Seen and heard this week

Mr Alex Capri, Visiting Senior Fellow at NUS Business gave his take on the US-China confrontation surrounding trade-related issues in an opinion piece for Forbes on 23 January. Mr Capri said that despite being major trading partners, Washington and Beijing are both pursuing primarily self-serving agendas which could see the use of various policy weapons that would disrupt cross-border commerce intensify in the name of national security. 

Dr Amitendu Palit, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at NUS discussed India’s ‘Act East’ policy in a Tabla commentary on 26 January. He opined that the policy, a broadening of the earlier ‘Look East’ policy, reflects India’s commitment to enhancing engagement with Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific. This has resulted in greater cross-border trade, investments, movement of people and growth in connectivity between India and ASEAN economies, as well as a host of strategic partnerships. 

On 29 January, The Straits Times highlighted the findings of a new study by Mr David Tan from NUS Biological Sciences and collaborators from non-profit body BirdLife International and Nature Society (Singapore), which revealed that almost a third of resident birds found dead in Singapore between 2013 and 2017 were killed due to collisions with buildings. The study suggests that this could be due to limited park and forest fragments in the country which leads to birds having to pass through urban areas to forage, thereby increasing the likelihood of building collisions. 

Read more about the NUS community in the news.