Why Singapore fear China over South China Sea dispute ? - Bloomberg

The risk of a clash in the South China Sea lies with non-military ships, Singapore’s defense minister said, as China deploys more heavily armed coast guard vessels in the disputed waters.

Singapore has joined other nations in the region and the U.S. in warning the reliance on fishing boats and coast guards to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea raises the prospect of an incident. China has used its so-called white hull fleet to chase and shoo ships including fishing boats from other countries away from the reefs it claims.

A practical concern for nations whose ships travel through the area -- it’s a key shipping lane that carries as much as $5 trillion in trade a year -- is how to develop processes to defuse incidents as they occur, Ng Eng Hen told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of Southeast Asian and U.S. defense ministers in Hawaii.

“It may have, in fact, very little to do with military ships” given an agreed code in place for navies, he said. “But you may have incidents arising from fishing, you may have incidents arising from white ships,” Ng said. “Whatever color ships they are, they can precipitate incidents.”

Singapore is not a claimant in the South China Sea, and Ng said China is “not a threat to us.” Still, it has called for a reduction in tensions and for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to take a more united approach to resolving the disputes. The South China Sea has become a flashpoint for the broader tussle between China and the U.S. for influence in the western Pacific as President Xi Jinping seeks to build his country into a regional power.

For an explainer on territorial tensions in the South China Sea, click here.

“We are interested in the South China Sea because it is a major shipping route, and a lot of economies depend on it,” Ng said. “We think that uncertainty may lead to incidents.”

China’s assertions cross over those of nations including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia, and it has reclaimed thousands of acres in the waters in recent years, adding airstrips and fighter jets. An arbitration court in the Hague in July ruled in favor of a Philippine challenge to China’s territorial claims, but that has not deterred China from continuing to beef up its presence in the waters.

Ministers in Hawaii talked about how to prevent an escalation in tensions and how to keep communication open, Ng said. “We talked about forums at which we can bring up disputes,” he said. “We talked about how we can resolve disputes.”

ministers or leaders have failed to take a tough stance on the disputes. Asean statements have not mentioned China by name, while expressing concern about developments in the South China Sea.

Asean operates on consensus and it only takes one member state to disagree for a statement to be torpedoed. A meeting of foreign ministers in China in June ended in confusion after Malaysia released and then retracted a joint Asean statement that cited China for the first time over its behavior. Observers said at the time that smaller states like Cambodia could be swayed by Chinese pressure.

That has led several Asean states to publicly call for greater unity for the bloc, amid concerns about its effectiveness going forward.

The South China Sea is a “problem of positions,” Ng said. Still, “we have often said that whether you are claimants or non-claimants, whether you are China, U.S. or other countries, I think there is wisdom in the system to understand what it is you are really fighting over. I do not see it as an immediate threat.”

Trump declared $916 million loss for 1995 tax return - CBS News

AM EDT

In 1995, Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss on his income tax returns, The New York Times reported Saturday.

This loss would have generated a tax deduction so substantial, according to the Times, that he would be able “to avoid paying any federal income taxes for “up to 18 years.”

The information was mailed to the Times in an envelope that bore a New York City postmark and listed a return address at Trump Tower. The mailing was not the totality of Trump’s 1995 tax returns, but rather the first page of his New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tax returns.

The Times consulted tax experts whose analysis suggested that Trump “almost certainly” carried forward operating losses from the early 1990s, from three casinos and a hotel in Atlantic City, an airline, the Plaza Hotel and a yacht.

In response, the Trump campaign lashed out at the Times Saturday night in a statement, saying, “The only news here is that the more than 20-year-old alleged tax document was illegally obtained,” which it went on to say, demonstrated that the Times and establishment media in general were “an extension of the Clinton campaign, Democratic party and their global special interests.”

However, the campaign statement also did not deny or confirm the authenticity of the documents published. “Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” it said, reiterating a sentiment routinely expressed by Trump and his aides during the campaign.  “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.” 

The statement went on to praise the GOP nominee’s mastery of the tax code. “Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it,” it said.  

Hillary Clinton’s campaign respondede to the “bombshell report.” 

“This bombshell report reveals the colossal nature of Donald Trump’s past business failures and just how long he may have avoided paying any federal income taxes whatsoever,” it said in a statement Saturday night. It went on to say, “He stiffed small businesses, laid off workers, and walked away from hardworking communities. And how did it work out for him? He apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades -- while tens of millions of working families paid theirs.” 

Clinton’s campaign also renewed its call on Trump to release his full tax returns, “to show us all how ‘smart’ he really is,” an allusion to a retort he made in their first debate days earlier.

At the Hofstra debate, Clinton prodded him to release his returns, referring to an earlier report by Politico that “the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” And Trump interjected at that moment,  “That makes me smart.”

CBS News’ Sopan Deb and Hannah Fraser-Chanpong contributed to this report

Lesson to be learned by all leaders from Trump's failed debate - New York Times

A big takeaway for leaders in all sectors. 

Among the many questions raised by Monday’s presidential debate – Who won? Was Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece? Why was Donald Trump sniffling? – was this one: Does rehearsing pay? Clinton reportedly rehearsed intensively, while Trump reportedly didn’t rehearse at all.

The most impartial judges of the outcome, markets in currencies, commodities, and stocks, declared Clinton the winner. Whether rehearsing pays in presidential debates may nonetheless remain one of those eternally unanswered questions, but in business the answer is absolutely clear. Rehearsal pays big, and most companies fail to achieve anything near its potential value.

Donald Trump at the presidential debate last night at Hofstra University. Photograph by Getty Images

A big takeaway for leaders in all sectors. 

Among the many questions raised by Monday’s presidential debate – Who won? Was Hillary Clinton wearing an earpiece? Why was Donald Trump sniffling? – was this one: Does rehearsing pay? Clinton reportedly rehearsed intensively, while Trump reportedly didn’t rehearse at all.

The most impartial judges of the outcome, markets in currencies, commodities, and stocks, declared Clinton the winner. Whether rehearsing pays in presidential debates may nonetheless remain one of those eternally unanswered questions, but in business the answer is absolutely clear. Rehearsal pays big, and most companies fail to achieve anything near its potential value.

For an example, check out this Fortune article on the value of rehearsing your business’s response to a data breach. As it makes clear, simply bringing together your top executives plus key players from all major functions – IT, legal, communications, sales, marketing – and putting them through a simulated breach is guaranteed to reveal surprising gaps in your preparations. Diana Kelley, executive security adviser at IBM, cites new research showing how rehearsals can lower the costs of a breach.

More broadly, rehearsing crises that would be most damaging to your business, such as a deadly food-safety problem at a restaurant chain, will always pay dividends. Plenty of other skills can be improved vastly through rehearsal. Salespeople who relentlessly rehearse selling almost always outperform those who don’t. Some companies have even worked up highly realistic simulations of critical processes – such as packing and shipping high-value perishable bio-pharmaceuticals – in order to perform better and cut losses. The results have been spectacular.

Sign up for daily insights, updates, and opinion on leadership and leaders in the news at the Power Sheet.

So here’s the strange part: Hardly any companies do this, even though we all know it works. We watch football teams that practice six days a week and play one day. We make our kids practice the piano or clarinet every day for a recital every six months. We know it works. But on Monday morning we forget all of it and do the exact opposite. I once calculated that Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in the history of football, spent about 3% of his football-related time actually playing in games. He spent the other 97% practicing. In business, we’re lucky if our ratio is the inverse and we spend 3% of our time practicing. Usually it’s 0%. We’re supposed to spend 100% of our time out there performing. And then company leaders are frustrated and baffled that the company isn’t performing better.

If you dare to raise the practice-to-performance ratio at your business, you’ll be out of the mainstream. You won’t be doing what your company’s peers are doing. Have the courage to defy convention. That’s one thing that distinguishes the best leaders from the rest.

Philippines' president Duterte's most contentious quotes - New York Times

Philippines has a reputation for frank – and frankly offensive – speechmaking that electrifies his constituents as often as it angers other countries. 

He has made the extrajudicial killing of drug dealers and users the cornerstone of his domestic policy. 

1. 1.“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
   Mr. Duterte drew international ire after issuing his latest threat against drug dealers and drug addicts on Friday. 

   The president – who underestimated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust; it was six million – said he was routinely depicted as being a “cousin of Hitler.” 
2. 2.“Son of a whore. I will curse you in the forum.”
   Mr. Duterte used the expletive, sometimes translated as “son of a bitch,” in a warning to President Obama about bringing up extrajudicial killings at an international forum held in Laos in September.

   Mr. Obama canceled the meeting and Mr. Duterte apologized. The two men met briefly a few days later. 

   
   
3. 3.“You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I’d kill you.”
   While running for president, Mr. Duterte, who had been mayor of Davao City and employed vigilante militias there, promised a similar national strategy against drug dealers. 

   He told voters: “Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor.”

   In the same campaign speech, Mr. Duterte said he would dump the bodies of slain drug dealers “into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there.”
4. 4.“Please don’t order me around. … Or would you rather that I declare martial law?”
   In August, Mr. Duterte warned Maria Lourdes Sereno, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, that if she tried to thwart his drug war he would declare martial law. 

   The threat was made after the judge responded to Mr. Duterte’s accusations that several judges were drug addicts. 
6. 5.“I was angry because she was raped. That’s one thing. But she was so beautiful. The mayor should have been first.”
   He joked at a campaign event in April about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary by inmates during a prison riot in Davao when he was mayor in 1989. 
7. 6.“I wanted to call him: ‘Pope, son of a whore, go home. Do not visit us again.’”
   Mr. Duterte complained that Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines, a majority Catholic country, led him to become snarled in a traffic jam in January 2015. 

   After bishops condemned him for his language, Mr. Duterte apologized. 
8. 7.“I was separated from my wife. I’m not impotent. What am I supposed to do? Let this hang forever? When I take Viagra, it stands up.”
   Addressing business leaders at a campaign event in April, Mr. Duterte bragged about his reputation as a womanizer.