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SGX's Q2 net profit rises 17% to S$76m

SINGAPORE : Rising interest in derivatives trading helped lift earnings for the Singapore Exchange (SGX) last quarter.

Asia's second-largest bourse operator reported a 17 per cent on-year rise in second-quarter net profit to S$76 million.

It also attracted a large number of new bond listings in the same quarter.

Derivatives trading has been the star performer in SGX.

Over the October to December quarter, derivatives daily average volume on SGX hit a record of 358,532 contracts, up 30 per cent on-year.

This was supported by rising trading interests in China A50 futures and Japan Nikkei 225 options.

Not to be undone, the securities market performed well too.

Its daily average volume rose 8 per cent for the quarter to hit a trading value of S$1.2 billion.

This translates to a revenue of S$58 million for the securities business segment.

SGX said the better performance was due to improvements in investor sentiment following stability over the Europe debt situation and improved US economy.

Magnus Bocker, chief executive officer of Singapore Exchange, said: "We should remember the enormous amount of liquidity in the market. Not so much in the equity market, but actually more in the fixed income and currency markets, and with chasing yields and lot of very successful and growing companies, I think we can all expect this sentiment to continue. I think we can expect more flows into securities."

Some analysts are bullish on SGX's prospects going forward.

The said the improved investment climate globally may benefit the exchange operator.

Ken Ang, investment analyst at Phillip Securities Research, said: "SGX is very well placed to benefit from this increasing attractiveness of the equity market and therefore resulting in increase in trading value."

SGX attracted eight new listings in its second quarter - raising S$798.9 million.

While the number seems small, it came amid declines in the global initial public offering (IPO) market.

In 2012, global IPO volumes fell 27 per cent, with the lowest level of funds raised since 2009.

Kenneth Ng, head of Singapore research at CIMB Research, said: "I think while that (derivative) is great and that diversified the revenue of SGX, SGX still has a rather pertinent problem of trying to increase the security turnover velocity and value by retail initiatives, attracting listings and so forth."

Apart from seeking more IPOs, SGX also attracted some 90 new bond listings, raising S$39.7 billion for the quarter.

- CNA/ms

Vegas officer kills wife, son and himself

Labels: Lifestyle 0 comments

By Lateef Mungin, CNN

updated 3:27 AM EST, Tue January 22, 2013

When a SWAT team arrived at the lieutenant's home, they found him waiting outside with what was believed to be a gun.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The officer called 911 to say he had killed his wife and son

His home was burning when the SWAT team arrived

After the fire was put out officers found three bodies in the home

Survey: Last year, 126 police officer killed themselves

(CNN) -- Even for stone-faced, seen-it-all-before officers, the act that took place at a police lieutenant's Las Vegas-area home Monday was deeply distressing.

The 52-year-old lawman, police said, killed his wife and child, called 911 to say he was burning his house down and warned he would take the life of anyone who tried to stop him.

Then he waited.

When a SWAT team arrived at the lieutenant's Boulder City home, they found him outside with what looked like a handgun.

Officers asked him to drop the weapon -- commands the lieutenant must have screamed many times before in his 20-year career. He ignored them and ducked back into the blazing home.

It was then, police believe, that he killed himself.

Once firefighters put out the blaze that tore through the home, they found his body, his 46-year-old wife's, and their elementary-school-aged son's.

CNN is withholding their names because the coroner's office has not finished notifying family members.

The lieutenant worked for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, where he supervised patrol officers, CNN affiliate KVVU reported.

The station had interviewed him before about other crimes.

The wife worked for some time as a Las Vegas police officer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said.

She won a community service award and a lifesaving award before leaving the department in 2005.

"Anyone involved with law enforcement for any amount of time is usually prepared for any scenario, but nobody can prepare for something like this," Las Vegas Metro Sheriff Doug Gillespie told reporters.

Last year, 126 police officers killed themselves, according to the National Study of Police Suicides by the nonprofit The Badge of Life.

It's a steep drop from the other two years the survey was conducted: 143 in 2009 and 141 in 2008.

Yet, it's cause for concern.

"In spite of this encouraging news, the fact is that police suicides continue at a rate much higher than the number of police officers killed by felons," the group said.

Folks who knew the lieutenant in Monday's incident were also trying to make sense of it. The soul-searching was agonizing for some.

Retired Las Vegas lieutenant Randy Sutton told KVVU he had worked alongside the lieutenant for years.

"There's no rhyme or reason," Sutton said, saying the lieutenant was hard-working and seemed well-adjusted.

This is "the most unconscionable, dishonorable thing to do I can ever imagine," he added.

"The memories I have of him, they mean nothing to me anymore."

Read more about this story from CNN affiliate KVVU.

U.K. grandma gets death sentence in Bali

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BALI An Indonesian court sentenced a British grandmother to death on Tuesday for smuggling cocaine worth $2.5 million in her suitcase onto the resort island of Bali — even though prosecutors had sought only a 15-year sentence.

Lindsay June Sandiford, 56, wept when judges handed down the sentence and declined to speak to reporters on her way back to prison, covering her face with a floral scarf. She had claimed in court that she was forced into taking the drugs into the country by a gang that was threatening to hurt her children.

Indonesia, like many Asian countries, is very strict on drug crimes, and most of the more than 40 foreigners on its death row were convicted of drug charges.

Sandiford's lawyer said she would appeal. Appeals take several years, and the country has not carried out an execution since 2008, when 10 people were put to death.

A verdict is expected in the trial of Sandiford's alleged accomplice, British man Julian Anthony Pounder, on Wednesday. He is accused of receiving the drugs in Bali, which has a busy bar and nightclub scene where party drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy are bought and sold between foreigners. Two other British citizens and an Indian have already been convicted and sentenced to prison in connection with the bust.

In its verdict, a judge panel at the Denpasar District Court concluded that Sandiford had damaged the image of Bali as a tourism destination and weakened the government's drug prevention program.

"We found no reason to lighten her sentence," said Amser Simanjuntak, who headed the judicial panel.

Prosecutors had been seeking a 15-year prison sentence for Sandiford, who was arrested in May when customs officers at Bali's airport discovered 8.4 pounds of cocaine in the lining of her luggage.

State prosecutor Lie Putra Setiawan told reporters that the verdict was "appropriate," explaining that prosecutors had been demanding 15 years because of Sandiford's age.

Indonesia has 114 prisoners on death row, according to a March 2012 study by Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy. Five foreigners have been executed since 1998, all for drug crimes, according to the institute.

Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

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It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

"Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website "sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide" first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.

The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.

Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.

"Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread," Lipp said. "It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar."

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Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.

USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:

Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils

Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar

Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves

Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors

Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.

Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.

National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.

"One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another...had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice," Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. "And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice."

Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.

"In a bottle of olive oil if there's a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?" she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is "too good to be true" it probably is.

"$5.50, that's pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil," Greenberg said. "And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers."

Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production.
"Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate," Lipp said.

How Obama made opportunity real

Labels: World 0 comments

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

LZ Granderson: Specifics of Obama's first term may not be remembered

He says his ability to win presidency twice is unforgettable

Granderson: Obama, the first black president, makes opportunity real for many

He says it makes presidency a possibility for people of all backgrounds

Editor's note: LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and is a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter: @locs_n_laughs.

(CNN) -- In his first term, President Barack Obama signed 654 bills into law, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by about 70% and the national debt by $5.8 trillion.

And in 10 years -- maybe less -- few outside of the Beltway will remember any of that. That's not to suggest those details are not important. But even if all of his actions are forgotten, Obama's legacy as the first black president will endure.

And even though this is his second term and fewer people are expected to travel to Washington this time to witness the inauguration, know that this moment is not any less important.

For had Obama not been re-elected, his barrier-breaking election in 2008 could have easily been characterized as a charismatic politician capturing lightning in a bottle. But by becoming the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win at least 51% of the vote twice, Obama proved his administration was successful.

And not by chance, but by change.

A change, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., that was not inevitable but a result of our collective and continuous struggle to be that shining city on a hill of which President Ronald Reagan spoke so often.

Best of 2013 inauguration

HIDE CAPTION

For much of this country's history, being a white male was a legal prerequisite to being president. Then it was accepted as a cultural norm. Because of that, we could not be the country we set out to be.

But today, somewhere in the Midwest, there is a little Asian-American girl with the crazy idea she could be president one day, and because of Obama, she knows that idea is not very crazy at all.

That's power -- the kind of power that can fade urgent numbers and debates of the day into the background of history.

Gergen: Obama 2.0 version is smarter, tougher

Few remember the number of steps Neil Armstrong took when he landed on the moon, but they remember he was the first human being who stepped on the moon. Few can tell you how many hits Jackie Robinson had in his first Major League Baseball game, but they know he broke baseball's color barrier. Paying homage to a person being first at something significant does not diminish his or her other accomplishments. It adds texture to the arc of their story.

I understand the desire not to talk about race as a way of looking progressive.

But progress isn't pretending to be color blind, it's not being blinded by the person's color.

Or gender.

Or religion.

Or sexual orientation.

Somewhere in the South, there is an openly gay high schooler who loves student government and wants to be president someday. And because of Obama, he knows if he does run, he won't have to hide.

That does not represent a shift in demographics, but a shift in thought inspired by a new reality. A reality in which the president who follows Obama could be a white woman from Arkansas by way of Illinois; a Cuban-American from Florida; or a tough white guy from Jersey. Or someone from an entirely different background. We don't know. Four years is a long time away, and no one knows how any of this will play out -- which I think is a good thing.

For a long time, we've conceived of America as the land of opportunity. Eight years ago, when it came to the presidency, that notion was rhetoric. Four years ago, it became a once in a lifetime moment. Today, it is simply a fact of life.

Ten years from now, we may not remember what the unemployment rate was when Obama was sworn in a second time, but we'll never forget how he forever changed the limits of possibility for generations to come.

Somewhere out West, there is an 80-year-old black woman who never thought she'd see the day when a black man would be elected president. Somehow I doubt Obama's second inauguration is less important to her.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.

37 foreigners killed in Algeria hostage crisis: PM

Labels: Technology 0 comments

ALGIERS: Thirty-seven foreigners of eight different nationalities were killed during the hostage crisis at an Algerian gas plant that was overrun by Islamist gunmen, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said on Monday.

"Thirty-seven foreigners of eight different nationalities," were killed during the four-day siege, Sellal told a news conference in Algiers, without specifying their nationalities.

One Algerian also lost his life, bringing the giving an overall toll of 38, while five foreigners were still missing, he added.

Among those that other official sources have already confirmed to have died in the siege were one Frenchman, one American, two Romanians, three Britons, six Filipinos and seven Japanese.

During the army's final assault on the plant, Sellal said the remaining gunmen executed several hostages by shooting them in the head.

The interior ministry had on Saturday given a preliminary toll of 23 foreign and Algerian hostages killed during the siege, which ended on Saturday with Algerian forces storming the remaining part of the complex still in militant hands.

The ministry said 685 Algerian and 107 foreign hostages were freed.

Sellal also said that the 32 militants who overran the In Amenas gas facility, taking hundreds of workers hostage, came from northern Mali. Twenty-nine of them were killed and three arrested.

He said the group's leader was Mohamed el-Amine Bencheneb, an Algerian militant known to the country's security services, and that he was killed during the army's assault.

As well as the three Algerians among them, the kidnappers had six foreign nationalities, namely Canadian, Egyptian, Tunisian, Malian, Nigerian and Mauritanian.

- AFP/xq

Top 5 inaugural addresses

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Presidential inaugurations and oaths

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

In the wake of election tie, Thomas Jefferson delivered most conciliatory address

Frederick Douglass said Lincoln's second inaugural "sounded more like a sermon"

Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural delivered hope amid the Great Depression

(CNN) -- Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

As President Barack Obama puts the finishing touches on his second inaugural address, one in which aides say Obama will take a "hopeful" tone, here are Prothero's picks for the top five U.S. presidential inaugural addresses:

1. Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural (1801)

If you think partisan politics are bad today, you should have seen the election of 1800. Desperately trying to hold onto power, Federalists accused Jefferson of all sorts of infidelities to God and country, blasting him as an infidel and intimating that he might be a secret Jew or Muslim. Soon each side was questioning whether America could survive rule by the opposing party.

The election ended in a tie between Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr. (At the time, the Electoral College cast its ballots without distinguishing between president and vice president, and the two Republicans each got 73 electoral votes, throwing the decision to the House of Representatives.) It took 36 ballots before the House awarded Jefferson the presidency. Into this maelstrom, Jefferson delivered perhaps the most conciliatory inaugural address in U.S. history, "better liked by our own party than his own," in the words of Massachusetts Federalist George Cabot.

"Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things," he said in a classic expression of our great tradition of conciliation. "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. ... We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists."

Bibles, oaths and parades: Inaugural trivia

2. Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural (1865)

sot lincoln dkg inauguration_00001820.jpg

The Gettysburg Address is the greatest speech by America's greatest orator, but Lincoln's second inaugural contains some of his most profound thinking.

In this address, which according to Frederick Douglass "sounded more like a sermon than a state paper," Lincoln thinks out loud about the ways and means of Providence in the midst of the bloodletting of the Civil War.

A lesser man might have denounced the Confederates as evildoers, or called God to his side. Instead Lincoln coolly observed the battleground where theology and the military meet: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

After this astounding flight of theological humility, Lincoln ended his remarks with another great statement of conciliation, urging his fellow Americans, North and South, to act "with malice toward none, with charity for all." Good advice, that, for civil wars and culture wars alike.

Quiz: How well do you know your inauguration history?

3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural (1933)

Like Jefferson and Lincoln, FDR delivered his first inaugural address in a moment of crisis, though this time the crisis was economic rather than political or military. In an era before food stamps and Social Security, the Great Depression had put two out of every five Americans out of work. Farm prices were collapsing. Factories were closing. The banking system was convulsing. The stock market was crashing.

Into this grim situation FDR delivered hope.

"This is a national consecration," he began, and then got right to the point: "So, first of all, let me assert my belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Strictly speaking, this sentiment makes no sense. Fear itself aside, there is always plenty to fear. But Roosevelt struck the right chord for the moment, and his reassuring words paved the way for the massive overhaul of the federal government now known as the New Deal.

10 inaugural moments that mattered

4. John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (1961)

John F. Kennedy's first and only inaugural was a Cold War speech that barely mentioned domestic policy. It takes us back to a time when the lines between liberals and conservatives were harder to draw -- when an upstart Massachusetts Democrat like Kennedy could run to the right of the sitting Republican president and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower on foreign policy.

It also recalls an era when presidents would actually call for sacrifice. Today politicians tell us what our country can do for us, or they demand that our country leave us alone. Kennedy told us to put the interests of the nation above region, party, and even self.

"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country," he said, in a line that inspired a generation to enter into the newly formed Peace Corps and other forms of public service. In a less known but equally apropos line he said, "Civility is not a sign of weakness. ... Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us."

5. Ronald Reagan's first inaugural (1981)

Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address isn't on its own terms a classic. But it was historic in the sense that FDR's first inaugural was historic. While FDR paved the way for the New Deal, Reagan set the groundwork for its gradual dismantling.

Ironically, FDR was Reagan's hero. But here Reagan turned on the big government FDR had ushered in, giving the policies of his predecessor a clear rebuke. "In this present crisis," he said, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Reagan's first inauguration came on the same day that 52 American hostages were released from Iran. So the celebrations were particularly keen. But in retrospect the day was most important for ushering in the Reagan Revolution and the fears of big government and high taxes that continue to haunt us today.

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SGX's Q2 net profit rises 17% to S$76m

Vegas officer kills wife, son and himself

U.K. grandma gets death sentence in Bali

Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

How Obama made opportunity real

37 foreigners killed in Algeria hostage crisis: PM

Top 5 inaugural addresses

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