Naomi Osaka is the highest paid female athlete in the history of sport, earning a staggering US$37 million last year. So, it would be easy to characterise her decision to bypass media conferences at Roland Garros – and subsequently withdraw from the French Open – as that of a privileged sports star behaving as if …
Author Archives: michael
When we stop hoping for a return to normal, we can start beating the pandemic
Embracing the new normal has become something of a mantra for government and business leaders when discussing the pandemic. But like many slogans, it quickly becomes meaningless unless there is a genuine commitment to it. For a handful of economies in the Asia Pacific region, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia prominent amongst them, the overriding …
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It’s not just how many you win… but also how you win
Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams have much in common. Both are phenomenally gifted athletes and both are inching closer to the statistical pinnacle of tennis, the all-time record of Grand Slam victories. But there’s also something less admirable they share: an unedifying sense of entitlement, a likely by-product of being told constantly by their fathers …
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Could Trump walk away from the contest?
With early polls suggesting Donald Trump may become the fourth incumbent President since the second world war to fail to win a second term, several questions loom. How far is the Trump camp willing to go to turn the campaign around? If Joe Biden continues to grow his double-digit lead over Trump, is there a …
From Minneapolis to Mongkok… it’s all about the November poll
In America, people tired of systemic racial discrimination and enraged by the death of George Floyd are rampaging on the streets. They light fires and hurl rocks at the police. Within 48 hours, President Trump calls them thugs, tweets about looting and shooting, and warns “soft” Democrat governors that he’ll call in the army if …
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Marriott hit by second data breach, as security experts warn of more attacks
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for the hotel industry, the world’s largest hotelier, Marriott International, has reported another major customer data breach, its second within two years. This time, the stolen data covers 5.2 million guests and includes postal addresses, emails, phone numbers, loyalty account information and birth dates. Marriott says that …
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Kudos to Emirates
Kudos to Emirates for looking after its people. Having announced the painful decision to suspend most flights from March 25, Emirates Chairman and CE Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum personally advised the troops that senior management would take the biggest hit in order to ensure jobs were not lost. In a communication to staff, he …
Why win the battle, only to lose the war?
The single biggest challenge facing the world today is not how to counter or slow the spread of Covid-19. Rather, it is the overriding question of how to respond effectively to the pandemic in a way that doesn’t cause more damage, in terms of lives lost or destroyed, than the disease itself. This doesn’t mean …
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Why are we panicking?
Why is the world reacting so irrationally to the Covid-19 outbreak? While we still have a lot to learn about the virus, we do know this much: It will continue to spread across the globe despite travel bans because it is highly contagious and many, if not most, suffer only mild common flu-like symptoms and …
Another killer at work
While the world frets over Covid-19, there is another global killer at work. It claims the lives of 7.6 million people every year or 21,000 people per day. That’s one death every four seconds. And most of the victims are children. It’s called malnutrition. Appallingly, this is happening while world food production is 17% more …