Today, we can order food from apps and enjoy it at home, thanks to smartphones and e-payments. But long before modern vehicles and technology, ancient China had already developed a rough version of food delivery services. Historical records say that during the Han dynasty (206BC-220), an emperor once asked his officials about the living conditions of ordinary people. This painting depicts how some...
Today, we can order food from apps and enjoy it at home, thanks to smartphones and e-payments. But long before modern vehicles and technology, ancient China had already developed a rough version of food delivery services. Historical records say that during the Han dynasty (206BC-220), an emperor once asked his officials about the living conditions of ordinary people. This painting depicts how some food deliveries in ancient China were carried by boat. Photo: RedNote To conceal the fact that famine had struck the city, one official deliberately bought a bowl of meat soup from a market, presented it to the emperor and claimed it was what commoners ate every day. Advertisement Historians believe the episode suggests that takeaway food from restaurants already existed in the Han period. At the time, elites in major cities were said to buy takeaway food as gifts to show respect and build social ties. Advertisement By the Tang dynasty (618-907), food delivery services had expanded to ordinary urban residents.
Each week we bring you insights into one of Asia’s most dynamic economies. If you haven’t yet, please sign up here . This week, Alfred Cang and Rthvika Suvarna detail how Singapore has been impacted by what’s happening in the Middle East, Andrea Tan explores the country’s obsession with AI, and Josh Xiao visits Joong San for some tofu stew and barley rice. Costs of a Faraway War The war in the Mid...
Each week we bring you insights into one of Asia’s most dynamic economies. If you haven’t yet, please sign up here . This week, Alfred Cang and Rthvika Suvarna detail how Singapore has been impacted by what’s happening in the Middle East, Andrea Tan explores the country’s obsession with AI, and Josh Xiao visits Joong San for some tofu stew and barley rice. Costs of a Faraway War The war in the Middle East is thousands of miles from Singapore’s shores. The economic consequences are not. As fighting escalated and the Strait of Hormuz all but closed to tanker traffic last weekend, Singapore once again felt the limits of its small, deeply globalized economy. The city-state is exposed along nearly every axis that matters: energy, trade, aviation, and financial markets. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong signaled the government may revise its economic outlook should the conflict deepen. Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong was also grim about having a quick end to the crisis. “You can see how the war starts,” he said at an event in Singapore, “but it is very hard to tell how the war will end.” Already during the week, petrol prices have risen, stirring angst among taxi and private-hire drivers who’ll get less to take home. Homes and businesses are bracing for higher power bills. For travel-loving citizens, a one-way economy ticket flying Singapore Airlines from Heathrow to Singapore has skyrocketed to more than $8,000, a 900% rise compared to fares later in the month amid a scramble for flights. The benchmark STI Index that recently soared to record levels has wobbled along with other bourses as markets worldwide churned, though its move was relatively less drastic. One of the most direct blows is in Singapore’s power sector. The country generates more than 90% of its electricity from liquefied natural gas and last year sourced roughly half of that supply from Qatar. That dependency became acutely visible when Iranian drone strikes hit QatarEnergy’s Ras Laffan facility, prompt...
In 2019, Chinese vanilla trader Luo Ming runs his business out of a bare-bones room attached to a small processing plant about a two-hour drive from Sambava, the city at the heart of Madagascar’s vanilla belt. Photo: Zhang Xinmin After the Lunar New Year, Luo Ming was back at his office, a bare-bones room attached to a small processing plant about a two-hour drive from Sambava, the city at the hea...
In 2019, Chinese vanilla trader Luo Ming runs his business out of a bare-bones room attached to a small processing plant about a two-hour drive from Sambava, the city at the heart of Madagascar’s vanilla belt. Photo: Zhang Xinmin After the Lunar New Year, Luo Ming was back at his office, a bare-bones room attached to a small processing plant about a two-hour drive from Sambava, the city at the heart of Madagascar’s vanilla belt. Madagascar is the world’s largest source of vanilla, supplying about 80% of global output. During buying season, Luo spends most days moving from village to village in a beat-up pickup truck, bumping over muddy red roads to check ripeness, bargain with growers and choreograph logistics that can collapse with a single storm.
SlavkoSereda/iStock via Getty Images U.S. crude oil futures soared more than 12% on Friday to their highest in two-and-a-half years, as the conflict in the Persian Gulf continues with no sign of the critical Strait of Hormuz being reopened to shipping. The strait remains effectively closed, trapping ships and supplies in the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East has limited rerouting and storage capac...
SlavkoSereda/iStock via Getty Images U.S. crude oil futures soared more than 12% on Friday to their highest in two-and-a-half years, as the conflict in the Persian Gulf continues with no sign of the critical Strait of Hormuz being reopened to shipping. The strait remains effectively closed, trapping ships and supplies in the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East has limited rerouting and storage capacities, which means supply concerns will continue to dominate market dynamics, analysts said. Citi estimated the market is losing 7M-11M bbl/day of crude oil and 4M-5M bbl/day of oil products, largely due to lack of flows through Hormuz. " We are growing more confident that without an agreement and a fast cessation of all kinetic activity, the crude market will begin to break in days, and not in weeks or months," Macquarie global energy strategist Vikas Dwivedi said. Goldman Sachs said crude likely will exceed $100/bbl next week if no signs of a solution emerge and warned that upside risks to its base‑case forecast are rapidly increasing. "We're in a situation where the lack of clarity on the timing of what happens in the Strait of Hormuz is stoking a tremendous amount of fear in the market," CIBC Private Wealth's Rebecca Babin said in a note. Production shut-ins by Iraq and Kuwait as their storage capacity fills up are fairly small but may have taken the market by surprise coming so soon, Babin said, adding that similar closures are "down the road for the larger producers, but this was a big thing." The U.S. Treasury issued a 30-day sanctions waiver for Indian refiners to buy Russian crude and products that were loaded onto vessels before March 5, and Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. may lift sanctions on additional Russian oil supply. There are "hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels" of crude on the water now, Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business. " In essence, by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply." The U.S. International Development Fin...
REVIEW PREVIEW NEWSLETTER Jobs Alert. Stock markets this week largely made peace with war in the Middle East. Economic problems on the home front may be a different story. Major indexes fell sharply on Friday after the February payrolls report from the U.
REVIEW PREVIEW NEWSLETTER Jobs Alert. Stock markets this week largely made peace with war in the Middle East. Economic problems on the home front may be a different story. Major indexes fell sharply on Friday after the February payrolls report from the U.
It seemed as if someone had switched off the power supplying Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN 10.68%) stock on the last trading day of the week. Investors aggressively sold out of the veteran utility's equity that day, as they were clearly disappointed by the company's 2027 guidance miss in its latest earnings report. The stock closed that trading session down more than 12%. Twin increases Well be...
It seemed as if someone had switched off the power supplying Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN 10.68%) stock on the last trading day of the week. Investors aggressively sold out of the veteran utility's equity that day, as they were clearly disappointed by the company's 2027 guidance miss in its latest earnings report. The stock closed that trading session down more than 12%. Twin increases Well before market open on Friday, Algonquin took the wraps off its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. For the three-month stretch, the utility's revenue was $630.7 million, representing year-over-year growth of almost 8%. Net income not under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) rose more steeply, increasing by 11% to $47.2 million ($0.06 per share). That meant a pair of beats for Algonquin, since analysts tracking the stock were averaging estimates of $616.6 million for revenue, and $0.05 per share for non-GAAP (adjusted) net income. Algonquin has slimmed down, from a sprawling business straddling both traditional and next-generation renewable utility services to a more pure-play business focusing on the former. It cited this "back to basics" strategy as a factor in its growth during the quarter. The company quoted CEO Rod West as saying that "During the year, we made substantial regulatory progress across our electric, gas and water utilities, began realizing the benefits of a more disciplined operating model." Expand NYSE : AQN Algonquin Power & Utilities Today's Change ( -10.68 %) $ -0.73 Current Price $ 6.14 Key Data Points Market Cap $5.4B Day's Range $ 5.96 - $ 6.52 52wk Range $ 4.29 - $ 7.11 Volume 1.1M Avg Vol 4.8M Gross Margin 23.82 % Dividend Yield 3.78 % Power shortage West and his team reaffirmed the company's full-year 2026 profitability guidance, maintaining its adjusted net income forecast of $0.35 to $0.37 per share. They also set a forecast for the following year of $0.38 to $0.42 per share. The per-share consensus analyst estimates for the tw...
女子亞洲盃|中華台北1比0小勝越南 打破兩次交手敗績宿命 To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video 【有線新聞】亞洲盃女子足球賽C組,中華台北1比0小勝越南。 上場0比2不敵日本,藍衫的中華台北收拾心情再出發,蘇育萱頭槌...
女子亞洲盃|中華台北1比0小勝越南 打破兩次交手敗績宿命 To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video 【有線新聞】亞洲盃女子足球賽C組,中華台北1比0小勝越南。 上場0比2不敵日本,藍衫的中華台北收拾心情再出發,蘇育萱頭槌26分鐘開紀錄,松永早姬近門一挑中楣彈出,還有蘇育萱補中。對上兩次在亞洲盃碰頭都輸,今次終於打破宿命,吳愷晴禁區起腳,過不到越南門將,中華台北仍贏1比0。