Old Trafford ready to be a Theatre of Dreams again

It has been 1,221 days since Manchester United were last top of the English Premier League (EPL). On Tuesday, they reached the summit again by winning 1-0 at Burnley to knock champions Liverpool off the perch. No trophies are handed out for topping the league mid-season, but it remains an achievement for a team that were languishing in 15th with just seven points from their first six games after being beaten 1-0 by Arsenal on Nov 2. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

There’s no place in sport for idiotic fans

The idiot in the stands is a stain on the game. A lout who thinks his idle provocation of athletes is clever. A bonehead who gathers a few buddies and mocks and abuses. A dimwit who thinks misogynistic or racist jokes are hilarious. He's a waste of a seat. The equivalent of a flat beer on a cold day. Just a bad taste. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

A running start needed

Singapore's male distance runners have made their mark in the region in recent years, with Mok Ying Ren and Soh Rui Yong winning three consecutive golds from 2013 (Mok) to 2017. But their female counterparts have lagged behind and while they stepped up to compete at the biennial SEA Games, Singapore's last women's marathon medal was Toh Soh Liang's bronze at the 1997 Jakarta edition. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

20 things I’d like to see in 2021

1. Once the vaccines are done, do you mind if we find a cure for a Swiss knee? So that we can squeeze one more oohing, sighing, Wimbledon out of the old man of the lawns. Everyone needs a chance for a farewell weep. Especially Roger Federer. 2. He's crankier, slower, older, scores less, will be 34 in the summer and so it's a perfect time for Lionel Messi to come to England and mock those who said he can't handle the Premier League. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

It’s no lucky break but a game changer

Encouraged by breakdancing's inclusion in back-to-back Summer Youth Olympic Games (YOG) at Buenos Aires 2018 and Dakar 2026 - postponed from 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic - World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) president Shawn Tay hopes to see the sport become a fixture in the senior Olympics programme. The priority, however, is to ensure breaking's debut at the Paris 2024 Games is a success, he told The Straits Times in a recent e-mail interview. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Wanted: Digital advocates to protect personal data

During a recent WhatsApp chat with a colleague on shopping, I confessed to an ignorance about fashion and how I had once thought Burberry - the British fashion label - was a fruit. Shortly after, an advertisement for the luxury brand popped up on my Instagram feed. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

In The Driver’s Seat: Verstappen’s win could be springboard for 2021 season

Everything might come to those who wait but it seemed a very long one for Max Verstappen, from Silverstone's Anniversary GP on Aug 9 until the season finale in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. Mercedes, who began the year with an engine problem and dodged a bullet when the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the start of the season and enabled them to fix it, ended it with another. Their W11 was unsettled on the softest Pirelli tyre, but Toto Wolff also admitted that an MGU-K problem - which had seen Sergio Perez's Racing Point expire at the Bahrain GP and George Russell's Williams struck down in FP 1 in Abu Dhabi - had obliged them to turn down the wick on all their engines. That explained why Red Bull's Hondas had superior maximum speed down the long straight. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Joy Spreader’s Deep Integration into the DouYin Ecosystem Opens New Doors to its Growth

HONG KONG, Dec 14, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - On November 30, a new domain name "Douyinpay.com" was added under "eName", which is a domain name registrar commonly used by ByteDance to store its domain names. With DouYin Pay, DouYin's short video ecosystem is expected to form a closed loop.Meanwhile, DouYin has offered its users access to mini-programs and H5 games on the Android platform, which brings greater traffic resources to its platform while officially provides we-media publishers with distribution and monetization channels through mini-programs and H5 games.Joy Spreader is deeply integrated into the DouYin ecosystemOn December 6, Joy Spreader in its announcement pointed out that DouYin had further opened up access to mini-programs and H5 games in its ecosystem, allowing the users to experience more features without leaving DouYin. This has enriched DouYin's commercialization and monetization channels and increased user retention. In fact, Joy Spreader will provide more content products and monetization channels to DouYin Pay, and the company will continue to benefit as one of the first key partners to gain access to DouYin's platform.Online payment service is an important infrastructure for internet companies like DouYin to carry out user ID-based marketing and expand into other businesses such as finance. The most important task after launching a payment service is to cultivate users' habits and guide them to use the payment service for functions such as the Shopping Cart and access to mini-programs and H5 games. DouYin not only offers its users access to mini-programs and H5 games, it also offers interconnectivity to other payment services providers such as WeChat Pay and Alipay, so that users can easily finish top-up payments without leaving DouYin, which further improves the user experience.As the largest performance-based we-media marketing service provider in China, Joy Spreader has started expanding into new content platforms such as short video and live streaming while covering mainstream information platforms such as WeChat official accounts.Based on its IPO prospectus, as early as the fourth quarter of 2018, Joy Spreader became one of the first companies to gain access to DouYin's e-commerce platform. Since DouYin's launch of its accesses to mini-programs and H5 games, Joy Spreader once again maintain its position as one of the first companies to serve as DouYin's distributors and joint-operators of mini-programs and H5 games.The reason why Joy Spreader can be quickly integrated into DouYin's ecosystem is that its service can help more users of DouYin to monetize, which in turn increases the user retention on DouYin's platform. The company is an important part of the closed-loop of DouYin's ecosystem.As an algorithm and technology platform with experience in providing tailored products to the target audience of we-media publishers, since Joy Spreader entered the short video market, it has built a thorough database which includes over 3,000 cooperating Douyin accounts, with e-commerce purchase links and product placement. Joy Spreader can therefore provide more users with precise monetization solutions.With more growth opportunities, Joy Spreader expects continued growthThe emergence of platform companies such as WeChat and DouYin has made the channels of information dissemination increasingly flat and the traffic distribution more fragmented. This means that the focus of online marketing activities is shifting from media channels to users. The newly promulgated national "Anti-monopoly Guidelines on the Platform Economy (Draft for Comments)" has also clarified this trend from a regulatory perspective. How to serve customers by effectively using the fragmented traffic has become a problem in we-media marketing service, which, however, brings opportunities to Joy Spreader.Joy Spreader is able to capitalize on the opportunities because it can accurately match products with we-media publishers through big data analytics and algorithms.Specifically, at the product end, Joy Spreader will analyze and select products with the same attributes and develop corresponding marketing strategies. At the media end, the company will label the we-media publishers with corresponding tags according to their users' age group, gender, geography, interests and other characteristics to create preconditions for the following precise marketing.More importantly, as the number of marketing services increases, the massive data feedback will further optimize the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm matching and continuously improve the ROI of the marketing services. As a result, industry customers can access the service at a reasonable price and with better marketing performance.As shown in the announcement of Joy Spreader on October 31, 2020, the company has provided content monetization services to an aggregate of 36,612 WeChat official accounts, an increase of 63.5% as compared to the number as of December 31, 2019. The number of cooperating DouYin accounts, with e-commerce purchase links and product placement, has exceeded 3,000. Gross profit for the first 10 months reached RMB175 million, 1.5 times of last year's full-year profit of RMB117 million.Through the data, the significant growth of the number of WeChat official accounts served by Joy Spreader can be visualized. This ongoing trend proves that once Joy Spreader's algorithms work its magic, the outcome is continuous growth. Therefore, it's not difficult to imagine the company's future expansion on DouYin's platform.As DouYin further permits the access of mini-programs and H5 games in its ecosystem, Joy Spreader's cooperation with DouYin will deepen in every dimension. Cooperation on the platform-level access will bring exponential growth in the number of DouYin users, which will further expand the growth rate and growth scope of the company and is expected to usher in a new round of performance development. Copyright 2020 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.acnnewswire.com

Space science aids understanding of our planet: Ex-astronaut

SINGAPORE - Scriptwriters take many liberties with scientific accuracy in space movies, but former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) astronaut Daniel Tani thinks there is one thing that the movie The Martian got right. And that is the grit of the movie's protagonist - an astronaut left behind on Mars after his crew mates thought him dead. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Doing job of two parents? Here’s how to ease the load on women

SINGAPORE - Three years ago, a comic by French cartoonist Emma depicted a scene familiar to many women. A frazzled mother tries to cook and feed her children at the same time. She ends up burning the dinner and rages at her husband, who is relaxing in the living room. Bewildered, he shoots back: "You should have asked! I would have helped." Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Are Schumacher, Russell the new F1 speed kings?

Mick Schumacher and George Russell… Two young men with big futures in Formula One, enjoyed respectively the joy and despair of motor racing in Bahrain last weekend. Schumacher, the son of seven-time world champion Michael, clinched the prestigious FIA Formula 2 Championship, one step below the big league, in which he will race next year following the expected confirmation that he will join the American Haas team for his 2021 graduation. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Licensed to soar: He faced great odds but Sean Mah is now one of Singapore’s most seasoned helicopter pilots

SINGAPORE - As a student at the now defunct Parry Secondary School in Yishun, Sean Mah had a habit of often looking out of the window. It earned him the ire of a teacher who, on more than one occasion, told him witheringly: "No one's going to pay you to look out the window, you know." Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Tennis in 2021 will be about the chase

If you want an unadorned quote on competitiveness, you've got to rewind. Got to find a 1970s guy who thought public relations meant giving the crowd the finger. Got to pull out a half-kidding threat from an unpolished guy which perfectly illustrated how athletes actually think. Like this old jewel. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

How digital natives struggle with the ‘right to disconnect’

Four years ago, when I started university in France, I took three months to open my bank account. This was in part due to my faltering French, which made communication difficult. But it was also because my bank representative took days to reply. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Setting wheels in motion

At the height of the bike-sharing wave in early 2018, there were about 200,000 such bikes in Singapore owned by seven companies. But that has since dwindled to just two - SG Bike and Anywheel - with giants such as Mobike and Ofo exiting the market last year. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

United struggle with deep-sitting sides

The Champions League semi-finalists were vanquished. Julian Nagelsmann, the managerial prodigy Real Madrid had wanted, suffered the heaviest defeat of his career. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reacted to a 5-0 thrashing of RB Leipzig by wondering how far Manchester United could go in Europe. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Kindness is good, human medicine

In the matter of hearts, my mother figuratively has a big one and literally an enlarged one. The first brings a smile, the second recently left her breathless. Late one September night in India, an ambulance had to be called to her gate for she was gasping for air. There was an issue with the stretcher so Raghubir, 48, my mother's cook for nearly 30 years, scooped her tiny, 87-year-old body into his arms, like a man cradling a half-broken flower, and carried her to the ambulance. Then, as she lay restless, he stayed close for the long ride. He's not a man of words but he was telling her: I am here. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

TTSH doctor faces charges after fatal traffic accident in 2019

SINGAPORE - A doctor with Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is facing criminal action after he allegedly caused death by negligent driving in an accident in Tampines last year. Ernest Fu Weizhong is from the hospital's Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat), according to an online search of registered healthcare professionals in Singapore. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

There is method to Arteta’s creative deviations

For some managers, the guessing game ends about 75 minutes before kick-off. They receive the opposition's team sheet and the questions are answered. Not for Brendan Rodgers tonight. Particularly in his younger days, the Leicester manager was noted for unexpected choices. Now the mantle of the most unpredictable man in the dugout may have been appropriated by Mikel Arteta. Few surprise more with their selections. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.

Residents grumble about TraceTogether: What’s wrong with just SafeEntry?

A grumpy chorus of "Why can't I continue to use just SafeEntry/SingPass/NRIC" arose among Straits Times Facebook users in response to the upcoming roll-out of TraceTogether-only SafeEntry. It's amazing how attached we can become to a system that's just a few months old. KDsquared Chewchew asked: "The question is why? SafeEntry was so awesome with the ability to check in my kids and spouse. Now can TT app do that as well?" Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article. Get unlimited access to all stories at $0.99/month Latest headlines and exclusive stories In-depth analyses and award-winning multimedia content Get access to all with our no-contract promotional package at only $0.99/month for the first 3 months* Subscribe now *Terms and conditions apply.