google's 2016 mic drop feature on Gmail, where clicking the "mic drop" button sent a recipient a gif of a Despicable Me minion—a vile affront to humanity in and of itself—and then muted and archived the conversation, thus hiding any responses to it. Cue widespread complaints from users who clicked the button by accident, denying themselves jobs and offending their bosses.
Microsoft, for one, wants no part of this. In a move that can only be welcomed, Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela sent a company-wide e-mail (leaked to the Verge) imploring staff to refrain from creating any public-facing April Fools' Day stunts. Capossela writes that according to the company's data, the stunts have "limited positive impact" and can result in "unwanted news cycles."...
