Prince William of Britain has arrived in Singapore for a week-long thought leadership and impact initiative focused on finding innovative solutions for a brighter future. He will launch the Earthshot Prize by his Royal Foundation – an award designed to reward entrepreneurs and companies that come up with ideas to solve global environmental problems faster than expected.

Singapore, known for its cutting-edge innovation and entrepreneurship, provides the ideal setting for this year’s Earthshot Prize competition. Organized by Temasek Trust and GenZero and taking place at Mediacorp Campus this November, winners and finalists of this prestigious event will meet global leaders, business and investors at this event in order to explore exciting collaboration opportunities, acceleration strategies and impact investments.

William was met by an enthusiastic crowd on his first visit to Singapore since taking on his role as King, welcoming him with open arms at Changi Airport’s Rain Vortex – the world’s highest indoor waterfall. William met members from Singapore’s local community working to protect and restore the environment, including Harrison Wong and Si Min from ITE College Central who provided food, groceries and thank-you cards to Town Council cleaners during Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, virtual experiential learning sessions for youths as part of their service projects.

William will meet with Singaporeans to assess how they are responding to global challenges such as protecting biodiversity and combatting illegal wildlife trade. In addition, William will attend the United for Wildlife Summit where law enforcement agencies, governments, and companies will discuss global efforts against this multi-billion dollar industry.

Kishore Mahbubani, the former Singapore diplomat who chairs the prize’s five-member jury panel and founder of NUS Singapore History Prize together with an anonymous donor, noted during a media conference that Singapore faces one of its greatest challenges today in terms of creating an identity rooted in history and heritage consciousness. Mahbubani started NUS Singapore History Prize with this goal in mind to foster and identify such consciousness of history within Singaporean communities.

The 2024 South Asian Literary Prize has broadened its focus to reflect our country’s increasing diversity, adding a translation category for work written in English by homegrown translators and comic-book authors based here in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, a Readers’ Favourite Award decided by public votes has also been instituted as an incentive to honor book titles that have caught people’s imagination.

At this year’s Singapore Literature Prizes (SLP), an unprecedented 224 submissions were received for poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction categories in all four official languages – English creative non-fiction will be judged by Clarissa Oon from Esplanade Communications and Content Head Clarissa Oon while Cultural Medallion recipient KTM Iqbal for Malay poetry will judge English creative non-fiction as will Sa’eda Buang from SMU Professor of Asian languages and cultures Sa’eda Buang for Tamil literature respectively. Winners will be announced towards the end of October – past judges include Esplanade Communications and Content Head Clarissa Oon who will judge English creative non-fiction creative non-fiction writing while Cultural Medallion recipient KTM Iqbal for Malay poetry as well as SMU professor of Asian languages and cultures Sa’eda Buang from SMU Professor Sa’eda Buang from SMU Professor Sa’eda Buang from SMU Professor Sa’eda Buang for Tamil literature!