Genes from nowhere: Orphans with a surprising story

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S'pore retailers splurging on renovation & re-branding

SINGAPORE: Singapore retailers are spending big bucks on major renovations and re-branding to keep customers shopping at their outlets.

Industry watchers say the competitive climate is forcing retailers to take a second look at their business strategy.

Home-grown department store Tangs invested S$45 million in a three-year transformation on its 80th anniversary. It expanded retail space by 25 per cent, which includes 14 flagship stores such as Tom Ford Beauty and Aesop.

Foo Tiang Sooi, CEO of Tangs said: "We decided to embark on this transformation project because we see the changing landscape of retail, both from competition as well as the fact that customer preferences have changed. They are a lot more affluent and savvy and through online and social media they are also able to have better judgement and variety of choices available to them."

Brand consultancy A S Louken said heritage brands in particular, recognise the need for change.

Sixty per cent of their clients are family-run businesses, such as Polar Puffs & Cakes and On Cheong Jewellery.

Most of them run by second-generation leaders trying to find solutions to stay up-to-date.

This is spurring demand for A S Louken's line of work. Revenue for them has doubled over the last year.

But today's "brand-saturated" market means identifying a consumer's wants and needs is not so straightforward any more.

Luke Lim, CEO at A S louken said: "We typically will tell our clients that you need to leverage what is core to you - your competitive advantage. Leverage that and build a distinctive space that is differentiated. Once that has been identified, communicate that space clearly. One message, one brand."

For retailers, tough competition is also forcing them to think deeply about who their customers are and how to retain them.

Lynda Wee, adjunct associate professor at Nanyang Technological University's Nanyang Business School said: "It forces them to be more focused, more niche, looking at them, knowing what they want to growing alongside them. They're getting more affluent, they're getting more discerning. I can see them moving from a mainstream department store to a more niche, more targeted, more premium kind of department store concept in the likes of Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale."

Industry watchers add that competition today is both for brands and location.

Another heritage name, Robinsons, is moving to its flagship store and a larger space this year.

It will house some 20 new-to-market brands in the 154-year-old department store.

- CNA/xq

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Gergen: Speech deepens divisions

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• David Gergen says historians will look on Obama's speech as an important source


• Obama seemed liberated to express his philosophy of government, he says


• Gergen says the president stressed equality in the tradition of Lincoln, King


• He says GOP is bristling at the speech, and it will likely deepen divisions in Washington

Editor's note: David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has been an adviser to four presidents. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- Years from now, historians are likely to look back upon Barack Obama's second inaugural address as a rich treasure trove for understanding his presidency and possibly the course of American politics.

It wasn't as important for his rise to power as his 2004 address to the Democratic National Convention. That one propelled him onto the national stage. It wasn't as elegant as his Philadelphia speech on race relations in the 2008 campaign. That one was his rhetorical masterpiece. But the second inaugural was far more important than either in defining his political philosophy as president.

Politics: After inauguration, political reality returns to Washington

Here's a first rough draft of what historians may find significant:

David Gergen

Obama revealed: The Obama who took the oath of office this week seemed not only more confident but also liberated. A central point of his address was that he inherited an economic crisis and two wars but now the nation is emerging into a clearing. This, he believes, is a golden opportunity for fresh action -- a moment to be seized.

Left unspoken were two other reasons why he feels liberated: He clearly thinks he has shown the country that Republicans aren't willing to compromise, so that he has no choice but to try to muscle them.

The GOP has now blinked twice on the fiscal cliff and the new debt ceiling; he plans to make them keep blinking. Then, too, Obama is also freed up because he is no longer working under the shadow of the 2010 midterm elections when he was snookered. After his convincing win in 2012, he is back on top politically.

Opinion: Obama's ringing defense of liberalism

All of this has inspired the president to reveal to the world his true political philosophy: In one speech, he gave the strongest embrace of 20th-century liberalism since Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. Yes, he gave a couple of bows to the importance of individual initiative and private enterprise, but the heart and soul of the address was a call to collective action on a wide array of fronts.

Gone were the third way of Bill Clinton and the centrism of Jimmy Carter. He emerged as an unapologetic, unabashed liberal -- just what the left has long wanted him to be and exactly what the right has feared.

Heir to Lincoln and King: A little more than three decades ago, Ronald Reagan moved the inaugural ceremony from the east side of the Capitol to the west. For Reagan, the symbolism was that of a Californian who wanted to give his inaugural address gazing out across the National Mall, the monuments and Arlington Cemetery toward the Pacific. But for Obama, the symbolism was very different: He was the president who looked west toward the monuments of Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his address artfully tied him to their legacy.

The historian Garry Wills won a Pulitzer Prize some years ago with his book on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1863. Wills argued that for most of America's early history, people thought that the republic was born with the Constitution of 1787 and the Declaration of Independence was a secondary document.

Opinion: Anti-government era is over

Along came Lincoln at Gettysburg saying that the country was born "four score and seven years ago" -- in 1776 with the declaration. In Wills' view, now widely accepted, Lincoln at Gettysburg turned the declaration's second paragraph into the founding creed of the country. What we must aspire to, Lincoln was saying, was to ensure that all are created equal.

King came to the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later -- in 1963 -- to go back to Lincoln at Gettysburg and through him to the declaration. The nation, King said, must live up to the promise of equal opportunity -- and indeed, that was the dream he so eloquently expressed in the finest American speech since Gettysburg.

Enter Obama at his second inaugural, not only on King's official holiday but 50 years after "I Have a Dream" and 150 years after Gettysburg. The president's address begins with a recitation of the declaration, calls it our "founding creed" and makes the aspiration of equal opportunity the central goal of his presidency.

In the past, presidents at inaugurations have found the nation's heroes among those who have died in battle. Obama chose a different path: He found the nation's heroes at Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall. His philosophy, as we learned, is not just about government programs but about embracing inclusion and diversity. It was, I believe, his firmest attempt to build upon Lincoln and King -- and in effect, his address made him their modern heir.

Opinion: GOP, play offense in Obama's second term

Setting a new course: A president's inaugural address often sets the tone and direction of his next four years in office and nowhere may that be more true than with Obama's second. His assertive address has heartened his supporters so that they seem ready to march into battle with him. They not only want him to succeed, but they now have an ambitious agenda to embrace as well.

Smartly, the president's team began putting together a new citizens group, Organizing for Action, just before the inauguration, and his speech was in effect a call to arms. Whether "OFA", as Democrats in Washington already call it, will work well with the Democratic Party is open to question, but it is clear that Obama & Co. intend to use it as an important way to rally public pressure on Congress for his agenda.

Gone were the third way of Bill Clinton and the centrism of Jimmy Carter. He emerged as an unapologetic, unabashed liberal. ...
David Gergen

On the other side of the aisle, many Republicans such as Eric Cantor were respectful of the president after his address but underneath most of them were bristling. They had expected the president to issue a ritualistic plea for bipartisanship and then to begin negotiating with them over federal deficits.

Instead, he made it clear that he will work with them as long as they agree with him and try to run over them if they resist. From the GOP perspective, Obama was virtually dismissive of the nation's fiscal threats and wasn't interested in true negotiations. In a tweet after the speech, scholar Ian Bremmer captured their view of Obama's message to the GOP: "Together, we shall pursue my objectives."

Opinion: World to Obama -- You can't ignore us

In short, the divisions in Washington may grow even deeper in the near term, if that is possible, and no one knows what will actually be accomplished. Among partisans on both sides, there is still a sense that a piece of gun control can be passed (starting with background checks) and perhaps a larger piece of immigration (starting with H-1B visas and legal status for the undocumented). But serious action on climate change seems distant.

More centrally, the parties seem even further apart on a budget agreement. The GOP is in no mood to revisit higher taxes and the president's address gave a ringing endorsement to the basic structure of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In short, the road ahead looks even rockier than it seemed after the elections.

On the day before the inaugural, a New York Times article by Jodi Kantor reported that after the first term, Obama has warned possible candidates for his job that it is very difficult to get things done in Washington and that the president has a "contracted sense of possibility." He and his team are also aware that power seeps away quickly in a second term.

How, one wondered, is it possible to reconcile those views with Obama's decision to go big at the inaugural, pushing an extraordinarily ambitious agenda.

That question still lingers after the inauguration. It is just possible that what he was ultimately doing in his address was to present the country with a liberal vision of the future and a legislative agenda to go with it -- something akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did in 1944. FDR left behind a Democratic Party with a majority coalition and an agenda that drove American politics for more than 20 years.

Is that the legacy that Obama really wants to leave? Lincoln, King, FDR -- all rolled into one? Only historians will know the answer for sure.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.

Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Gergen.

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Romney to be honored Friday at D.C. luncheon

Mitt Romney will make it to Washington, D.C. for inauguration week after all.

The 2012 GOP presidential nominee and his wife Ann are scheduled to attend a luncheon in their honor Friday at Washington's J.W. Marriott hotel, National Journal reported this afternoon. The reception will be hosted by two of Romney's biggest campaign fundraisers: Virginia philanthropist Catherine Reynolds and hotel tycoon Bill Marriott, Jr.

Romney, a longtime friend to the Marriott family, serves on Marriott International's board of directors. While on the trail, he and his traveling staff stayed almost exclusively at Marriott hotels.

Having opted to spend Inauguration Day at his home in La Jolla, Calif., on Monday, Romney became the first presidential nominee since Michael Dukakis in 1989 to not attend the ceremonial event. But he's made at least one appearance in the nation's capital since the election: Several weeks following his loss, he enjoyed a lunch of white turkey chili with President Obama at the White House.

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Pentagon to Allow Women in Combat

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will lift a longstanding ban on women serving in combat, according to senior defense officials.

The services have until this May to come up with a plan to implement the change, according to a Defense Department official.

That means the changes could come into effect as early as May, though the services will have until January 2016 to complete the implementation of the changes.

"We certainly want to see this executed responsibly but in a reasonable time frame, so I would hope that this doesn't get dragged out," said former Marine Capt. Zoe Bedell, who joined a recent lawsuit aimed at getting women on the battlefield.

The military services also will have until January 2016 to seek waivers for certain jobs -- but those waivers will require a personal approval from the secretary of defense and will have to be based on rationales other than the direct combat exclusion rule.

The move to allow women in combat, first reported by the Associated Press, was not expected this week, although there has been a concerted effort by the Obama administration to further open up the armed forces to women.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommended in January to Secretary Panetta that the direct combat exclusion rule should be lifted.

"I can confirm media reports that the secretary and the chairman are expected to announce the lifting of the direct combat exclusion rule for women in the military," said a senior Defense Department official. "This policy change will initiate a process whereby the services will develop plans to implement this decision, which was made by the secretary of defense upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey sent Panetta a memo earlier this month entitled, "Women in Service Implementation Plan."

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"The time has come to rescind the direct combat exclusion rule for women and to eliminate all unnecessary gender-based barriers to service," the memo read.

"To implement these initiatives successfully and without sacrificing our warfighting capability or the trust of the American people, we will need time to get it right," he said in the memo, referring to the 2016 horizon.

Women have been officially prohibited from serving in combat since a 1994 rule that barred them from serving in ground combat units. That does not mean they have been immune from danger or from combat.

As Martha Raddatz reported in 2009, women have served in support positions on and off the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where war is waged on street corners and in markets, putting them at equal risk. Hundreds of thousands of women deployed with the military to those two war zones over the past decade. Hundreds have died.

READ MORE: Female Warriors Engage in Combat in Iraq, Afghanistan

"The reality of the battlefield has changed really since the Vietnam era to where it is today," said Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former military helicopter pilot who lost both her legs in combat. "Those distinctions on what is combat and what is not really are falling aside. So I think that after having seen women, men, folks who -- cooks, clerks, truck drivers -- serve in combat conditions, the reality is women are already in combat."

Woman have been able to fly combat sorties since 1993. In 2010, the Navy allowed them on submarines. But lifting restrictions on service in frontline ground combat units will break a key barrier in the military.

READ MORE: Smooth Sailing for First Women to Serve on Navy Submarines

READ MORE: Female Fighter Pilot Breaks Gender Barriers

Panetta's decision will set a January 2016 deadline for the military service branches to argue that there are military roles that should remain closed to women.

In February 2012 the Defense Department opened up 14,500 positions to women that had previously been limited to men and lifted a rule that prohibited women from living with combat units.

Panetta also directed the services to examine ways to open more combat roles to women.

However, the ban on direct combat positions has remained in place.

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See ya, latex: Reinventing the condom

See more in our gallery: "Prophylactic progress: The story of the condom's rise"

IF I didn't already know what they were, I would have difficulty identifying the objects in front of me. There are about 20, mounted on a rack of vertical wooden pegs and illuminated into ghostly shadows by a light box beneath. They resemble elaborate sculptures in translucent resin. One looks like a thin, hollow lemon juicer; others are like accordions or abstract spaceships.

Designers Danny Resnic and Ray Chavez joke that they used to keep these racks in the window since passers-by had no chance of guessing what they were. And it's true; they share only the most rudimentary qualities with what most people think of when they think of a condom.

Despite being available in various colours, flavours and textures, modern condoms all follow a basic design that has been with us for more than ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

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Work on Bangladesh nuclear plant to start in October

DHAKA: Bangladesh will start building its first nuclear power plant by October this year after signing a loan deal with Russia to fund the construction, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced Wednesday.

The Rooppur nuclear power plant in the country's northwest will have two reactors with each producing 1,000 megawatts and it will be built with the help of Russian state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom, Hasina said.

The plant is seen as a necessary but risky move by the power-starved country to diversify its energy mix as Dhaka has been overwhelmingly relying on its fast dwindling gas reserves to produce electricity for its booming economy.

"Rosatom has shown special interest to start the main construction work of the nuclear power plant within this year," Hasina said, briefing reporters on a $500 million loan deal she signed with Russia last week.

"Design has to be complete by May. Construction area will be prepared by August and the main construction work will begin by September-October," she said.

She said soft loans from Russia would finance 90 percent of the plant, estimated to cost around $4 billion, with an initial half a billion loan to be used for preparatory work.

The prime minister dismissed safety concerns, saying that Russia would take back and deal with the nuclear waste.

Bangladesh's atomic energy agency signed a deal with Rosatom in November 2011 to build the plant, but work has been delayed as Dhaka had to ratify a series of laws to make sure it addresses all safety issues.

Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko had said the Rooppur plant would be designed to avoid the kind of accidents that took place at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant following an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Bangladesh has long suffered severe power outages as demand for electricity soars on the back of a booming economy that has grown at around six percent a year since 2004.

The power crisis worsens in the summer when the gap between demand and supply shoots up to 2,000 megawatts per day due to years of under-investment.

Officials say Bangladesh needs to build the nuclear plant because reserves of its main source of energy -- natural gas -- are fast depleting and could run out in a decade.

- AFP/ir

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Tapper talks Benghazi and his book

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Netanyahu likely clings to job in Israel election

JERUSALEM Israel's parliamentary election ended Wednesday in a stunning deadlock between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line bloc and center-left rivals, forcing the badly weakened Israeli leader to scramble to cobble together a coalition of parties from both camps, despite dramatically different views on Mideast peacemaking and other polarizing issues.

Israeli media said that with 99.8 percent of votes counted on Wednesday morning, each bloc had 60 of parliament's 120 seats. Commentators said Netanyahu, who called early elections expecting easy victory, would be tapped to form the next government because the rival camp drew 12 of its 60 seats from Arab parties who've never joined a coalition.

A startlingly strong showing by a political newcomer, the centrist Yesh Atid party, turned pre-election forecasts on their heads and dealt Netanyahu his surprise setback.

Yesh Atid, or There is a Future, a party headed by political newcomer Yair Lapid, is now Netanyahu's most likely partner. Lapid has said he would only join a government committed to sweeping economic changes and a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Addressing his supporters early Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible. He said the next government would be built on principles that include reforming the contentious system of granting draft exemptions to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and the pursuit of a "genuine peace" with the Palestinians. He did not elaborate, but the message seemed aimed at Lapid.

Shortly after the results were announced, Netanyahu called Lapid and offered to work together. "We have the opportunity to do great things together," Netanyahu was quoted as saying by Likud officials.

Netanyahu's Likud-Yisrael Beitenu alliance was set to capture about 31 of the 120 seats, significantly fewer than the 42 it held in the outgoing parliament and below the forecasts of recent polls.

With his traditional allies of nationalist and religious parties, Netanyahu could put together a shaky majority of 61 seats, results showed. But it would be virtually impossible to keep such a narrow coalition intact, though it was possible he could take an additional seat or two as numbers trickled in throughout the night.

The results capped a lackluster campaign in which peacemaking with the Palestinians, traditionally the dominant issue in Israeli politics, was pushed aside. Netanyahu portrayed himself as the only candidate capable of leading Israel at a turbulent time, while the fragmented opposition targeted him on domestic economic issues.

Israeli actor, journalist and author Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, speaks to supporters, Jan. 23, 2013 at his party headquarters in Tel Aviv.

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Getty

Netanyahu's goal of a broader coalition will force him to make some difficult decisions. Concessions to Lapid, for instance, will alienate his religious allies. In an interview last week with The Associated Press, Lapid said he would not be a "fig leaf" for a hard-line, extremist agenda.

Lapid's performance was the biggest surprise of the election. The one-time TV talk show host and son of a former Cabinet minister was poised to win 19 seats, giving him the second-largest faction in parliament.

Presenting himself as the defender of the middle class, Lapid vowed to take on Israel's high cost of living and to end the contentious system of subsidies and draft exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jews while they pursue religious studies. The expensive system has bred widespread resentment among the Israeli mainstream.

Thanks to his strong performance, Lapid is now in a position to serve as the kingmaker of the next government. He will likely seek a senior Cabinet post and other concessions.

Yaakov Peri, a member of Lapid's party, said it would not join unless the government pledges to begin drafting the ultra-Orthodox into the military, lowers the country's high cost of living and returns to peace talks. "We have red lines. We won't cross those red lines, even if it will cost us sitting in the opposition," Peri told Channel 2 TV.

Addressing his supporters, a beaming Lapid was noncommittal, calling only for a broad government with moderates from left and right. "Israelis said no to the politics of fear and hatred," he said. "And they said no to extremism and anti-democracy."

There was even a distant possibility of Lapid and more dovish parties teaming up to block Netanyahu from forming a majority.

"It could be that this evening is the beginning for a big chance to create an alternative government to the Netanyahu government," said Shelly Yachimovich, leader of the Labor Party, which won 15 seats on a platform pledging to narrow the gaps between rich and poor.

Although that seemed unlikely, Netanyahu clearly emerged from the election in a weakened state.

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Al Qaeda Commander Killed for the 3rd Time

The second in command of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Yemen in December, according to a news report by Arabic television network Al Arabiya, the third time the former Guantanamo detainee has been reported dead since 2010.

According to the report, Said al-Shihri died last month after sustaining severe injuries from a joint U.S.-Yemeni airstrike that targeted a convoy in which he was riding. The al Arabiya account, based on information from "family sources," said that the airstrike left al-Shihri in a coma. He allegedly died soon after and was buried in Yemen.

On Tuesday afternoon, hours after the initial report, a Yemeni government official denied having any information regarding the death of al-Shihri, according to Arabic news site al-Bawaba.

No photos of a body have yet surfaced and no mention of his death has appeared on jihadi forums.
This is the third time al-Shihri, the second in command of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been reported killed since 2009. In 2010, the Yemeni government claimed it had captured him. In September 2012, Yemeni news sites reported he was killed in an American drone strike.

PHOTOS: Terrorists Who Came Back from the Grave

READ: Gitmo Detainee turned terror commander killed: Reports

Al-Shihri, a "veteran jihadist," traveled to Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks to fight coalition troops, only to be captured weeks later, according to West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. He was sent to the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he stayed for six years before being released to Saudi Arabia. There, he entered a so-called "jihadi rehab" program that attempted to turn terrorists into art students by getting them to get "negative energy out on paper," as the program's director told ABC News in 2009.

READ: Trading Bombs for Crayons: Terrorists Get 'Art Therapy'

But just months after he supposedly entered the fingerpainting camp, al-Shihri reappeared in Yemen where he was suspected to have been behind a deadly bombing at the U.S. embassy there.

At the time, critics of the "jihadi rehab" program used al-Shihri as evidence that extremists would just go through the motions in order to be freed.

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