Will Singapore's tax hike on top earners deter top talent?

Ansuya Harjani | @Ansuya_H

Jacobs Stock Photography | Photodisc | Getty Images

Singapore's decision to hike taxes on its top earners has raised questions about whether the unanticipated move may erode the city state's longer-term competitiveness.
The nation's low tax regime has long been a magnet for attracting highly skilled talent as well as the super-rich from abroad.
In its budget for 2015 delivered on Monday, the government announced an increase in the income tax rate for those in the top tier – residents with a chargeable income exceeding 320,000 Singapore dollars ($256,000) – to 22 percent from 20 percent starting with income earned in 2016.
This is the first increase in the highest marginal personal tax rate in 30 years, according to Deloitte. The government will use the increased tax revenue to fund additional social and infrastructure spending over the longer-term.
"[Given] that Finance Minister Tharman opted for a more

Yahoo executive and NSA chief clash over online data privacy

Geoff Dyer

A Yahoo executive clashed with the new head of the National Security Agency at a conference on Monday as tensions continued to simmer between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley over the privacy of online data and new security technologies.

Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at Yahoo, said that if technology companies were obliged to provide "backdoor" access to their systems for the US government, they would face heavy pressure to do the same in China and Russia.
Admiral Mike Rogers, who took over at the NSA last year, said it would be "technically feasible" for companies to hand over information to law enforcement but this had to take place within an agreed legal framework.

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The sharp exchange of words was the latest signal of the growing dispute between Washington and Silicon Valley over new end-to-end encryption technologies which

Could Chinese handset makers steal the show at MWC? Arjun Kharpal | @ArjunKharpal

Mobile World Congress is normally dominated by Samsung headlines, but this year, Chinese smartphone makers are angling to steal the limelight, reflecting a shift in the global market.
The rise of the Chinese smartphone maker has been rapid and in the fourth quarter of 2014, three domestic players - Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo - were among top 5 vendors in the world, according to market research company IDC.
Xiaomi made a splash last year, knocking Samsung off the top spot in China, and seeing 178 percent year-on-year shipment growth in the final quarter of last year. Chinese companies have made a name for themselves by offering high-spec smartphones at low prices.
"We have moved past the Chinese companies being

Is this the secret to kickstarting global growth?

Leslie Shaffer | @LeslieShaffer1

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Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

The global economy's recovery has been anemic at best, but putting women to work would likely change that, the world's lender of last resort said.
"Increasing women's economic participation can, in turn, lead to higher growth," Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said in a blog post Monday.
She cited data showing that increasing women's labor

Will Yellen set the dollar free?

Mia Tahara-Stubbs

Dominick Reuter | Reuters

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.

The U.S. dollar has been range bound for weeks, but if Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen sounds more upbeat about the labor market in her testimony to Congress this week, analysts say the greenback could test recent highs against several currencies.
"The U.S. dollar has been in consolidation mode. If Janet Yellen comes out sounding fairly hawkish and suggests the rate hike cycle could start in the middle of the year, the dollar could rise," said ANZ senior currency strategist Khoon Goh.
The greenback has been waiting for a fresh catalyst for a month f

Greece submits reform proposals to creditors

Holly Ellyatt | @HollyEllyatt

Greece's Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis sent a list of reform proposals around midnight on Monday, just making a deadline set by its international creditors.
A Greek government source confirmed that the reform measures were sent to the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers for approval. They will also need to be approved by the so-called "troika" overseeing the country's bailout, made up of the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank.
A source close to the European Commission said they were "encouraged" by Greece's "strong commitment" to combat tax evasion and corruption, which were among the measures on the list, according to a document seen by Reuters. Other proposals included pledges to reform

Apple closes in on $775B market cap, now twice as large as No. 2 Exxon Mobil

By Mikey Campbell
Monday, February 23, 2015, 05:08 pm PT (08:08 pm ET)

Apple stock hit a new high of $133 at the closing bell on Monday, rocketing up 2.7 percent on the day to grow its market capitalization to just under $775 billion, a number two times larger than second-largest publicly traded U.S. company Exxon Mobil.

After making history earlier in February by becoming the first U.S. company in history with a $700B market cap, Apple shares continue to soar, rising nearly 22 percent since the beginning of 2015.

Calculating company value by market cap, Apple is now worth twice as much as Exxon after the oil giant's shares dipped one percent today to close at $89.01, with a market cap standing at just under $374 billion. Apple first passed Exxon as the world's largest company in 2011 with

Reddit Bans Edward Snowden, Flames Glenn Greenwald In ‘Citizenfour’ Documentary AMA

By  Thomas Halleck @tommylikey t.halleck@ibtimes.com

Edward Snowden, along with filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald, appeared on Reddit for a Q&A to discuss NSA surveillance and the Oscar-winning documentary "Citizenfour." Praxis Films / "Citizenfour"

Edward Snowden says the only thing he regrets about his revelations regarding NSA surveillance is that he didn’t do it sooner. The former NSA analyst took part in a question-and-answer session on Reddit along with filmmaker Laura Poitras and and journalist Glenn Greenwald Monday.

The trio appeared on the site to celebrate the Academy Award that “Citizenfour,” a documentary that depicts some of the earliest interviews between journalists and Snowden, received. The NSA leaker was temporarily banned from the popular submission site during the

Android Apps Can Track Users By Battery Drain, Researchers Say

By  Thomas Halleck @tommylikey t.halleck@ibtimes.com

A malicious Android app could track a user using only information about their battery usage, researchers say. Reuters

Android phones can be easily tracked by apps that calculate battery drain, according to a new paper by a team of Stanford researchers. Apps merely need access to smartphone users’ power consumption over time to track their movements, the researchers say.

Smartphones use more power as they get further away from cell towers, or if walls and other barriers disrupt communications from the tower to phone. Researchers say that battery-draining services like high-speed data use and apps can be removed from the equation using machine learning algorithms, or software formulas that can learn from, and sort through the data.

The team built their own software to test their findings -- a lab-created computer virus they called PowerSpy -- capable of tracking Android users without GPS tracking data

Hyperinflation … in Japan?

Mia Tahara-Stubbs

Robert Gilhool | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Despite decades of deflation, Japanese consumers are increasingly worried runway inflation could trigger a vicious cycle of capital flight, an excessively weak yen and an interest-rate spike, warns a Credit Suisse report.
"The Bank of Japan's unprecedented monetary easing could be driving the upsurge in household inflation expectations," said Credit Suisse Japan economist Hiromichi Shirakawa in a note published on Friday. If that fear spreads to enough consumers, that vicious cycle could be on the cards, he said.
Since April 2013, the Bank of Japan gone for a "shock-and-awe" campaign of monetary-policy easing in a bid to drag the country out of two decades of deflation and achieve its 2 percent inflation target.
But one major side effect of its massive quantitative