The 5 Smallest Countries in the World

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/04/the-5-smallest-countries-in-the-world/

Music player noise limit planned

Train and bus passengers keen not to share the beat of fellow travellers' portable music devices might be happier to hear about a new plan from the EU.

A maximum noise default setting will be set on new portable music players, the European Commission has suggested.

But the standard decibel setting could be overridden by music fans still keen to turn up the volume.

The proposal came after research claimed that one in 10 users could suffer permanent hearing loss.

Scientists said those who listened at high volume for more than one hour per day over five years risked permanent harm. Between 50 million and 100 million people may be listening to portable music players on a daily basis, they found.

Levels

Existing EU standards currently prescribe no maximum sound limit nor require any specific volume labelling on devices.

The new proposals suggest that a default volume is set on all personal music players and mobile phones with a music playing function manufactured in the future. The proposals could take some months before becoming standard practice and would be voluntary among manufacturers.

The Commission said that at 80 decibels, exposure should be limited to 40 hours a week. At 89 decibels, exposure should not exceed five hours a week.

"It is easy to push up the sound levels on your mp3 player to damagingly loud levels, especially on busy streets or public transport," said EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva.

"The evidence is that particularly young people - who are listening to music at high volumes sometimes for hours each week - have no idea they can be putting their hearing at risk. It can take years for the hearing damage to show, and then it is simply too late.

"These standards make small technical changes to players so that by default, normal use is safe. If consumers chose to override the default settings they can, but there will be clear warnings so they know the risks they are taking."

BBC News.  Sep 28, 2009.

The use of "chiu yu" (潮語) in Hong Kong

Cantonese slang has taken off in recent years. But if you're game enough to use it, try not to make a fool of yourself



For anyone hoping to keep up with Hong Kong's highly idiomatic Cantonese, sites such as Discuss.com.hk and Hkgolden.com are vital resources. Trendy expressions, or chiu yu (潮語), are constantly being coined by the young people who dominate online forums.


Some of the vernacular has seeped into mainstream use as the Chinese tabloid press and other media pick up on it. Those not plugged into this youth culture can find it incomprehensible: a teenager who "drips sweat" (dik hon)(滴汗) because his laptop "struck wood" (daa caai)(打柴) is actually speechless with embarrassment and confusion because the machine gave out while he was trying to show off.


But a slew of books has emerged over the summer to help us make sense of the latest phrases. Publisher and writer Jimmy Pang Chi-ming, who has released several books on local street language, says Cantonese slang is a misnomer for such expressions.


"It should be called Hong Kong slang because, culturally, Hong Kong is the most international city. Hong Kong slang is the liveliest form of language ever. It's one of a kind and that's why I find it so fascinating. People outside Hong Kong wouldn't understand our slang," he says, referring to phrases derived from Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, French and Indian words.


His new book, Mong Kok Phrases, draws on the vibrant street culture of a district he knows well. Pang, 53, grew up in Mong Kok and still lives and works there.


"Mong Kok is the most culturally significant place in Hong Kong. The district has easy transport access so it gathers people from all walks of life. There's nowhere better to study trendy expressions," Pang says.


Primary school teacher Adrian So was among the first to bring chiu yu to broader attention two years when he issued a set of 42 flash cards on the latest expressions, along with a booklet explaining their origins and usage.


Created under the pseudonym So RealReal, the learning kit was such a hit (20,000 sets sold) that he has released another set this summer, which now also features a board game.


"I want it to be fun and educational at the same time," he says. "Remember how we learned to recognise simple words from flash cards when we were little? I want to apply this concept to adults too. Parents often have little idea what their children are saying now."


But the inventive slang So heard from his father sparked a lifelong passion for Chinese language, especially in popular culture. Having earned a degree in translation, So is now pursuing a masters in language studies at City University.


His original learning kit began as a DIY book project. "I made about 80 to 100 copies as a trial and drew the illustrations myself. But they sold out at bookstores within two days," he says. "I never thought it'd be so popular."


Young Hongkongers might associate hip expressions with cyberspace chatter because of so-called "Mars text" - easy-to-type phrases invented for online communication such as instant messaging. Gwing(勁) , a word that means bright in formal Chinese, has also has taken on a new connotation with widespread internet use. Because the written character resembles a frowning face with a mouth wide open, it's now often used to show someone is stupefied, depressed or embarrassed.


But chiu yu has been around for far longer than we realise, says Pang.


"Every era has its own. Whatever you call it - informal speech or colloquialism - it's the same thing."


Pang, who worked as a scriptwriter in the 70s and 80s, says his experience in film industry further fuelled his quest to trace the origins of various slang expressions.


"When I had to write a script, I often had trouble figuring out how to put those terms into writing and wondered how terms such as yi ng jai (二五仔)[which means a turncoat, but translates literally as two-five boy] were coined," he says.


Some words simply don't exist in other Chinese dialects. For example, there is no formal Chinese character for jiu (𡁻), which is colloquial Cantonese for "chew"; Hong Kong people just made one up, Pang says.


Tracking slang words in this literary limbo has become a passion for Pang. He always keeps a notebook handy to jot down trendy phrases he hasn't heard of and looks up dictionaries of ancient words for clues to how phrases developed.


"One thing leads to another," he says. "When you pay attention to these details, you start to dig deeper in everything from pop culture and history to science and literature."


That's why Pang includes historical and cultural context whenever possible in his books on slang expressions.


"It's crucial to understanding how different cultures from abroad and the mainland have influenced the way we talk," he says.


Although regarded as a specialist due to decades spent investigating slang, Pang says he's no expert.


"I am just as ignorant as the next person in deciphering the latest slang, because when a new term appears we are all starting from scratch," he says. "What I'm doing is building a foundation and documenting these words for others who might want to study them in depth in the future," he says.


Interpretation is subjective, so there's no such thing as "right".


"I've made mistakes before," says Pang. "You have to be humble and keep an open mind."


But other writers take a less scholarly approach.


"All this investigation may be good for academia, but who cares when you use [the slang] in daily life? Language is always evolving. I only trace the origins when I can," So says.


As a teacher, he concedes that too much slang can hinder students' grasp of Chinese language.


"Cantonese isn't a written language, and this surge in slang use exacerbates the problem. But I don't take negative view of it because slang is just a reflection of our culture and values," So says.


English tutor June Leung Ho-ki tries to put an educational spin on it by matching chiu yu with English expressions in her book, Slang 111.


"Most students only speak classroom English and often have no clue about English slang, which sometimes comes up in listening sections of public exams," she says.


Leung, who says she consulted more than 200 native English speakers, completed her book in three months for release at this year's book fair. Examples include gai (𠝹)(literally "cut"), the local equivalent of "hit on", and woon gau (緩交)(compensated dating) is sugar-daddy dating.


"I don't encourage students to use these terms, but ignorance doesn't do them any good," she says. "Trouble starts when you don't know what foreigners are talking about. Slang can be risky because there are many nuances involved."


Josephine Ng Pui-yin, a DJ at Commercial Radio better known as Chu Fun E, also takes a practical approach with Trendy Expressions in the News. It may be her second book on slang but Ng says her look at the local argot grew out of a concern for correct use of Chinese words.


"I started out correcting people's pronunciation on my programme," says Ng. "I am very word-conscious. I always look to see if words have been used wrongly or not."


The explosion in expressions invented in internet chat rooms piqued her curiosity.


"I felt like an outsider in these forums, because there are so many words I couldn't fathom. I don't want to join them, but at least I want to know what's going on," she says. "And when even the Chief Executive uses a slang term, you know how pervasive it can be."


Yet these writers rarely bring new slang phrases into their conversation. Their reasoning? You have to use the right word at the right time. "Otherwise, you could get into a lot of trouble or make a fool of yourself," Leung says.


SCMP. Sep 28, 2009.

Fast Food: Calories Per US Dollar

When it comes to weight issues, the quickest culprit to blame is the calorie. Losing weight and eating right can be hard when there are so many faster, less expensive, and more convenient options available, like fast food. But for those who watch what they eat and what they spend, here’s an interesting infographic that shows the calories per dollar (CPD) of some of our favorite fast food items.

Topcultured.  Sep 25, 2009.

Japan's NTT DoCoMo introduces two prototype phones made of waste wood

Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo on Thursday announced it has created two prototype handsets constructed of excess wood from trees felled during thinning operations designed to ensure a healthy forest. The devices were built through collaboration between Sharp, Olympus and More Trees, a reforestation project in Japan. Either prototype handset sports cypress wood and goes by the Touch Wood name. Despite the wood construction, the bodies are resistant to water, insects and mildew thanks to 3D compression molding technology developed by Olympus.
No artificial colors or paints are used, so the natural grain pattern, color and smell of the cypress wood are retained. Further hardware specs have yet to be announced, although the user interface sports photographic art from More Trees advocate Mikiya Takimoto.

The prototype phones will be shown at ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva and CEATEC Japan 2009 in early October.

Electronista. Sep. 24, 2009.

Chow warns of second swine flu wave

Health Secretary York Chow Yat-ngok said on Friday that Hong Kong people should prepare for a second wave of human swine flu infections.

Chow made the comments after attending the 60th session of the World Health Organisation's Regional Committee in Hong Kong.

“We will probably follow some Northern Hemisphere countries and experience a second wave... so we have to prepare for the worst,” he said.

Chow said health authorities would have to ensure there were adequate supplies of vaccines before the onset of winter.

“The vaccination programme should be able to start before the so-called winter peak rise,” he explained.

Centre for Health Protection Controller Thomas Tsang Ho-fai said the CHP would also revise its strategy for combating swine flu.

Tsang told reporters 99.5 per cent of confirmed swine flu cases were mild. But confirmed figures did not always reflect the actual number of people infected with swine flu.

Tsang said this was because many people had not received tests for swine flu. Therefore, CHP will update the latest number of confirmed cases every week - rather than each day, he added.

Tsang said the hospitals would give priority to critical and high-risk patients from next Monday at designated flu clinics and accident and emergency departments.

Critical and high-risk patients include:

• Pregnant women
• Children aged 12 months or under
• Healthcare workers, including staff from residential homes
• Patients living in health institutions that have not had swine flu outbreaks
• Influenza patients with persistent fevers (over 38°Celsius) or those whose conditions deteriorate.

As of Thursday afternoon, there were 24,681 confirmed cases of swine flu in Hong Kong. Some 19 swine flu patients have died. Figures for Friday were not yet available, a Department of Health spokesman told SCMP.com.

For more information, see: Hospital Authority

SCMP. Sep. 25, 2009.

Video – Baby Panda Gets a Checkup

So cute.

Sydney dust storm 'like Mars'

A storm which blew in from the Australian outback blanketed Sydney in a layer of orange dust. Here, residents describe the bizarre and frightening scene.

Tanya Ferguson said the dust was the weirdest thing she had seen in her life, turning the city into a scene from another planet.

"It was like being on Mars," she told the BBC News website.

"I haven't been there, obviously, but I imagine that's what the sky would look like."


She said she woke to a massive gust of wind blowing through her windows early in the morning.

"The whole room was completely orange. I couldn't believe my eyes," she said.

Ms Ferguson said she initially thought there was a bush fire. When she finally decided to venture outside, she said the entire city was covered in a film of orange dust.

"All the cars are just orange - and the orange was so intense," she said by phone from Sydney, where she has lived for the past six years.

"It was like being in the outback, but it was right here in the city."

Ms Ferguson said the sky was overcast and it was very dusty, making her sneeze a lot.

Public transport was disrupted and the roads were clogged as drivers struggled in the difficult conditions, but she said some people went to their jobs, and she saw a few residents wearing face masks.

By evening, Ms Ferguson said there were blue skies over Sydney and that it was returning to a normal day.

'Pink until noon'

Fellow Sydneysider Nick Beaugeard said his four young children were really frightened when they woke up on Wednesday morning.

"There was a really red glow inside the house, really crimson" he said. "It looked like the end of the world."


After the initial shock, he said the children got really excited and went off to school where they said it was "pink until noon".

Mr Beaugeard - who moved to Australia from the UK in 1998 - had to drive to work from the Northern Beaches area because the ferries were closed.

"It was like driving through a pea soup of fog," he said, "except it was bright red".

He said the lights looked blue because it was so red outside.

Mr Beaugeard said his wife - who is an asthmatic - was fine despite the blanket of dust and fog.

"She went out with a scarf over her mouth and she came back without it," he said.

He said the dust left everyone with a dry mouth, and a really gritty taste, but caused no breathing problems for his wife.

'Armageddon'

Andrew Hawkins, who lives in Northmead, about 20km from the centre of Sydney, says he was scared at first because it looked like the end of the world.

"This morning's dust storm was unbelievable… It was like waking up to see that Armageddon is upon us," he wrote in.


Mr Hawkins said he thought his eyes were playing up, or that there had been a nuclear explosion or a bush fire.

He described an ethereal scene of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House as he rode the train to work.

"To see a city of such beauty shrouded in red, was a sight which cannot be described - even pictures fail to capture the eerie nature of the scene which surrounded us this morning," Mr Hawkins added.

Another Sydney resident, Kirsty Ainsworth, said it was like being in a film.

"It was really, really bizarre. It was actually like being in a movie - the Day After Tomorrow or Armageddon," she said.

Ms Ainsworth said there had been storm warnings on Monday and Tuesday, but the dust storm took everybody by surprise.

"It came out of nowhere," she said, adding that visibility had improved enough for her to make it to work by around 0830 local time.

"Everybody's cars were caked in orange dust, and there's still sand everywhere," she said.

BBC News.  Sep. 23, 2009.

My acting is crippling me

To find fame and fortune in America Hugh Laurie had to adopt a trademark limp for the role of Dr Gregory House.


But that realistic limp could force him out of the TV series that earns him £250,000 an episode because of the pain of contorting his body.

“The show might last to series seven, eight or nine but I don’t know if I will,” he said last night, “because I’m starting to lose my knees a little bit.

“It’s a lot of hip work. There’s things going badly wrong. I need to do yoga.”

The 50-year-old star, a winner of two Golden Globes and just nominated for his third Best Actor Emmy, is about to launch the sixth series of what has become the most watched television drama.

More than 80 million people tune in every week to follow the cantankerous, cane-wielding ­clinician as he unravels medical mysteries.

Laurie, the son of a doctor, was best known in Britain for his roles in Jeeves And Wooster and the Blackadder series before “almost falling into” House after a haphazard video audition in a tiny bathroom while filming Flight Of The Phoenix in Namibia.

His performance was so convincing that he was taken for an American actor.

“I have no idea why people like House so much and I am almost too superstitious to ask the question,” said Laurie.

“I don’t know. I feel as if someone’s going to blow a whistle at any moment and say, ‘Right, that’s it. This is all a big mistake. We meant the other guy, the other show.’

However, success has come at a price. The actor is often lonely and homesick for his family in Britain.
“We can finish filming between midnight and 4am. Then I’m straight back to bed. It’s not really a life, actually.

“If this had happened 10 years ago, when my kids were small, it would have been very easy maybe to just yank them out of school and put them in school here. But now they’re teenagers and they’ve got their own life . ”

Daily Express. Sep 20, 2009.

Liu returns with bang to delight home crowd

Hurdles hero Liu Xiang thrilled a hometown crowd last night with a photo finish in his much-anticipated comeback after his Olympic withdrawal, vowing he would soon bring glory home to China again.
The stadium erupted as Liu and American Terrence Trammell, the world number two, both registered a 110m hurdles time of 13.15 seconds. Trammell was placed first.

Liu, 26, exploded out of the starting blocks at the Grand Prix, racing for the first time since he limped out of the Bird's Nest Stadium last year. "His result is beyond our expectations," Liu's coach, Sun Haiping, said. "He was inspired by the crowd."

The 2004 Olympic gold medallist vowed before the race that he would soon be "ready to bring home the glory for China once again".

"Being back on the track today is a pivotal step for me. I didn't expect I could run so fast ... but once I stepped on the track I could not hold back," said Liu, who thumped his chest and collapsed on the track after the finish. "I felt like I had been infused by an enthusiastic spirit."

"I'm confident and optimistic that I will soon make a full recovery and be ready to win again. I need to be patient and not expect too much, too quickly."

Liu had an operation in the United States in December to repair his Achilles tendon and has been training in secret in Shanghai.

Meanwhile, Carmelita Jeter ran the second fastest women's 100m in history at 10.64 seconds as Russian pole vault queen Yelena Isinbayeva tried unsuccessfully to top her own record. She won the woman's pole vault but failed on a third attempt to clear 5.07m. She cleared 4.85m ahead of Poland's Anna Rogowska at 4.60m.

With her 100m time, Jeter - the bronze medallist at the world championships in Berlin last month - became the second fastest woman in history. Only compatriot, the late Florence Griffith-Joyner, who set the world record of 10.49 seconds, has run faster.

American Tyson Gay beat Jamaican former world record holder Asafa Powell in the 100m with 9.69 seconds, equalling the second fastest time ever for the distance.

Next year Shanghai will be included in the 14-meet "Diamond League", which replaces the current schedule of six Golden League meets and other Grand Prix meetings.

SCMP.  Sep 21, 2009.

Is chocolate good for you?

In a study that will provide comfort to chocoholics everywhere, researchers in Sweden have found evidence that people who eat chocolate have increased survival rates after a heart attack — and it may be that the more they eat, the better.

The scientists followed 1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months. Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial cardiovascular effects.

The patients had a health examination three months after their discharge from the hospital, and researchers followed them for the next eight years using Swedish national registries of hospitalizations and deaths. After controlling for age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, education and other factors, they found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive. The results are reported in the September issue of The Journal of Internal Medicine.

But before concluding that a box of Godiva truffles is health food, chocolate lovers may want to consider some of the study’s weaknesses. It is an observational study, not a randomized trial, so cause and effect cannot be definitively established.

Even though the researchers controlled for many variables, chocolate consumption could be associated with factors they did not account for — mental health, for example — that might reduce the risk for death.

The scientists did not ask what kind of chocolate the patients ate, and milk chocolate has less available flavonoid than dark chocolate. Finally, chocolate consumption did not reduce the risk for any nonfatal cardiac event.

Still, Dr. David L. Katz, an associate professor of public health at Yale who was not involved in the work, said the study added “an interesting element, following a group of adults who’ve had a heart attack and noting an impressive reduction in cardiac deaths.” While the study is observational, he said, “the broader context is reassuring.”

While the chocolate eaters in the study had a statistically insignificant reduction in the risk of death from any cause over the eight-year span, the reduced risk for dying of heart disease was highly significant. And it was dose-dependent — that is, the more chocolate consumed, the lower the risk for death.

Compared with people who ate none, those who had chocolate less than once a month had a 27 percent reduction in their risk for cardiac death, those who ate it up to once a week had a 44 percent reduction and those who indulged twice or more a week had a 66 percent reduced risk of dying from a subsequent heart event. The beneficial effect remained after controlling for intake of other kinds of sweets.

A co-author of the paper, Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said that there was considerable data from other studies suggesting that chocolate lowered blood pressure and that this might be a cause of the lower cardiac mortality found in the study.

Dr. Katz, of Yale, agreed that “there are many reasonable biological mechanisms” for a protective effect from chocolate.

“I like the study,” he said. “It adds to the general fund of knowledge we already have.”

Dr. Mukamal sounded a note of caution about the findings.

“Although this is interesting and provocative, chocolate does not come without costs,” he said. “For people looking for a small snack to finish a meal, this is a great choice. But it should be supplementing healthy eating and replacing less healthy snacks.”

New York Times.  September 15, 2009

McDonald's free coffee?

As part of a national campaign promoting McDonald's restaurants, a downtown Vancouver lamppost became part of an out-of-home optical illusion, appearing to pour coffee into a giant cup on the sidewalk. At the time, McDonald's was giving away free small cups of its brew for a two-week period, in an effort to attract new breakfast customers. They developed the concept for a lamppost near 6th Avenue and Cambie Street. The post was wrapped in brown vinyl to resemble poured coffee, while an oversized carafe was attached to the end.


Directdaily. Sep. 16, 2009

Warning on weight-loss salons

Slimming ambassadors complain some firms dishonest over targets

The women are told that if they meet their weight targets, they will be given the opportunity to become spokeswomen in advertisements. But the customers are required to pay a deposit to show their "determination and sincerity" - and the sum is about the same as the market price of the treatment. If the woman cannot reach a designated weight, she may lose a month's deposit.

In the first eight months of this year, the Consumer Council received 31 complaints from women persuaded to become spokeswomen. There were 24 complaints last year.

Among them was a woman, with diabetes, who signed a contract in which she paid a deposit of HK$24,800, equivalent to the cost of 46 treatments.

To lose more weight to meet the target, she paid an additional HK$7,000 for acupuncture, but missed her first-month target.

She said she tried harder, but found the company slowed the progress of her treatments and required her to do less exercise. She decided the company was being dishonest, and reported the case to the council.

In another case, in which a spokeswoman succeeded in losing a certain amount of weight, she was required to report back to the centre every month for a year to see whether she was able to maintain the weight loss. If not, the instalment for that month was forfeited.

The city's consumer watchdog warned that there was no "free lunch" in the commercial world.

"Contract terms stress that the effectiveness of a slimming programme depends on co-operation of participants," said the vice-chairman of the council's publicity and community relations committee, Ron Hui Shu-yuen. "It is hard to define whose responsibility it is" when a customer fails to lose weight.

It was hard for consumers to claim their money back once they had signed such contracts, he said. As much as HK$60,000 was involved in one of the slimming complaints the council received.

The watchdog is negotiating with the beauty sector for a cooling-off period during which a consumer can retreat from a deal.

Danny Chan Chung-cheung, a member of a slimming centre's "victim" alliance, said dozens of cases were referred to the Consumer Council in the past few months.

About 20 per cent were settled with the council's help, the victims receiving varying levels of refund, Chan said. "There are still some new victims, and we find that the amount of money involved has increased. In earlier cases, the amount was about HK$20,000 to HK$30,000, but now we find more cases involving more than HK$40,000."

The alliance would continue to help victims regain their deposits, Chan said. "If a victim negotiates with a slimming centre alone, usually the victim will get nothing back. But if we do it as a group, the bargaining power is much stronger."

The chairman of the Federation of Beauty Industry, Nelson Ip Sai-hung, said the marketing managed to capture the desire for a perfect figure, but the strategy was illogical.

"The slimming centres are telling potential customers they are being offered a job as spokeswoman. What kind of job would require a person being recruited to pay a deposit? Also, the slimming centres have full control over the effect of those treatments, while refunds are being made based on the treatment result."

However, he said that though the promotions were high-profile, there were only a few companies involved.

A spokeswoman for the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau said it was reviewing the consumer-protection legislation to tackle unfair trade practices better. It plans to formulate legislative proposals for public consultation by the end of this year or early next.

SCMP  Sep. 17, 2009.

Harry Potter theme park

The books shattered sales records, the films made billions, now a Harry Potter theme park is to be launched to extract extra cash from parents around the globe.

Universal Orlando Resort, Florida, is promising an experience so magical it will be “unlike any other experience on earth” when it opens in spring 2010.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter will allow fans to take a “forbidden journey” to Hogwarts Castle, visit the wand shop Ollivanders and take a Hippogriff training flight which, to the adult eyes, may resemble a carefully-crafted rollercoaster.

The Owlery, dreamed up by author J. K. Rowling and featured in the Harry Potter films, will be recreated, with birds nesting in the rafters and visitors able to post letters, adorned with the Hogsmeade postmark, via The Owl Post.

Fans can also visit Dervish and Banges, the magical instruments and equipment shop, which will be stocked with Quidditch tools, Triwizard apparel, spectrespecs and Remembralls.

Food and drinks will be served at The Three Broomsticks and Hog's Head pub.

Unveiled yesterday in a webcast hosted by Mark Woodbury, President Universal Creative, the company, responsible for Universal Studios, gave a lesson in hype.

Woodbury called the park a “monumental project”, while stars of the films gave breathless quotes.

Daniel Radcliffe, who has embodied the much-loved Harry for all six films, said: “I would come out of films when I was younger and absolutely just wish that world could be real and that I could be a part of it, so it’s amazing that people will get to do that.”

Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley said: “It’s going to be like walking into the films and really experiencing it.”

The theme park has the backing of Rowling, who has amassed an estimated wealth of £499 million since publishing her first Harry Potter book in 1997. She released the seventh and final book in the series in 2007. The film of the last instalment will be split into two and released in 2010 and 2011, bringing the movie series to a close.

The Times. Sep 16, 2009.

Facebook grows and makes money

The world's largest social networking site just got bigger with the announcement it has 300 million active monthly users from around the globe.

Facebook also revealed that it had started making money ahead of schedule.

The company had not expected to start turning a profit until sometime in 2010.

"This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"We are succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. We are just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone.

"We face a lot of fun and important challenges that require rethinking the current systems for enabling information flow across the web," Mr Zuckerberg said in a blog post.

'Milestones'

The news that Facebook had passed these two benchmarks was made at TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco, a conference for start ups.

Facebook hit the 250 million user mark back in July. It is estimated that the site is gaining about five million new users a week, or 50 million in the last 75 days.

"Passing these milestones to me means we can continue to fund our development and our innovation and be self sustaining as we grow this network," Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's vice-president of engineering, told BBC News.

"We think 300 million is a just a step on the way to get as much of the entire world on the social network communicating with the friends and family and the people they want to communicate with."

"That Facebook is able to continue this growth and build a "cash-flow positive" business is an impressive feat," said Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook.com.

"If the company can cover the cost of scaling to one billion users and still manage to break even, there's no doubt that the company will have a great opportunity to rake in billions," added Mr O'Neill.

Facebook's Mr Schroepfer said the company had worked hard to get more money flowing in than out.

"The growth of the network has certainly helped us go cash-positive and the engineering team has done a lot of innovation on our ad products, as our business is primarily advertising-funded.

"As more and more of the world gets on the network, people and advertisers realise the power of sharing information, whether it's about a movie preview or a car," said Mr Schroepfer.

Look out Twitter, said Ben Parr, who is associate editor at the social media blog Mashable.com.

"If Facebook continues to open up its platform and adopt Twitter's best features, it could spell trouble for the Twitterverse. The world's largest social network is on the warpath," warned Mr Parr.

BBC News.  Sep. 16, 2009.

This Is It – first look at Michael Jackson trailer

Michael Jackson fans have been given their first look at the trailer for This Is It, the movie featuring footage from his final days.



The film is a behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals for Jackson's London comeback shows, which were scheduled to take place this summer. He died on June 25, shortly before the run was due to commence at the O2 Arena.

The two-and-a-half minute clip shows Jackson performing his fabled dance moves. They appear to contradict reports that he was emaciated and suffering from exhaustion in the weeks before his death.

In the trailer, Jackson says of his comeback: "This is the moment. This is it. It's an adventure, it's a great adventure. We want to take them places that they have never been before."

The film will have a limited two-week release from October 28.

Kenny Ortega, the movie's director and choreographer of the shows, has described This Is It as "Michael's gift to his fans". He said: "Fans will see Michael as they have never seen him before: this great artist at work. It is raw, emotional, moving and powerful footage."

Sony paid a reported $60 million (£36.4 million) for rights to the film, which was stitched together from more than 100 hours of footage shot in Los Angeles between April and June.

The MTV Video Music Awards opened last night with a tribute to the late superstar, which featured a performance by his sister, Janet.

The Telegraph. Sep 15, 2009.

7-Eleven cafes to sell local cuisine

The first shots have been fired in a Hong Kong fish ball war that is pitting the city's traditional street-food vendors against the world's most ubiquitous convenience chain.
The front line in this culinary battle is busy Tong Chong Street in Quarry Bay, where last month a new 7-Eleven shop started selling laksa, fish balls, egg tarts and milk tea from a large kitchen counter.

The retailer, which has almost 1,000 shops in Hong Kong, is expected to roll out more such counters across the city as it vies for a slice of a market that for generations has been dominated by small street traders.

Curried fish balls, siu mai, milk tea and pineapple buns are Hong Kong cultural icons for the armies of hungry office workers and labourers who grab them on the street to munch on their way to work. Whether they take to a version served up by a global retail giant, though, remains to be seen.

The 7-Eleven version, dubbed  7 Cafe, is apparently off to a good start, with sales of up to 600 cups of milk tea a day at a promotional price of HK$3 on Tong Chong Street. That is about one-third of the price charged by nearby food vendors.

Tong Chong Street is packed with office workers and schoolchildren on most days.

"We were surprised by the popularity of some products - for example, the milk tea ran out on the second day," said Tim Chalk, commercial director for Hong Kong and Macau at Dairy Farm, which owns the 7-Eleven franchise locally. "It is a worldwide trend for convenience stores to move to hot food-on-the-go."

But nearby street food vendors are unimpressed by the quality of the fare served up by 7-Eleven, even though it has hired an executive chef from a five-star hotel to ensure the food is safe and tasty.

Ming Kee, a street-food counter that has been selling breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea on Tong Chong Street for 18 years, concedes that it has sold fewer breakfasts and milk tea lately, but does not think 7 Cafe poses a threat.

"Do you think 600 cups of milk tea is a lot?" Ming Kee owner Wong Ming-sang asked. "When Hoixe Cake Shop started selling milk tea two years ago, it sold 1,000 cups a day."

Hoixe, a franchised bakery, was shut down last month and its site is now occupied by 7 Cafe. "Although [7 Cafe] has opened, our business has returned to normal," Wong said.

From IFC in Central to public housing estates in Tin Shui Wai, fish balls, siu mai, meat balls, milk tea, egg tarts and pineapple buns are part of the city's daily fare and are popular with people of all ages.

With a menu spanning breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, the 7 Cafe is also competing against arch-rival Circle K, Cafe de Coral, McDonald's and other food vendors in the Tong Chong Street neighbourhood.

Chalk said the HK$3 milk tea deal would be extended to the end of this month. But Wong said Ming Kee had no intention of cutting prices as that would mean lowering quality.

"Price is not the only factor," said Wong, who sells milk tea for HK$9 a cup. "We use Holland's Black and White Cow milk, which is the most expensive evaporated milk in Hong Kong. [7 Cafe] uses Nestle, which is cheaper."

Competition from 7-Eleven comes at a bad time for the city's street-food vendors. Wong and the other food vendors on Tong Chong Street are chasing fewer white-collar customers from nearby Taikoo Place, the complex of office towers owned by Swire Properties.

The city's unemployment hovered at a four-year peak of 5.4 per cent last month, but economists widely expect the worst is yet to come.

Wong and his family owned their premises, so they were faring relatively better than vendors who faced rising rents. The Wongs also own the 300-square-foot shop occupied by the Circle K convenience store, which is in between 7 Cafe and their own food counter.

The operator of the Circle K chain, Convenience Retail Asia, declined to comment on 7 Cafe's impact on its business. Circle K sells milk tea, toast and pizza on a made-to-order basis.

Circle K, which signed a six-year lease two years ago, faced a 9.75 per cent increase in rent next year as part of its contract, Wong said.

Chalk said 7-Eleven's reason for choosing Tong Chong Street was mainly because of its busy traffic of white-collar workers.

Despite the stiffer competition, the owner of Chinese dumpling shop King of Siu Mai, next door to 7 Cafe is undaunted.

"Consumers are curious about new things, but the curiosity normally lasts for three days and our customers come back," King of Siu Mai owner, Ah Ming, said, pointing to the crowd of customers in front of her shop.

Thomas Wong, a regular customer at King of Siu Mai, said 7 Cafe provided a choice, but he would stick with his favourite dumpling store. The store has sold fish balls, siu mai and meat balls for more than 10 years on Tong Chong Street. "I have been coming here [King of Siu Mai] for years, and have no intention of trying out [7 Cafe]," he said.

Retail competition has become so punishing in Hong Kong that the  7 Cafe is even "cannibalising" the customers of the 7-Eleven store immediately next door. Chalk said sales at the 7-Eleven had dropped 5 per cent since the new store was opened. The two stores offered different products, Chalk said.

While the buzz that 7 Cafe created on Tong Chong Street has died down, other bustling areas of the city are set to feel its impact soon. Chalk said the Tong Chong Street 7 Cafe was the first of many in the pipeline. Dairy Farm, which owns half of the 945 7-Eleven stores around the city (the rest are franchised), plans to convert the group's stores into 7 Cafes.

Future 7 Cafes, which would occupy 1,000 square foot of space, would be located in high-traffic locations, including Causeway Bay, Central, Admiralty and housing estates. Chalk would not say how many were planned.

SCMP. Sep 7, 2009.

Russian president orders swift anti-alcohol controls

Russian President Dmitry Medvedvev on Friday gave his officials three months to enact tough restrictions to try and curb alcohol abuse.

Last month, Medvedev described alcoholism as a "national disaster", which undermines public health and hampers the economy, urging the public to unite in fighting against it.

Russia has one of the world's highest per-capita rates of alcohol consumption, linked to life expectancy. According to official figures, just 40 percent of this year's school leavers will reach the pension age of 55 for women and 60 for men.

Earlier attempts to introduce curbs on alcohol, including a major campaign by the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev launched in 1985, brought little practical results and undermined government popularity.

On Friday, Medvedev ordered Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to introduce new restrictions on advertising alcoholic drinks and to allow local authorities to ban the sale of alcohol in specific locations and at specific times of the day. Medvedev also proposed replacing fines with criminal punishment for those who sell spirits and beer to those under 18, who are banned from buying alcohol.

The proposals, which echo similar measures introduced during Gorbachev's campaign, will be unpopular in a country where easy access to alcohol and public drinking in parks and streets are seen as traditional rights.

Medvedev also ordered the government to initiate new measures limiting the illegal production and sale of spirits.

Russian officials say about 30-50 percent of Russia's vodka market is illegal and untaxed. Many officials say a state vodka monopoly would bring order to the market and make it easier to control.

The proposed measures will hardly affect importers of alcohol, whose share of the local market does not exceed three percent. Most imported wines and spirits are sold in legal shops, which will not be affected.


Reuters. Sep 11, 2009.

Google Book Search

Google Book Search is the ambitious plan to digitize every book - famous or not, in any language, published anywhere on earth - found in the world's libraries, as part of the company's core mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Beginning in 2002 as a "secret books project," according to an official history at the Google site, Google Book Search has become a planned multibillion-dollar effort that has had to overcome many obstacles, both the sheer effort of scanning so many pages of text as well as conforming to copyright laws.

Google started in 2004 to partner with many of the greatest library collections in the world -- the New York Public Library, the University of Michigan, Harvard and Stanford, among others -- to digitize their collections, paying the scanning costs. Google expects to scan 15 million books from those collections over the next decade.

In October 2008, Google reached a settlement with authors and publishers to end a class-action lawsuit that challenged the legality of the scanning project. Under the agreement, Google will pay $125 million and create the framework for a new system that will channel payments from book sales, advertising revenue and other fees to authors and publishers, with Google collecting a cut.

The $125 million will go to compensate authors and publishers whose books are still under copyright and help find the copyright holders for so-called "orphan works," out-of-print books that are still within the law. These copyright holders, who are considered part of the group, or class, that settled with Google, are hard to find, since many never expected their works ever to be in print again. It is the resurrection of these works -- making them available at the click of a mouse -- that many consider among the greatest benefits of Google Book Search. That, and the millions of public domain works that will be easily searched and called up by computer users around world.

The proposed settlement has attracted opposition from various corners of the book world, and the Department of Justice has opened an antitrust investigation.

A coalition has also formed to oppose the proposed class-action settlement, which is awaiting court approval. Tentatively called the Open Book Alliance, it includes nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations. The coalition is led by Gary L. Reback, an antitrust lawyer in Silicon Valley, and the Internet Archive, a non-profit group that has been critical of the settlement. The group plans to make a case to the Justice Department that the arrangement is anticompetitive. Members of the alliance will likely file objections in court independently.

In August 2009, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo announced plans to join the Open Book Alliance.

"This deal has enormous, far-reaching anticompetitive consequences that people are just beginning to wake up to," said Mr. Reback, a lawyer with Carr & Ferrell, in Palo Alto, Calif. In the 1990s, Mr. Reback helped persuade the Justice Department to file its landmark antitrust case against Microsoft.

European publishers, authors and copyright holders have also objected to the proposed settlement in the American courts. On Sept. 7, 2009, representatives of those groups spoke out at a hearing sponsored by the European Commission against the proposed deal. They said it would give Google too much power, including exclusive rights to sell out-of-print works that remain under copyright, a category that includes millions of books.

Google has tried to mollify European opponents by clarifying that a digitized version of a book considered out of print in the United States, but still commercially available in Europe, would not be sold online without explicit consent from the European copyright holder. The company has also offered European publishers representation on a board to oversee a "book rights registry," which will distribute royalties from digital book sales under the plan proposed by the settlement.

New York Times  Sept. 8, 2009

Police saddened as young girls lured into 'compensated dating'

A brand-name strap for her mobile phone was the only thing on a 14-year-old girl's mind when she agreed for the first time to provide sexual services for reward.

Two years later the girl, now 16, was among about 100 girls interviewed by Chief Inspector Chung Chi-ming, who has led police operations against "compensated dating" in the past 12 months.

Chung, of Kowloon West regional crime unit, said he felt very sorry to see young girls in Hong Kong engaging in enjo kosai - a practice originating in Japan where men give money and luxury gifts to young girls for their companionship and, often, sexual favours.

Satisfaction of materialistic desires was one of the major reasons girls participated in the de facto prostitution practice, he said.

Some girls also came from broken families.

Chung said one girl had run away from home because of family disharmony and was lured into prostitution by criminals who suggested to her that a group of girls should live together like a family.

Police raided two such syndicates last year and found 10 girls, of whom the youngest was only 14.

The girls had to follow the rules set by syndicates and could be beaten if they did not conform.

"The girl told us it was like living in a prison and she could not escape," Chung said.

Police had also found pimps operating individually on the internet to arrange clients for girls. One, they found, was an 18-year-old student about to enter university.

"He told us it was like doing business on eBay," Chung said. "It is really a pity to see a young man, who did not have any criminal record, go to jail for his lack of morality."

Police over the past year have arrested 22 people, including syndicate members and online pimps, in relation to compensated-dating offences, and at least 13 girls have been referred to the Social Welfare Department. But Chung said police were only dealing with the tip of the iceberg and the solution lay in education and prevention.

Chief Inspector Sandra Chiu Yui-luen of the Kowloon West crime prevention office said police would write to primary and secondary schools in the district, and conduct seminars for school principals to alert them to juvenile crime.

"The girls might earn money pretty easily for a brand-name handbag, but once they start, it is a road of no return, and they will soon find their losses are much greater than their gains," she said.

SCMP Sep 5, 2009