1. law, govt and politics
2. government

ipm gets
largest
share of
old um
campus
P3
scholars call for betterment
of migrants’ living conditions
zhuhai exhibition center
‘complements’ macau
‘There are normally around 8 to 10 –
and sometimes even more – migrants
staying in small, old flats,’ scholar and
activist Cecilia Ho told the Times
The Zhuhai International
Convention & Exhibition Centre
has recently commenced a longawaited trial run
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The Shanghai exchange
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bourse said in a statement
on its website Saturday.
The debut of the link will
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“ THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ ”
Australia Eyeing
Chinese assertiveness,
President Barack Obama
and the prime ministers
of Japan and Australia
committed yesterday
to deepen their military
cooperation and work
together on strengthening
maritime security in the
Asia Pacific. More on p12
Afghanistan A
suicide bomber tried to
assassinate a prominent
female member of
Afghanistan’s parliament
yesterday, killing three
people and wounding the
lawmaker, a senior official
said. Shukria Barakzai
was slightly wounded in
the attack on her vehicle
as she was heading to
parliament, said Interior
Ministry spokesman Sediq
Sediqqi.
More on backpage
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The Hong
Kong ‘petit
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F1
Schwarzenegger, Stallone back in
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MACAU
2
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
澳聞
Leather craftsman calls for gov’t
help on brand promotion
Brook Yang
T
he feeling of starting from
scratch is about confronting
difficulties,” said Mr Andrew Lo,
who launched Macau’s first leather crafts workshop and brand
of hand-made leather bags.
“Many people have the creativity [to do a job like this]. If we
can cultivate an atmosphere for
people to learn and make their
own designs in Macau, we can
help more people produce and
sell their designs,” said Mr Lo,
who had nearly 400 people
come to his business, named
the Leathership Workshop, in
the past year.
The craftsman has been organizing workshops for about
Before there
were old
craftsmen for
leather shoes,
but not for
bags, and now
they’ve retired
from the sector
Mr Lo
three years, targeting people
who want to learn the art of
making a leather wallet or bag.
It started with five students;
since then, two more similar
workshops have appeared in
Macau.
“As far as I know, I’m the first
professional leather bag maker
in Macau. Before there were old
craftsmen for leather shoes, but
not for bags, and now they’ve
retired from the sector,” explained Mr Lo.
The craftsman spent nearly
five years learning in mainland
China, HK and Taiwan. “Before
there was nobody who taught
leather crafts here. I thought
Macau could develop in this
sector,” he added. “When we
first started the workshop, there were no leathers, materials
and tools [available] in Macau.
We went to Hong Kong, Taiwan
and Japan to collect all that.”
Mr Lo and his partner also
launched two original brands
for hand-made leather products, displaying items in the
workshop for sale. Several new
designs will be put into mass
production each season.
“It’s very hard to [navigate
the] cultural and creative industry, especially for [manufacturing] products. The government must help this sector,”
he stressed. “What the sector
needs most is the government’s
initiative in helping to promote
the original brands to overseas
customers.”
Besides the lack of promotion,
the craftsman explained that
the difficulties for operating the
workshop and its own brands
also come from a limited de-
Law scholars say ‘second system’
needs further building
Brook Yang
S
cholars
from
Macau’s law schools
and research institutions
have praised the current
government’s administrative accomplishments
over the past five years,
and suggested a further
construction of systems
in accordance with the
Basic Law.
A symposium held last
week by the One Country Two System Resear-
ch Center of the Macau
Polytechnic
Institute
(IPM) debated the recently released government work report. Nearly twenty professors and
scholars exchanged their
opinions on the administration’s performance
and the challenges that
face Macau, as well as
the Work Report itself.
Wang Yu, from the
symposium host institute, took the stance that,
“only building the sys-
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tems can ensure Macau’s
lasting peace and stability.”
“System construction is
the main problem that’s
been facing the MSAR
government in its implementation of the ‘one
country, two Systems’
model and ‘Macau People Govern Macau’ policies,” he stated.
“The current government has been fully aware of the importance and
urgency of this issue,
and has made considerable progress on building systems,” stressed
the scholar. “However,
there are areas where
the system construction
is blank, lagging behind,
and lacking efficacy.”
According
to
Prof
Wang, some systems
that are mentioned in
the Basic Law have been
absent in the administration, such as a nongovernmental municipal
body.
mand within the local market
and the expense of high rents.
“The Cultural Bureau has supported us a lot, taking us to
trade fairs every year. It’s easy
to apply for the creative industries’ fund. But [subsidising]
is not enough help, ” he said,
“they could make promotional
videos and advertisements for
us, even contact the overseas
buyers.”
Furthermore, Mr Lo suggested that the government should
set up a cultural and creative
industry zone where venues are
rented by the government for
local creative brands.
“Being located near the Albergue SCM doesn’t help the shop
attract many customers; when
the evening starts, there’s nobody around” he said. “Most of
the tourists that come here are
only taking photos. ”
“If the government reserves
this area as a pedestrian zone
for creative industries into which vehicles are not allow to enter, and also provides financial
aid for the area’s small creative
businesses, it can generate a
cascade effect and attract more
tourists and customers to the
zone.”
From merely teaching people the craft, the Leathership
Workshop has grown into a platform where Mr Lo collaborates
with two local artists on new
designs.
Today, many have seen the
appeal of the workshops, and
local department stores and
boutique shops have also added
its branded products to their
shelves, leading to total sales of
some 4,000 items per month.
The scholar also argued that some existing
systems inherited from
the pre-handover period
are not in line with the
spirit of the Basic Law,
and should be modified
promptly.
Furthermore, several
academics indicated that
although some current
systems are established
in accordance with the
Basic Law, they have
been ineffective. “Inadequate consultations in
major decision-making
processes have occurred
from time to time; sometimes there are serious
administrative
omissions whilst administrative inefficiency is also a
prominent issue; the ac-
Director and Editor-in-Chief_Paulo Coutinho paulocoutinho@macaudailytimes.com
Managing Editor_Paulo Barbosa paulo.barbosa@macaudailytimes.com
Contributing Editors_Eric Sautedé, Leanda Lee, Severo Portela
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countability system for
top officials also needs
to be implemented,” said
Prof Leng Tiexun, the
Research Center’s deputy director.
In addition, IPM professor Ji Chaoyuan indicated that the Work
Report shows an inadequate long-term vision,
and fails to specify the
MSAR
government’s
coordination with the
Central
Government
for further preferential
policies. IPM professor
Yang Yunzhong also suggested that, “the government needs to prevent the negative effects
emerging from the rise
of residents’ democratic
awareness.”
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ISSN 2305-4271
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
澳聞
IPM gets largest share
of old UM capus
renato marques
T
he University of Macau’s old campus will
be allocated to four
tertiary
education
institutions and three government departments, the Tertiary Education Services Office
(GAES) announced on Friday.
The biggest share will be granted to the Macau Polytechnic
Institute (IPM), while the City
University of Macau is the only
private institution being allocated one part of the old campus, TDM News reported.
The director of the Tertiary
Education
Services
Office
(GAES), Sou Chio Fai, said that
three academic buildings and
two dorms would be allocated
to IPM. The original dormitory
building, comprising a 23,000
square meter space, will be allocated to the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT). He added
that the University of Macau,
which now operates in Hengqin
Island, would keep the library
and a study center comprising
21,000 square meters.
The largest area will be
allocated to IPM in a total of
38,000 square meters. IPM
president Li Xiangyu said that
they are glad they can finally
stop renting classrooms and
dormitories in different buildings around town.
It was also announced that
the City University of Macau
would be given eight buildings
totalling 37,000 square meters. The government will require rent from City U, since
it is a private university, but
they have not disclosed the
amount.
Sou Chio Fai said that the
campus sports complex would be allocated to the Macau
Sports Development Board,
which they hope will work to
enhance relevant facilities and
allow residents, civic organizations and other tertiary edu-
Entrance to the UM old campus in Taipa
cation institutions to use it.
Another building will be dedicated to Public Administration and training programs
for civil servants. Some of the
parking areas will be alloca-
renato marques
avid Chow Kam Fai
said that he plans to
construct a convention
and exhibition centre, catering to locals, in Fisherman’s Wharf, a subsidiary
of Macau Legend Development. The co-chairman
and CEO of the Hong
Kong-listed company also
claimed that news has
been positive regarding
Macau’s application for
the administrative rights
of its water territory.
Mr Chow spoke to the
media on Saturday, on the
sidelines of a ceremony
to mark the construction
completion of the Harbourview Hotel and the
first stage of the yacht pier,
3
after the announcement that
the allocation of the UM old
campus was not transparent
enough. The government also
failed to disclose not only the
degree of urgency but also the
basis of the decisions the City
University faces. The Chinese
Educators’ Association of Macau also said that the administration should respond to the
public. It suggested that the
authorities should consider
the needs of non-tertiary education institutions as well.
Kwan Tsui
Hang says that
the allocation
of the UM old
campus is not
transparent
enough
ted to the Transport Bureau,
and some will be opened for
the public. One building and
one dormitory have not been
allocated yet. The government
said it would not disclose any
Fisherman’s Wharf to build
exhibition center ‘for locals’
D
MACAU
Fisherman’s Wharf
further information on these
two buildings.
The way the old UM campus
has been allocated has drawn
public criticism. Lawmaker
Kwan Tsui Hang said the day
GAES later released a statement, stressing that the government is lawfully allocating
the old UM campus. It said
that the decision is being made
in accordance with the requirements of relevant education
institutions and public departments, and has been agreed
and approved by the Secretary
for Social Affairs and Culture,
as well as the Chief Executive.
The secretary of the Council
of the City University, Chan
Chon Pat, also explained to
TDM that the university currently has classrooms in several commercial buildings
around town and needs more
space for development. He believes that the government has
made the right decision and
revealed that the university is
still discussing the rent with
the government.
which is part of the project
to revamp Fisherman’s
Wharf. He said that they
would strive to submit the
convention and exhibition
centre’s blueprint to the
government within the
year.
“I will hope that the government can, in collaboration with the Science
Centre, have an independent convention and exhibition centre at that area
for locals. There will not be
any casinos [in the area].
[The convention and exhibition centre] will be an
independent building instead of [being located] inside a hotel. Only through
this can the atmosphere of
the [convention and exhibition] industry be brought out,” he said.
The CEO also said that
he would like to promote the individual travel
scheme for yachts with
the yacht pier, and clai-
med that the Chinese central government will be
working with the MSAR
authorities regarding Macau’s water territorial administrative rights. “Now
I have received the news
that, as soon as it can be,
the central government
will collaborate [with Macau],” he said.
David Chow revealed that future plans for
the yacht pier include
the construction of a
breakwater and an extension of the pier area.
The facility is expected to
house up to 400 yachts
upon completion.
Other items in the revitalization project include
another two hotels, a dinosaur museum and an
opera house. David Chow
said that he also hopes
to include more tourism
elements in Fisherman’s
Wharf, in order to attract
more tourists. JPL
4
ADVERTISEMENT
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
廣告
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
澳聞
MACAU
5
SHOP FIRE
Scholars call for improvements in
migrant workers’ living conditions
Catarina Pinto
F
our Southeast Asian
migrants died in a fire
that broke out last
week at a small local
boutique, in an attic above the
shop. It remains unclear how
many people lived in the attic.
Professor Cecilia Ho, from the
Macau Polytechnic Institute’s
social work department, says
that the living conditions of
migrant domestic helpers are
worsening. “There are normally around 8 to 10 – and sometimes
even more – migrants staying
in small, old flats, just with
two bedrooms and one living
room, around 400 to 500
feet,” she told The Times. Cecilia Ho stressed that living conditions have worsened, since most employers
hiring
domestic
workers
only provide them with the
minimum
accommodation
allowance of MOP500. “It is
very difficult to find a place with good conditions to
live in [with] only MOP500 a
month,” she said. The IPM scholar has urged
the government to demand
an increase of the minimum
accommodation
allowance. “Apart from rent, [the
general cost of living] is becoming very high and their
salaries have not been adjusted accordingly (…) the salary
for Southeast Asian domestic
workers is usually less than
that granted to mainland domestic helpers,” the scholar
added.
Cecilia Ho said that migrant workers usually get
MOP2,500 per month plus
MOP500 for accommodation.
“This is a kind of racial discrimination and the Macau
government has not been acting according to the Internal
Labor Convention C189 – to
There are
normally
around 8
to 10 – and
sometimes
even more –
migrants
staying in small,
old flats
Cecilia Ho
There’s a
high number
of casualties
when there’s a
fire, because
emergency
exits or even
simple exits are
closed
Vizeu Pinheiro
The shop where the fatal accident occurred is guarded by police officers
ensure that domestic work
is as a decent job, which deserves the same status of any
other employment sector,”
she stressed.
The IPM professor thinks
the Labor Affairs Bureau and
the Human Resources Office
should bear the responsibility of monitoring and ensuring
that migrant workers are provided with basic living conditions in Macau. She questioned whether the
employers of the four deceased migrants should take legal responsibility. “We should discuss this and request
that both employers and employees know their rights,”
Ms Ho added.
The professor also said that
the government should revise
current legislation, stipulating that employers acquire
insurance covering medical
care or any work-related accidents that might occur.
Ms Ho recalled that domestic
helpers in Macau are permitted to live outside their employers’ homes, which Hong
Kong law does not allow. Although it helps them maintain
their own private life without
having to be on duty 24-7, it
also raises other problems:
“The allowance provided by
the employer is not enough to
fully cover accommodation,
nor does it include benefits
such as paid electricity, food,
and other perks usually provided to those who live with
their employers.”
The shop, located on Rua do
Tarrafeiro, caught fire in the
early hours of Wednesday last
week. Two Indonesians (one
man and a woman) and two
Filipino nationals (male and
female) were trapped inside
and died. The Indonesian woman was a 34-year-old widow
and leaves behind a nine-yearold son. Police authorities said in a
press conference last week
that there is no evidence to
suggest it was a criminal act.
The leader of Peduli Indonesian Migrant Concern Group,
Cindry Purnasari, told TDM
News that the group wants
authorities to explain why the
victims were unable to escape
from the fire. Police said the
victims were found in the attic. It might indicate that the
fire broke out within the shop
area, leaving the migrant
workers stranded upstairs. Ms Ho believes this is not a
unique case. “I think there are
many other similar cases, but
not as fatal as this one. Fire
incidents do happen, and migrant workers might not have
enough knowledge of how to
escape and [find] a safe place,” she stated.
Furthermore, Ms Ho recalled that this type of incident
affects not only migrants, but
also other citizens, depending
on the building’s fire safety
equipment, such as fire alarms or extinguishers. Architect Francisco Vizeu
Pinheiro, who teaches at the
University of Saint Joseph,
acknowledged that not all
buildings comply with the
appropriate fire safety measures. “It’s something we see
often in Macau: there’s a high
number of casualties when
there’s a fire, because emergency exits or even simple
exits are closed.” He added that there are several buildings in the city where emergency exits have been
locked. “It’s against the law.
But if there are no inspections
or further control over [safety
measures], the law becomes
ineffective,” he stressed.
Macau
faces
particular
challenges on fire safety measures, especially in historic
neighborhoods with older
buildings, he said. These include bad management of
emergency exits, as well as a
lack of fire drills that could
help residents be better prepared to act throughout fire
incidents.
“If there were more fire
drills, people would know
better what [to] do and how
to proceed in case of a fire.
They would not be caught so
off guard,” he suggested. Mr
Pinheiro added that fire drills
should be mandatory in residential buildings, shops, and
restaurants. However, it affects more modern construction as well as older buildings. “We have really
tall buildings that do not meet
some of the safety requirements,” he acknowledged.
He suggests that Macau could adopt similar measures as
Singapore, particularly in old
neighborhoods. “It’s called
retro-fitting. Instead of demolishing buildings, which
can get more expensive, they
adapt them, perfecting security conditions.”
Another possible solution,
he said, is related to the community itself. Mr Pinheiro
believes Macau’s community
should be more involved in
launching and ensuring safety measures.
He concluded by saying
that, “what Macau needs is a
city hall and parish councils
that could work on these issues. The community needs
to come together, like they
do in Japan, to work on the
safety measures for each neighborhood, instead of relying
only on the government.”
further inspections needed
Regulations on fire safety
measures are crucial but insufficient, said architect Francisco
Vizeu Pinheiro, from the University
of Saint Joseph. The scholar believes that there’s a need to ensure
shop owners and building management comply with safety rules, and
that more fire inspections should
be conducted. “Legislation is im-
portant. But inspections play an
essential role, because when you’re
building or trying to open a shop,
you get licensed based on meeting
certain safety requirements. But after that license is granted, changes
might have been made and authorities need to conduct further inspections, ensuring that they still meet
those requirements,” he stressed. 6
MACAU
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
澳聞
New Zhuhai exhibition centre
‘complements’ Macau
João Pedro Lau, Zhuhai
A
fter almost four years of construction, the Zhuhai International Convention & Exhibition Center (Zhuhai CEC), developed by the state-owned Zhuhai enterprise Huafa Group, has recently commenced a
long-awaited trial run, on October 30. It has
already hosted several exhibitions and conventions since September.
Zhuhai CEC is located at the Wanzai section of the Shizimen Central Business District in Zhuhai. It is very close to the Wanzai Port and is only 10 minutes away from
Gongbei Port by car. In fact, it is clearly visible from the Macau side, especially in the
southwestern parts, such as Sai Van and the
area near the Macau Tower.
The venue occupies 269,000 square meters with a total investment input of RMB6.9
billion. It is a collection of exhibition and
convention facilities, an opera theater, concert hall and hotels, and can host different
types of events including banquets, concerts
and carnivals.
In a media tour yesterday, Doris Wan, the
public relations executive of Zhuhai CEC,
said that the establishment of the center has
ended Zhuhai’s long-term drought of professional exhibition venues. The fact that
the Zhuhai CEC houses several different
facilities, Ms Wan suggested, is very rare in
southern China as well.
Despite the fact that the center is in close proximity to Macau and has strengthened Zhuhai’s competitiveness in terms of
hosting meeting, incentive, conference and
exhibition (MICE) events, Doris Wan still
believes that the two cities are not in competition, but in a complementary relationship,
in which both parties will be able to supplement each other. “After all, Macau is limited
in terms of the venues and human resources
[for MICE],” she said.
The exhibition and convention facilities,
opera theater and concert hall have already
opened. The Zhuhai CEC exhibition centre
has a net exhibiting area of 30,000 square
meters that can be divided into six exhibition halls, housing a total of 1,600 exhibition booths. Huafa also invited the managing company of the China National Convention Centre to co-manage the facility.
Ms Wan said that Zhuhai CEC would mainly
focus on hosting feature and professional
exhibitions.
The Zhuhai CEC convention centre is also
co-managed by Huafa and the National
Convention Centre’s managing company. It
includes a 4,500 square meter grand convention hall, a 2,000 square meter multifunction hall, a 1,200-seat opera theater and
an 800-seat concert hall. The facilities are
capable of receiving a total of nearly 10,000
people.
Doris Wan especially mentioned that the
convention hall is also suitable for wedding
banquets. “We want to smash Zhuhai people’s perception that convention centers
are not for wedding banquets,” she said. Ms
Wan pointed out that the Zhuhai CEC has its
own kitchen capable of catering for roundtable banquets of up to 6,000 pax. This, she
said, also sets Zhuhai CEC apart from other
similar venues in Guangdong province.
The accommodation facilities in the Zhuhai
CEC – the Zhuhai Huafa Sheraton Hotel, the
St Regis Zhuhai Hotel and the Zhuhai Huafa
Apartment – are still under construction,
with the Huafa Sheraton Hotel set to open in
December. With a total floor area of 66,000
square meters, the Zhuhai Huafa Sheraton
will provide 550 hotel rooms and suites.
As for the St Regis Zhuhai Hotel, it will occupy the 37th to the 65th floor of the Zhuhai
International Business Centre Building and
is expected to provide 250 rooms. Standing
at over 300 meters tall, it will be the tallest
building in both Zhuhai and Macau upon
completion. It is predicted that the construction will reach 200 meters at the end of
this year, and the building will open in 2016.
Stallone and Sch
Schwarzenegger and Stallone pictured during their previous visit to Macau
Paulo Barbosa
S
ylvester Stallone
and Arnold Schwarzenegger are two of the
celebrities returning to
town to attend Sunday’s Pacquiao–Algieri fight at the Venetian Cotai Arena. As the Times
predicted last week, both movie
stars are on the list of fight attendees, Sands China corporate
vice-president Scott J. Messinger confirmed in an exclusive
interview.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Sylvester Stallone, and I paraphrase from Arnie himself, he
‘will be back.’ He will be here,
Sly will be here, Sly’s brother
Frank Stallone is going to be
joining us. Again, much like
we had last year [at the Clash
in Cotai event], you will see an
unbelievable array of Western
stars, Asian stars, from music,
motion pictures, TV.”
The blockbuster film’s iconic lead actors are returning
to Macau after August’s visit,
when they participated in the
The Expendables 3 VIP screening and attended the Ultimate Fighting Championships
(UFC) event, both included in
The Venetian’s 7th anniversary celebration.
According to Mr Messinger,
the planning and preparation
for the Clash in Cotai II has
been going on for months, “almost akin to one of our property openings.” Interviewed
by the Times, he said that
the planning stage “requires
a cross-departmental group
ranging from operations, pu-
blic relations, marketing, advertising, conventions and
exhibitions group, hotel operations, arena staff… So it’s a
very large group that comes
together to [pull] something
like this off because at Sands
China we are committed to
bringing the world’s best entertainment to our fellow citizens here in Macau and also to
our visitors.”
Other celebrities in attendance at the Cotai Arena include Bruce Lee’s daughter
Shannon Lee, the MMA star
Other celebs
that will also be
in attendance
at the Cotai
Arena include
Bruce Lee’s
daughter
Shannon Lee,
MMA star
Cung Lee,
actor Stephen
Baldwin, former
Pussycat Dolls
star Melody
Thornton, and
US rapper Ja
Rule
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
澳聞
MACAU
7
paulo barbosa
warzenegger back in town this weekend
Sands China’s corporate vice-president Scott J. Messinger
Cung Lee, actor Stephen Baldwin, former Pussycat Dolls
star Melody Thornton and
US rapper Ja Rule. At Manny
Pacquiao’s request, Season 11
“American Idol” runner-up
Jessica Sanchez will sing the
Philippine national anthem
before the fight.
“And more and more names
are being hinted at everyday
(…) Hong Kong and Macau
tend to be late ticket-buying
markets and people are now
the story of kk ng,
the macau kid
Scott J. Messinger thinks
that one of the best aspects
of the cooperation between
Sands China and Top Rank for
the past 18 months “is the story of KK Ng.” Dubbed the Macau Kid by Top Rank founder
and CEO Bob Arum, the local
fighter was on the first Clash
in Cotai card a year ago in his
first-ever professional fight.
“Here is a young man who
has dedicated himself to his
craft, he is undefeated in his
pro-career, he has not only
gained prominence in Macau
and Hong Kong; he has also
travelled with us to mainland
China,” says Mr Messinger.
“We generally don’t talk about
this, but we invest upwards of
seven figures of US [dollars]
in advertising, promoting and
marketing for our fights, this
particular fight, and KK is
in all of that advertising,” he
adds.
waking up to the fact that this
is going to be another runaway
success,” Mr Messinger said,
adding that he expects “another sell-out crowd” at the Cotai Arena.
“We seek to engage with the
best possible partners to do
this and in the world of boxing there’s no one better than
Top Rank. In all my conversations with Bob Arum, he is the
first to say that is not simply
about boxing, it’s also about
entertainment, so we are very
determined to giving a total
package and program people
can’t experience anywhere
else. Sure, it’s possible to watch it on TV, but there’s nothing like watching it live and
in person,” Sands China’s corporate vice-president stated.
Asked whether the celebrities
coming to town this weekend
will participate in activities
included in the fight week, he
said that, “it’s too early to disclose things before we have
everything finalized, but the
celebrities obviously will be supporting the fight on social media and various things. We are
also going to try to have them
attend many of our events.”
The fact that the bout will be
produced and distributed live
in the United States by HBO
Pay-Per-View is one of the
factors attracting celebrities,
the top executive acknowledges. More than the airtime,
however, they are drawn to a
certain type of event, he says:
“They [celebs] want to be associated with world class events
that are going to generate a
lot of interest and notoriety.
But it’s not just anything, I
can claim that something is
going to be broadcast and…
[they will not be interested in
it]. It’s the type of event and
the association with folks like
Top Rank and Bob Arum. His
reputation in the business is
such that people want to be
associated with that event
and frankly the ethos of Sands
China is that we don’t do things halfway. If Sands China is
going to do an event we do it
all the way.”
Mr Messinger draws a parallel with the glamour of boxing
events in Las Vegas: “Last year
people asked if we are competing with Las Vegas for boxing. There are great sporting
events done there, but we are
bringing here our own take on
the glitz, the glamour and the
excitement that surrounds big
time world title boxing events.
That includes the big time entertainers that go along with
it. The celebrities want to be
there to see and be seen. What
sets it apart here are our fans.
We have to continuously open
doors earlier and earlier for
each of our events, because
unlike in the US, where the
crowd only starts getting there when the main events start,
you know, the last four fights,
our fans are here right from
doors, they want to be here
for all nine fights. We are now
thinking of ways to provide
them with a little bit of entertainment in the hour and a
half run up to when the fights
start.” Not even the fact that
the event kicks off early in the
morning (the doors are expected to open 5am) – due to the
fact that it is being broadcast
live to the US – deters fans.
“It [the early morning fights] certainly wasn’t an issue
for Clash [in Cotai] I. To be
honest with you we were a bit
concerned about that, it’s to
accommodate the US audience, but we had no problems,”
Scott Messinger says. “It was
an extraordinary event last
year, amongst so many notable extraordinary events, and
we have every expectation that
Clash II will exceed that. It’s a
very strong card from top to
bottom,” the top executive notes, adding that they help raising Sands China brand and
the fame of Macau as a mustgo destination: “These kinds
of events have a global audience, but will be seen by up
to as much as 65/70 million
people in mainland China live.
It’s instant positive proof that
something is going on in Macau that suggests this is an
We are in the
home stretch.
The planning
and preparation
for the Clash
in Cotai II has
been going
on for months
and months,
it’s almost
akin to one of
our property
openings
Scott J. Messinger
amazing destination for leisure and business travelling, because you are seeing the diversity of the product offering.”
major film project in macau
A major film project is going
to be made in Macau, Scott J.
Messinger revealed to the Times.
He said that the name of the project can’t be disclosed until a formal announcement is made. “As
more and more people are becoming aware of Macau and what we
are doing here, it has led directly
to a major film project that we are
going to undertake here for a US
company,” Mr Messinger stated.
Stressing that Sands China has
been doing a lot of film-related
projects and events, including
Bollywood ones also, the company’s corporate vice-president
said that they are, “getting more
and more interest from US companies.”
8
BUSINESS
th Anniversary
分析
‘Haunted apartments’ go
for cheap in Hong Kong
Michelle Yun
bloomberg
T
here’s a grim phenomenon in Hong
Kong’s real estate
market: discounts of
as much as 50 percent for home-seekers willing to live in
an apartment where a murder
has occurred.
Unnatural deaths typically
result in rental discounts of
10 percent to 20 percent and
can be more than double that
for sinister killings, according
to Sammy Po, head of the residential department of realtor
Midland Holdings Ltd. Chinese believe such places, known
as “hung jaak,” the Cantonese
term for “haunted apartments,” are unlucky, he said.
“The Chinese really do care”
about living in these places,
Po said.
The rent for a Wan Chai
district apartment where police found two women’s bodies on Nov. 1, HK$29,000
(USD3,740) a month at the
time of the murders, will probably drop by half when it’s
released from being a crime
scene, cleaned and rented
again, according to a director of the company that owns
the unit, who didn’t want his
name or firm identified because he isn’t permitted to speak
publicly. The sales value of the
unit in the luxury J Residence would decline from HK$9
million to HK$6 million if it
were sold immediately, the
person said.
Hong Kong had almost 190
sites where an unnatural death took place, including murders and suicides, this year,
according to a database compiled by Squarefoot.com.hk.
Squarefoot lists the date of
the incident, the address, the
district and a brief description
of the death. Among recent listings were an apartment where an 18-year-old male student
slipped a plastic bag over his
head last month and jumped
17.11.2014 mon
Unnatural
deaths typically
result in rental
discounts of 10
to 20 percent
to his death; one where a middle-aged couple, plagued by
financial troubles, committed
suicide by inhaling burning
coal smoke; and another where a mother was hacked to
death by a mentally unstable
neighbor while protecting her
two daughters.
Hong Kong is certainly not
the only place where home-
seekers can be wary of a residence marred by tragedy.
Nevertheless, in a comparably
high-demand market like New
York City, the stigma is less
marked, according to Jonathan Miller, president of real
estate appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. in Manhattan. Where sales inventory in the city is
scarce and rents are near records, a crime or other negative event wouldn’t have much
effect on price, he said.
In the U.K., a particularly
notorious crime can cause a
home to become unsalable, requiring it to be knocked down
and rebuilt, said Richard Sexton, a director at e.surv, the
country’s largest provider of
residential property valua-
tions.
“Equally, if it’s a folklore situation, the U.K. can be different,” he said. “The house with
the friendly ghosts can sometimes be marketed that way as
a positive.”
Hong Kong property agents
aren’t required by law to disclose if a death occurred in a
unit, but they should provide information when asked
under the industry’s code of
ethics, according to the Estate Agents Authority, a government agency. Potential
tenants or buyers should ask
whether a suicide or homicide
took place because there’s no
legal definition of a “haunted
property,” the agency said in
an e-mailed response.
Hong Kong is otherwise Asia’s priciest real estate
market. Private residential
rents hit a record high in August, reaching almost HK$25
a square foot, or HK$12,500
for a 500-square-foot apartment, according to Midland.
Residential sales prices, which have more than doubled
since the start of 2009, hit a
record last month despite government measures to curb
demand.
The city is the world’s mostexpensive after London for
multinational companies to
base staff because of its real
estate, according to property
brokerage Savills Plc.
C S Group, a Hong Kong property-services firm, is auctioning a 550-square-foot “hung
jaak” on Nov. 18 with a starting price of HK$3.18 million
($410,120), according to its
website. An apartment of the
same size in the same complex
sold last month for almost 27
percent more, or HK$4.33
million, according to data
from Midland.
“The demand is there, whether from investors seeking
rent or for self use,” said Alger
Cheng, general manager of the
group’s auction department.
First-time homebuyers are
also drawn to these cheaper
properties, Midland’s Po said.
Expatriates tend to be less
concerned with living in
“haunted apartments,” said
Asif Ghafoor, founder of property-listing website Spacious.hk.
For them, “location is by far
the most important thing,” he
said. Bloomberg
corporate bits
first macau bath & body works store in opens at venetian
Regional fashion and
beauty retailer, Valiram
Group on Friday announced the opening of its first
Bath & Body Works store
in China at the Shoppes at
the Venetian.
Bath & Body Works, a
North American brand,
offers a variety of fragrances from body to
home, and is America’s
favorite fragrance brand.
The brand operates almost 1,600 stores in
the United States and
has over 100 stores internationally. The 1,400
square feet store at The
Venetian marks the first
Bath & Body Works store
in Greater China.
“We’re excited about
bringing this exciting brand
to Macau and to the rest of
Asia Pacific. The Bath &
Body Works brand is strong
and well-recognized in the
U.S. and all over the world
for its devotion to creating
a fun yet pampering experience for everyone. The
Valiram Group chose The
Shoppes at The Venetian
for its exceptional location
with international brands
and its unparalleled standing as a destination mall
in Macau. We celebrate
our first store opening here
with great expectations,
and look forward to our future expansion into Hong
Kong and China”, said Mr
Mukesh Valiram, Executive Director, Valiram Group.
truffle season begins at sheraton macao hotel
Truffles are back in season at
the Sheraton Macao Hotel, Cotai
Central. Chef Gaetano Palumbo,
Executive Sous Chef of Sheraton Macao Hotel’s signature Italian restaurant, Bene, has designed two dinner menus featuring
the Périgord black truffle and the
Alba white truffle starting from
Friday.
The Périgord black truffle heralds from the southwestern region of France and is best known
for its earthy flavor and subtle
aroma. First on the menu is a
slow cooked egg with taleggio
cheese, winter wild mushrooms
and black truffle, followed by a
carnaroli rice with pigeon, chestnut, coffee and black truffle.
The main entrée is a venison
fillet medallion with chanterelle
mushrooms and black truffle.
And for dessert, a Piedmont
gianduia parfait with hazelnut
and black truffle.
A special a la carte menu featuring the Alba white truffle from
Piedmont, Italy has also been designed. Diners can choose from
the scallop, chestnut, pancetta
ham and white truffle alba; carnaroli rice, Jerusalem artichoke
and white truffle alba or a lamb
loin with potato parmesan cheese
sauce and white truffle alba. Also
on the menu is a dessert of warm
chocolate cake with honey and
white truffle ice cream.
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
廣告
ADVERTISEMENT
9
10
CHINA
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
中國
ap photo
Gov’t wants
Uighur
refugees back
from Thailand
M
Hong Kong Federation of Students leader Alex Chow, center, committee members Nathan Law, left, and Eason Chung pose for photographers before attempting to
travel to Beijing, at Hong Kong International Airport Hong Kong
Student protesters denied
permit to go to Beijing
Helene Franchineau and Annie Ho
T
hree Hong Kong students who have led protests for greater democracy in the
former British colony were denied in their attempt Saturday
to go to Beijing to meet with
top Chinese officials.
Alex Chow, Nathan Law and
Eason Chung — members of
a student group that played a
main role in organizing massive street protests that started nearly two months ago —
arrived at the Hong Kong airport greeted by dozens of wellwishers holding up yellow umbrellas. But they were denied
boarding passes for a Cathay
Pacific flight when they were
told their documents that would allow them to travel to Beijing were invalid.
“The Cathay Pacific has confirmed ... that the (students)
got their return-home cards
cancelled by the mainland authority, so they cannot get the
required certificates to get onto
the plane,” said Yvonne Leung, general secretary of Hong
Kong Federation of Students.
In a news conference hours later, the student leaders
said annulling their travel documents is an unreasonable
move that deprives them of
their rights to enter the country’s territory.
“It symbolizes that Hong
Kong people’s right to determine their destiny will be taken
away in the future,” Chow said.
Carrie Lam, chief secretary
for the Hong Kong administration, said that it was unnecessary for the students to
petition Beijing and that the
central leadership of the ruling
Communist Party “is fully aware of the different appeals.”
Pro-democracy lawmakers
in Hong Kong are routinely
denied entry to the mainland,
and Beijing in the past has
confiscated or refused to renew the travel permits commonly known as return-home
cards for a number of Hong
Kong activists.
Chow and his deputies had
planned to go to China’s legislature upon arrival to seek
talks with Premier Li Keqiang
and others.
A fourth traveler, Jeffrey
Tsang, a former member of the
student group, tried to board
the Cathay Pacific flight separately but his travel permit was
not valid.
The protesters oppose Beijing’s decision that a panel will
screen candidates for the inaugural 2017 election for Hong
Kong’s top official. Chinese
authorities have declared the
gatherings illegal.
An editorial in the Saturday
edition of the party-run Global
Times said the students would not get their meeting and
their travel plans were merely
a show for sympathy.
“These activists may be too
naive,” the editorial reads. “Do
they really know who they are
and whom they can represent?
How can they meet whomever
they want in Beijing?”
“Tycoons were allowed to go
to Beijing before,” Chow said
at a press briefing Saturday
night broadcast live on Hong
Kong TV stations. “Why would they be scared of just three
student[s]?”
Joshua Wong, the leader
of the Scholarism protest
group, said Saturday’s event
“further damages confidence in one country, two systems.” The government has
closed the door for dialogue,
he said. AP/Bloomberg
judge’s ruling authorizes bailiffs to clear mong kok
Hong Police Commissioner Andrew Tsang
said Saturday his force will help clear protest sites
that have blocked main roads and disrupted the
city for more than seven weeks after a judge dismissed demonstrators’ appeals against orders to
remove them.
The street occupations are illegal and protesters
should not interfere when the removal of blockades
begins, he said in a press briefing broadcast live
on Cable TV Hong Kong. He didn’t say when that
would be.
High Court Chief Judge Andrew Cheung Kuinung’s ruling means bailiffs can remove obstructions at two protest sites in Mong Kok on the north
side of Victoria Harbour. An injunction was also
granted against protesters in Admiralty, where the
city’s government headquarters are located. Under
the injunctions, police are authorized to assist in
the clearing and arrest anyone who interferes.
The ruling risks reigniting violent clashes between
police and protesters as government talks with student leaders are stalled and China refuses to give
in to demands for free elections in the city in 2017.
Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed support for
Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying while hosting
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in
Beijing.
The protest movement that has occupied Hong
Kong’s streets since September is losing momentum amid dissent among its leaders and dwindling
crowds. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam has ruled out
more talks with the students.
The Mong Kok injunctions were brought by taxi
and bus drivers who said that their business has
been impaired by the blockage of key roads by the
students.
ore than 200 refugees
detained in Thailand earlier this year are believed to be
Chinese Uighurs and should be
repatriated, a Chinese consul
said, dismissing concerns they
will be mistreated.
The refugees’ claim to be
Turkish cannot be confirmed
and they refuse to cooperate
with Chinese authorities on proper identification, said Qin Jian,
the consul in Songkhla.
“They have been uncooperative and refused to communicate
at all,” Qin said.
The refuges are likely fearful
of being mistreated in China if
they are returned, although Qin
said such concerns are unwarranted.
“If they do not have criminal
records back in China, there will
be no prosecution,” the consul
said.
Tensions between minority Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese have left about 400 people
dead in the past 20 months. Beijing has blamed the violence on
terrorism, separatism and extreme religion and has harshly
cracked down in the Uighurs’
far northwestern home region.
But human rights groups say
the heavy-handedness is further
alienating the Uighurs.
In March, Thai immigration
officers rescued 220 men, women and children held by presumed human traffickers at a
remote camp. Qin said there has
been no confirmation of their
Turkish identity after staff from
the Turkish embassy met with
the group.
Dozens of men have been identified as Chinese Uighurs and
the others in the group are believed to be based on their physical features, habits and customs, Qin said. He declined to
elaborate.
The Washington-based Uyghur American Association has
called upon the Thai government not to return them to China but allow them access to the
United Nations’ refugee agency
for asylum requests.
“Uighurs have been forcibly
returned into the hands of their
persecutors in the past with dire
results,” said Alim Seytoff, president of the association in a
statement.
Seytoff said China’s economic
and political leverage with other
governments leaves genuine refugees unprotected and that the
increasing numbers of Uighur
refugees is an indication of Beijing’s repression of the Muslim
minority.
Thai officials have said their
investigation is not yet complete. AP
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
亞太版
G-20 Summit
Kristen Gellineau, Brisbane
Leaders agree on USD2
trillion boost to growth ap photo
U
British Prime Minister David Cameron addresses a press conference at the conclusion of the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia
11
And experts warned that
the countries would need to
comply with every one of the
800 measures to achieve the
2.1 percent target, a virtually
impossible task, given the
difficulties they will inevitably face in pushing some of
the policies through in their
home countries.
“There are two questions:
whether the specifics are credible and whether the political backing by leaders is convincing,” said Thomas Bernes,
an analyst with the Center for
International Governance Innovation, a Canadian-based
think-thank.
Abbott said the group had
been most productive on the
issue of trade, calling it the
“key driver of growth.” The
leaders adopted reforms to
streamline customs procedures and reduce regulatory
burdens.
Despite Australia’s push to
keep the summit focused on
the economy, the meeting
was largely overshadowed by
tensions between Putin and
Western leaders over the escalating conflict in Ukraine,
where Moscow is supporting
pro-Russian rebels in the
country’s east. AP
Putin leaves G-20 early as Ukraine dominates talks
Ilya Arkhipov and Thomas Penny
P
resident Vladimir Putin left the
Group of 20 summit in Australia
early so he can sleep on the long flight
home, as fellow leaders berated Russia
over the conflict in Ukraine and warned
of possible further sanctions.
Putin, who was told by European leaders to stop arming rebels, said before
jetting off from Brisbane he needed 4 to
5 hours of sleep so he could get to work
early this morning.
“We have to fly from here to Vladivostok 9 hours and then from Vladivostok
to Moscow, another 9 hours,” Putin told
reporters in Brisbane. “There are no
other considerations.”
The crisis in Ukraine has overshadowed the G-20 summit, and European foreign ministers meeting today
in Brussels will discuss expanding the
list of individuals targeted by sanctions, according to German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, who spoke with Putin
for almost four hours during a late night meeting. Russia, which occupied
and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in
March, has repeatedly denied that it’s
sending its armed forces into Ukraine
or aiding the separatists.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who
met with European leaders on the sidelines of the summit to discuss the crisis, said Russia had the “opportunity
to take a different path” on Ukraine or
face continued isolation.
“This is going to be a test of the stamina and a test of the political will of the
United States and the countries of the
European Union,” U.K. Prime Minister
David Cameron told reporters. “Russia
needs to know that there’s a real unity of purpose between America and the
ap photo
nder
pressure
to jolt the lethargic world economy
back to life, leaders
of G-20 nations yesterday finalized a plan to boost global GDP by more than USD2
trillion over five years. The
fanfare, however, was overshadowed by tensions between Russian president
Vladimir Putin and Western
leaders.
The communiqué from the
Brisbane summit of Group of
20 wealthy and emerging nations revealed that the plan
for jumpstarting growth includes investing in infrastructure, increasing trade and
the creation of a global infrastructure hub that would help
match potential investors
with projects.
Leaders also aim to reduce the gap between male and
female participation in the
workforce by 25 percent by
2025, saying that would put
100 million more women in
employment and reduce poverty.
Speaking at the end of the
summit, Australia’s Prime
Minister Tony Abbott said
countries will hold each other
to account by monitoring implementation of their commitments to boost growth.
The G-20, criticized in recent years as being all talk
and no action, was urged to
deliver measurable results
this year. Perhaps in response, the group said the International Monetary Fund and
OECD will also play a role in
monitoring progress and estimating the economic benefits
of the growth plan.
IMF
managing
director
Christine Lagarde dismissed
concerns that countries might
fudge their growth figures,
saying that while the monitoring isn’t scientific, it’s a thorough and detailed process.
“We’ll make sure they keep
their feet to the fire,” she said.
The G-20 communiqué says
if the $2 trillion initiative is
fully implemented, it will lift
global GDP by 2.1 percent
above expected levels by 2018
and create millions of jobs.
Abbott said countries agreed
on more than 800 new measures to spur the global economy, which the IMF describes as facing a “new mediocre.”
“People right around the
world are going to be better
off,” he said.
But the G-20, which represents around 85 percent of
the global economy, faces an
uphill struggle to implement
its plan after international
agencies downgraded their
global growth forecasts in recent months. Growth in China and Japan has weakened
and Europe is teetering on the
brink of another recession.
ASIA-PACIFIC
Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott and President of Russia Vladimir Putin hold koalas during a photo
opportunity on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Brisbane
I guess I’ll shake
your hand but I have
only one thing to say
to you: You need to
get out of Ukraine
Canadian PM Stephen Harper to
Vladimir Putin
European Union in making sure that we
don’t have a permanent frozen conflict
on the continent of Europe.”
Putin told reporters he thought he and
his fellow leaders now better understood each other on Ukraine after one
-on-one talks on the issue.
The crisis is the worst standoff between Russia and its former Cold War
foes since the Iron Curtain fell 25 years
ago.
Putin received a blunt message when
he approached Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a handshake
during the Brisbane summit on Saturday.
“I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have
only one thing to say to you: You need
to get out of Ukraine,” Harper told Putin, the prime minister’s spokesman Jason MacDonald said in an e-mail. Putin
told Harper that would be impossible
because Russian troops aren’t there, the
president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov,
said.
G-20 host Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was happy to treat his guest
with “respect and courtesy” and posed
with Putin for photographs as they each
cuddled a koala.
Nevertheless, when Abbott addressed
leaders at the summit’s opening Saturday, Putin was seated at the other end
of the room - a far cry from his central position at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing
last week, where the Russian leader
and Obama flanked Chinese leader Xi
Jinping. Bloomberg
12
ASIA-PACIFIC
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
亞太版
G-20 Summit
Julie Pace, White House
Correspondent, Brisbane
ap photo
US, Japan, Australia agree
to deepen security ties
E
yeing Chinese assertiveness, President Barack
Obama and the prime ministers of Japan and Australia
committed yesterday to deepen their military cooperation
and work together on strengthening maritime security in
the Asia Pacific.
The meeting, the first since 2007 among leaders of the
three allies, risked antagonizing Beijing after a week when
Obama reached a surprising
level of consensus with Chinese President Xi Jinping on
climate change and trade, and
Japan and China took steps to
improve their relationship.
China has viewed Obama’s
efforts to deepen alliances with
other countries in the region,
particularly on security issues,
as an attempt to counter Beijing’s rise.
ad
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, center,
and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right, shake hands at the start of their
meeting at the G20 Summit in Brisbane
In a joint statement following
the meeting, the three leaders
said they had agreed to “dee-
pen the already strong security and defense cooperation”
between their countries. They
also agreed to work on boosting “maritime security capacity building” in a region rife
with disputes between China and its neighbors over
claims to waters and islands.
However, there were no announcements on specific military exercises or new troop deployments within the region.
White House officials insisted that the three-way talks
on the sidelines of the Group
of 20 economic summit were
not meant to send a message
to China. But in advance of
Obama’s meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott and Japan’s Shinzo
Abe, the president pressed China to “adhere to the same rules
as other nations — whether in
trade or on the seas.”
“By virtue of its size and its
remarkable growth, China will
inevitably play a critical role in
the future of this region,” Obama said Saturday in a speech at
the University of Queensland.
“And the question is, what kind
of role will it play?”
An Obama administration official said the three-way meeting had been in the works for
a year. Beyond military cooperation, the leaders also discussed the U.S.-led campaign to
defeat Islamic State militants
in the Middle East, combat
the spread of the deadly Ebola
virus in West Africa, and stop
Russia’s destabilizing actions
in Ukraine.
Australia was Obama’s last
stop on a weeklong trip that
began in China and Myanmar.
He arrived politically weakened at home by the Democratic Party’s election defeats Nov. 4. The president has
tried to show the region’s
leaders that he retained the
ability to deliver on promises
to deepen U.S. engagement in
Asia and the Pacific, an effort
he sees as a central part of his
foreign policy.
“There are times when people have been skeptical of this
rebalance, they’re wondering whether America has the
staying power to sustain it,”
Obama said. “I’m here to say
that American leadership in
the Asia Pacific will always be
a fundamental focus of my foreign policy.” AP
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
分析
WORLD
13
Ukraine
Mstyslav Chernov and
Peter Lepnard, Hrabove
New video evidence of MH17
downing obtained ap photo
F
our months after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine,
The Associated Press has obtained video that shows how close
the burning passenger jet came
to hitting village homes and suggests that residents first assumed
it was a Ukrainian military plane
that had been struck.
The amateur footage, filmed
by a resident of Hrabove, shows
people reacting in alarm as wreckage blazes only a few meters
away from their homes on the
afternoon of July 17. The video
is perhaps the first taken immediately after the plane came
down.
The ultimate cause of the
MH17 disaster is the subject
of major diplomatic disputes.
Ukraine and Western governments say Russia-backed separatist fighters fired the rockets
that felled the plane, while staterun television in Moscow over
the weekend produced evidence it claims places blame with
Ukraine’s air force.
All 298 people aboard the
Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were
killed when it was shot down
over a rebel-held area. Charred
remains of the aircraft are scattered around fields over an area
of 20 square kilometers.
Workers yesterday began collecting debris from the crash
site, under the supervision of
Dutch investigators and officials
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Euro-
In these images made from amateur video taken on July 17, 2014 and obtained by The Associated Press, the burning wreckage
of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is seen near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
pe. The recovered fragments will
be loaded onto trains and taken
to the government-controlled
eastern city of Kharkiv. The investigation into what happened
to MH17 is being conducted there and in the Netherlands.
The recovery operations have
been delayed amid continued
fighting between government
troops and separatist fighters. A
truce was agreed in September,
but hostilities have raged on nonetheless.
In the video obtained yesterday by AP, residents of the
village of Hrabove can be heard
asking about the whereabouts of
the pilot. This is significant because multiple Ukrainian military planes had been shot down
by this time, and their pilots and
crew regularly taken prisoner by
rebel forces.
Three days before the MH17
was brought down, rebels claimed responsibility for shooting
down an Antonov-24 military
transport plane.
The downing of MH17 stunned Ukrainian defense officials.
They argued that the aircraft
must have been targeted by Russian fighter jets, as it was flying
at an altitude of 6,500 meters,
far beyond the reach of the Igla
portable surface-to-air missiles then being used by rebel fighters. The plane was flying at
10,000 meters when it was hit.
On the day after the Antonov-24
was downed, the Moscowbased LifeNews television channel broadcast the questioning by
rebels of a man identified as the
Ukrainian plane’s pilot.
The afternoon that MH17 was
brought down, LifeNews repor-
ap photo
Netherlands
ted unnamed rebel sources as
saying another Ukrainian transport plane had been downed.
Other pro-Kremlin media issued
similar reports. They quickly
dropped that account as it became evident that a civilian aircraft
had in fact been brought down.
The reaction of villagers in
the new video suggests their
immediate assessment too was
that another Ukrainian plane
had been struck.
One person can be heard to
say: “And where is the pilot?”
Another person answers: “Who
the hell knows?”
In another exchange, a person is heard questioning whether more than one plane had
crashed, since there was so
much debris. People around him
quickly correct him to say only
one aircraft had come down.
The account favored by most
Western government is that the
plane was brought down by an
SA-11 missile launcher — also
known as a Buk —fired by rebels. U.S. government officials
have said the Russians might
have provided technical help to
the rebels to operate the system.
The separatists have denied
any involvement in shooting
down the plane. AP
‘Black Pete’ stirs racial controversy Mike Corder and Raf Casert
P
olice arrested 90
protesters Saturday
as a traditional Dutch celebration of the arrival of
Saint Nicholas was disturbed by demonstrators
who say his faithful sidekick, “Black Pete,” is a
racist caricature, and by
supporters of the popular
children’s figure.
In some of the worst
scenes of unrest in the
increasingly
acrimonious debate about Black
Pete, opponents scuffled
with police on the historic market place of the
central city of Gouda as
thousands of children
welcomed Saint Nicholas
nearby.
Prosecution
office
spokesman Wouter Bos
said 60 anti-Black Pete
activists were arrested
for demonstrating away
from a location set aside for protesters and
were each fined 220 euros (USD275). Another
30, both supporters and
opponents of Black Pete,
were arrested for disturbing public order, Bos
told The Associated Press.
Video
from
Gouda
showed scuffles breaking
out in its historic downtown while children’s
songs played in the background. Protesters were
detained by police as children watched.
“Deeply,
deeply
sad,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told broadcaster NOS. “Everybody
can debate one another,
we can endlessly discuss
the color of Black Pete,
but we should not disturb
a children’s party in this
way.”
The Dutch cheese capital of Gouda came up
with a strategy for reconciliation as Saint Nicholas
arrived Saturday. Black
Petes walked side-by-si-
de with yellow-colored
“Cheese Petes,” a nod to
the city’s most famous
products but also a concession to critics of Black Pete. In another sign
of changing times, the
daily Dutch children’s television report on Saint
Nicholas’ travels also
featured White Petes on
Thursday night.
The vast majority of
people in Gouda were
parents and their young
children — many dressed as Black Pete — who
braved cold and wet conditions to watch as Saint
Nicholas arrived and rode
through the town on a
white horse to the market
square.
Across Belgium and the
Netherlands, celebrations
in which Saint Nicholas
rolls into town surrounded by a host of “Black
Petes” have come under
increasing pressure year
by year from complain-
ts about racism. Pete is
usually played by a white person who paints his
face pitch black, dons a
frizzy wig and gives himself bright red lips — stereotypes that disappeared
from most countries decades ago.
The Belgian town of Sint-Niklaas, with a church
and statue honoring the
saint, has long been one
of the focal points of the
celebrations that spread
across the Netherlands
and Belgium at this time
of year. A grand entrance
yesterday was expected to
bring tens of thousands
of children flocking to
the “home of the saint.”
Yet even in this bastion
of saintly tradition, questions are starting to be
asked about Black Pete.
Last year, more than 2
million people endorsed
a Facebook petition to
keep Black Pete’s image
unchanged. That’s near-
Black Petes walk side-by-side with yellow-colored “Cheese Petes”,
right, and “cookie Petes,” left, in the historic town of Gouda
ly one-eighth of the entire Dutch population,
indicating the depth of
emotion over the issue.
But Van Bellingen insists democracy is not about
numbers alone.
“It is about the will of the
majority and the rights of
the minority,” he said. “As
a majority you have to be
sensitive and show empathy for things that are
hurtful to a minority.”
He says it’s time to get
rid of Black Pete. AP
14
ADVERTISEMENT
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
廣告
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
分析
15
Islamic State Terrorism
Diaa Hadid, Beirut
Graphic video claims US
aid worker beheaded ap photo
T
he
Islamic
State
group released a graphic video yesterday in
which a black-clad militant claims to have beheaded
U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig,
who was captured last year.
The militant was standing
over a severed head, but it was
not immediately possible to
confirm that Kassig, 26, was
pictured in the video. Family
representatives were not immediately available for comment.
The video, which was posted
on websites used by the group
in the past, appeared to be the
latest in a series of grisly messages to the U.S. warning of
further brutality if it does not
abandon its air campaign in
Iraq and Syria.
“This is Peter Edward Kassig,
a U.S. citizen, of your country;
Peter who fought against the
Muslims in Iraq, while serving as a soldier,” the militant
says near the end of the nearly
16-minute video. He speaks in
an audible British accent despite his voice being distorted to
make it more difficult to identify him.
The video also shows what
appears to be the mass beheading of several Syrian soldiers
captured by the group. The militants warn that U.S. soldiers
will meet a similar fate.
WORLD
This undated file photo provided by the Kassig Family shows Peter Kassig standing in front of a truck filled with supplies for
Syrian refugees
Kassig, a U.S. Army Ranger,
was providing medical aid to
Syrians fleeing the country’s
civil war when he was captured inside Syria on Oct. 1, 2013.
His friends say he converted to
Islam in captivity and took the
first name Abdul-Rahman.
The video identifies the militant’s location as Dabiq, a small
town in the northern Syrian
province of Aleppo, near the
Turkish border.
Previous videos have shown
the beheading of two American
journalists and two British aid
workers. The latest video did
not show the person identified
as Kassig being beheaded.
Kassig formed the aid organization Special Emergency Res-
ponse and Assistance, or SERA,
in Turkey to provide aid and
assistance to Syrian refugees.
He began delivering food and
medical supplies to Syrian refugee camps in 2012 and is also
a trained medical assistant who
provided trauma care to injured Syrian civilians and helped
train 150 civilians in providing
medical aid.
The militant Islamic State
group has beheaded and shot
dead hundreds of captives mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers - during its sweep across
the two countries, and has celebrated mass killings in a series
of slickly produced but extremely graphic videos.
The group has declared an Islamic caliphate in the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq,
which it governs according to a
harsh version of Shariah law.
The U.S. began launching air
strikes in Iraq and Syria earlier this year in a bid to halt the
group’s rapid advance and eventually degrade and destroy it. AP
ad
16
INFOTAINMENT
what’s ON
...
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
資訊／娛樂
TV canal macau
Writing Macau in Portuguese - Portraits
Exhibition
Time: 10am-7pm
Until: November 23, 2014
Venue: Old Court Building, Avenida da Praia Grande
13:00
TDM News (Repeated)
13:30
News (RTPi) Delayed Broadcast
14:30
RTPi Live
17:30
Brazil Avenue (Repeat)
18:20
Non-Daily Portuguese News (Repeated)
Admission: Free
19:30
Soap Opera
20:30
Main News, Financial & Weather Report
Macau in a Gentle Wind Solo Exhibition by
Hsiao Mei
Time: 12pm-7pm (Closed on Tuesdays)
Until: December 7, 2014
Venue: Ox Warehouse, corner of Avenida Do
21:00
TDM Sports
22:10
Brazil Avenue
23:00
TDM News
23:30
Champions League Magazine
00:00
Main News, Financial & Weather Report (Repeated)
00:30
RTPi Live
no.459
Coronel Mesquita and Avenida Do Almirante Lacerda
Admission: Free
Enquiries: (853) 2853 0026
14th Macau Food Festival
Time: 5pm-11pm (Mondays to Thursdays)
3pm-midnight (Fridays to Sundays)
Until: November 23, 2014
Venue: Sai Van Lake Square
Admission: Free
Enquires: (853) 2857 5756
Time & Routes of free shuttle bus (3 routes):
5pm-11:30pm (Mondays to Thursdays)
3pm-12:30 midnight (Fridays to Sundays)
Return service to Sai Van Lake Square and Macau
Luso Bank (Av. Dr. Mario Soares), OCBC Weng Hang
Bank (32, Est. Marginal do Hipodromo), opposite
Altira Macau Hotel in Taipa
Communication & Media Exhibition – Saint
Joseph University
Time: 2pm-7pm (closed on Sundays)
Until: November 29, 2014
Venue: Creative Macau, G/F Macau Cultural Centre
cinema
cineteatro
13 Nov -19 Nov
interstellar_
room 1
2.30, 6.00, 9.00 pm
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway,
Jessica Chastain
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 169min
don’t go breaking my heart 2_
room 2
2.30, 4.30, 7.30, 9.30 pm
Director: Johnnie To
Starring: Louis Koo, Miriam Yeung, Gao Yuanyuan
Language: Cantonese (English and Chinese)
Duration: 115min
1997 Egyptian militants kill
tourists at Luxor
Building, Xian Xing Hai Avenue
Admission: Free
Enquiries: (853) 2875 3282
Offbeat
Seal
that won’t stay in ocean
bound for US zoo
before i go to sleep_
room 3
2.15, 4.00, 5.45, 9.30 pm
Director: Rowan Joffe
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 92min
gangster pay day_
room 3
7.30 pm
Director: Lee Po Cheung
Starring: Anthony Wong, Charlene Choi, Wong Yau
Nam
Language: Cantonese (English and Chinese)
Duration: 134min
macau tower
6 Nov - 26 Nov
A seal that wouldn’t stay rescued will be sent to a
Detroit zoo to live out the rest of her life after touring
the New Jersey shore in recent weeks.
The unnamed seal first stranded herself in Sand
Hook, New Jersey’s northernmost ocean beach before
being helped back into the water by rescuers. But she
kept coming back ashore, over and over again, a few
kilometers south each time.
Each time, animal rescue groups shooed it back into
the water or treated it for illness or injury.
When people started petting it on a beach on Sept.
5, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center removed it
from the ocean permanently because it had become
too acclimated to humans.
The stranding center notified federal wildlife officials,
who found a home for it at the Detroit Zoo.
The 45-kilogram seal left yesterday for the zoo, which
will have a contest to name it.
this day in history
interstellar_
2.30, 5.30, 8.30 pm
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway,
Jessica Chastain
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 169min
More than 60 people have been killed after an attack on a group of foreign tourists visiting a temple in
southern Egypt.
The tourists’ bus was fired on as they visited the
temple of Hatshepsut, one of the main attractions in
the town of Luxor in southern Egypt.
An Egyptian police spokesman said most of the
dead were Swiss and Japanese tourists. The spokesman said the six gunmen were killed in an ensuing
two-hour gun battle with police.
According to initial figures released by Egypt’s interior ministry, 57 tourists, a local guide and two policemen died in the attack.
Other reports say the number of people who have
been killed could rise to 75 with up to 85 people
injured. An Islamic extremist group, the outlawed alGamaa al-Islamiya, is reported to have said it carried
out the attack.
It came as 65 alleged members of the Islamic group
went on trial in Cairo accused of conspiracy to murder. Islamic militants have targeted tourists since beginning a campaign in 1992 to topple the government
of Hosni Mubarak and set up a strict Islamic state.
Two months ago, nine Germans and an Egyptian
driver were killed when gunmen opened fire on a bus
in Cairo. Two men have since been sentenced to death for the shootings.
Luxor, about 500 km south of Cairo, is visited by
about two million tourists a year. It has not previously
been attacked by militants who have strongholds in
other parts of southern Egypt.
In the past five years, attacks by militants have seen
34 foreign tourists killed and cost a total of more than
a thousand lives.
Courtesy BBC News
In context
The final number of people known to have died in the Luxor
attack was 68.
It devastated the tourism industry and the Egyptian economy.
The Egyptian authorities said they believed it was carried
out by members of the Egyptian Islamic extremist group alGamaa al-Islamiya and financed by Osama Bin Laden and his
al-Qaeda network.
Several people were arrested for the attack but none stood
trial. Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya declared a cease-fire in 1999 after
the government agreed a prisoner amnesty.
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
資訊／娛樂
Taurus
Mar. 21-Apr. 19
April 20-May 20
Selfishness works against you today
— so the self-interested thing to do
is to take care of others! That might
feel weird at first, but you should
start to see how it works to your
advantage soon.
Your health could use a tune-up,
so see if you can get your friends or
colleagues to offer advice. A slight
dietary change or a new commitment
to the gym could be all it takes to give
you more energy!
Gemini
Cancer
May 21-Jun. 21
Jun. 22-Jul. 22
Good energy is still flowing
through you today, and it’s
keeping your smile bright and
your surroundings fun. It may not
always be a party around you, but
it sure does feel good!
You need to stay active today — no
matter how you feel on the inside!
It’s one of those days when you’re
better off dealing with people as they
really are instead of how you want
them to be.
Leo
Virgo
Jul. 23-Aug. 22
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Speak from the heart or keep your
mouth shut today — there’s no inbetween! Bending emotional truths
is sure to come back to bite you hard,
and there’s just no need to cause
problems like that.
Your
business
partner
or
sweetheart has a proposition for
you — and it is likely to cost you.
The good news is that you’re in it
together, sharing risk as well as
reward. Go for it!
Libra
17
The Born Loser by Chip Sansom
YOUR STARS
Aries
INFOTAINMENT
SUDOKU
Weather
Easy
Sep.23-Oct. 22
Oct. 23 - Nov. 21
Sometimes you have to move
backward in order to make real
progress, and today is one of those
days. It may feel weird giving in
to a rival, but you know that the
longterm game is all yours.
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
You’ve got to think hard about what
you really want today — otherwise,
you’re not likely to be ready when
people come asking you. Make your
hopes and wishes known to yourself
first of all.
Your cultural needs are stronger
than ever right now, so make sure
that you’re meeting them by any
means necessary. You should find
that your energy levels start to climb
back up soon.
Aquarius
Pisces
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Feb.19-Mar. 20
It’s time for you to really show that
you can step up and take care of
business — it’s time to connect.
Someone needs to come closer, and
you have to make that all-important
first step.
It’s time to forgive and forget. It may
be an insult, a debt or something
that’s haunted you for years, but you
have the capacity to let it go if you
really want to. Resolve to get on with
your life!
Medium
Hard
0
11
clear
Harbin
-9
1
haze/clear
Tianjin
2
11
clear
Urumqi
-3
4
clear
Xi’an
2
12
clear/cloudy
Lhasa
-2
16
clear/cloudy
Chengdu
10
12
shower
Chongqing
12
14
drizzle
Kunming
8
14
drizzle
Nanjing
6
14
cloudy/clear
Shanghai
10
16
cloudy
Wuhan
7
17
cloudy
Hangzhou
9
15
cloudy
Taipei
20
22
moderate rain
Guangzhou
15
23
clear
19
23
cloudy
Moscow
-8
-4
flurry
Frankfurt
4
9
drizzle
Paris
7
9
drizzle
London
7
10
drizzle/moderate rain
New York
2
6
overcast/moderate rain
Condition
world
Crossword puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com
Down: 1- Satirist Mort; 2- “The Time Machine” people; 3- It’s over your head; 4- Try;
5- One who feels bad; 6- “Dilbert” intern; 7Japanese rice wine; 8- Speak; 9- Pert. to the
Friday’s solution
management of public wealth; 10- Closer;
11- Singer Vikki; 12- Yes ___?; 13- Killed;
21- “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” author; 23Liturgical vestment; 25- Ignited again; 26Mortise insert; 27- Alamogordo’s county; 28Gives a 9.8, say; 30- For want of ___...; 31Chili con ___; 32- Strange and mysterious;
34- Distrust; 35- Nav. officer; 38- Pants; 42Some digits; 43- Deserter; 45- Cultural; 46___ alai; 47- Shuts; 50- Highway; 51- Word
that can precede war, biotic and climax;
52- Limos, hatchbacks, and coupes; 53- ___
colada; 54- Breather; 55- “Othello” villain; 56Minn. neighbor; 57- Eight furlongs; 60- Tear;
Beijing
Hong Kong
Crosswords
Across: 1- Antitoxins; 5- Dated; 10- Sgts., e.g.; 14- Tons; 15- Son of Abraham;
16- ____ Grey, tea type; 17- Shout in derision; 18- Capital of Japan; 19- “Judith”
composer; 20- Simulating real life; 22- Of little width; 24- “The Simpsons”
bartender; 25- Acting part; 26- Apathy; 29- Hug; 33- Les ___-Unis; 34- Sandwich
shop; 36- Scot’s refusal; 37- Safety device; 38- Medicine; 39- Part of ETA; 40Mine find; 41- Corrosion; 42- Singer Lopez; 44- Rhinoplasty; 47- Small valley; 48Tense; 49- Author Deighton; 50- Stem; 53- Unpoetic characteristic; 58- ___ even
keel; 59- Great Lakes tribesmen; 61- Dry watercourse; 62- Longfellow’s bell town;
63- Wash lightly; 64- I’ve Got ___ in Kalamazoo; 65- It may be compact; 66- Tiffs;
67- Symbol of slavery;
Max
China
Easy+
Scorpio
You can’t help playing silly little
games with people today — it’s like
you’re a flirt machine! See if you
can get your people to stick by you
as you impress others and make
hearts flutter.
Min
Useful telephone numbers
Emergency calls 999
Taxi (Yellow) 28 519 519
Fire department 28 572 222
Taxi (Black) 28 939 939
PJ (Open line) 993
Water Supply – Report 1990 992
PJ (Picket) 28 557 775
Telephone – Report 1000
PSP 28 573 333
Electricity – Report 28 339 922
Customs 28 559 944
Macau Daily Times 28 716 081
S. J. Hospital 28 313 731
Kiang Wu Hospital 28 371 333
Commission Against
Corruption (CCAC) 28326 300
IACM 28 387 333
Tourism 28 333 000
Airport 59 888 88
ad
18
ADVERTISEMENT
17.11.2014 mon
th Anniversary
廣告
mon 17.11.2014
th Anniversary
體育
SPORTS
19
Rio Games need more volunteers;
deadline extended
ap photo
would not be extended. “We
just don’t want people to miss
out.”
Volunteers perform a range of
jobs like greeting fans and escorting athletes. They must pay
their own lodging and transportation to the host city. They get
transportation to venues and
meals on the days they work,
some training, uniforms and no
pay. Fontes has she expects nonBrazilians to make up about 5
percent of the final 70,000.
Organizers say candidates
have a wide range of experience, ranging from young students to some holding advanced
university degrees. Many of the
medical staff at the Olympics
will be volunteers.
“We are very happy that such
a wide range of people have re-
pele leaves brazil hospital after surgery
O
rganizers of the
2016 Olympics and
Paralympics in Rio
de Janeiro are struggling to find enough unpaid volunteers and have extended the
registration period for another
month.
In a country that is divided
starkly between rich and poor,
many cannot afford to work for
free. There is little tradition in
Brazil of volunteering or philanthropy.
Organizers said Friday that
170,000 people had registered
ahead of an initial Nov. 15 deadline — which has now been
extended to Dec. 15. The goal is
300,000 applicants, from which 70,000 will be picked.
Flavia Fontes, who manages
the volunteers’ program, said
registrations had picked up in
the last few weeks.
“It is clear that there are still
many interested people who
have yet to register, so we have
decided to extend the registration,” she said. “This really is
the last chance.”
Fontes said there was no problem finding volunteers, and
she said the Dec. 15 deadline
ap photo
This Aug. 19, 2012, file photo shows the newly arrived Olympic flag in front of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro
Stephen Wade, Rio de Janeiro
gistered for the program,” Fontes said. She said some people
have declined to register, fearing too many have already signed up.
Olympic volunteers save their
local organizing committees
tens of millions of dollars.
The International Olympic
Committee conducted a study
of the 2000 Olympics and found volunteers were worth about
USD60 million. Sydney used
only 40,000 volunteers.
The operating budget for the
Rio Games is $3 billion, which
is the cost of running the games themselves. Overall, Rio is
spending about $20 billion —
a mix of public and private money — to build sporting and urban infrastructure to prepare
the South American city. AP
A Brazilian hospital says
Pele has been discharged after
undergoing surgery to remove
kidney stones. A statement from
the Albert Einstein hospital said
that the retired football player left
on Saturday. It offered no other
information.
The 74-year-old Pele was hospitalized Wednesday evening after
canceling his appearance at an
event at the Pele Museum in the
coastal city of Santos because of
stomach pain. He is widely regarded to be among the greatest
football players of all time.
Football | Euro qualifiers
Greece suspends Ranieri after Faeroe Island loss
G
reece’s Football
Association has suspended national team
coach Claudio Ranieri
indefinitely after losing
1-0 at home to the Faeroe
Islands in a European
Championship qualifier.
An association statement issued at midni-
ght Saturday said youth
coach Costas Tsanas had
been named interim manager for a friendly on
Tuesday against Serbia
on the island of Crete.
The statement gave no
reason why Ranieri was
suspended and not fired,
though the action was
widely seen as the result
of an unresolved contract
termination dispute.
Ranieri, 63, a former
coach at Chelsea and lea-
ding Italian clubs, took
over from national team
coach Fernando Santos
after Greece reached the
second round of the World Cup in Brazil. But the
national team slumped
to three straight home
defeats in Group F of the
Euro qualifiers. AP
ad
THE
Zimbabwe’s vice president linked
BUZZ to plot
Christopher Flavelle
Don’t just trust China on
climate, verify
I wrote Wednesday that last week’s agreement between the U.S. and China to reduce
carbon emissions was a smart move - not
least because it pressures congressional
Republicans not to block President Barack Obama’s proposed rules on power plant
emissions, without which the U.S. can’t
uphold its side of the deal.
In response, I got a flood of e-mails from
readers, most of whom made the same arguments: that the U.S. is foolish to assume
China will keep its commitments; and because China only agreed to begin reducing
its emissions by 2030, it doesn’t need to
change course until then - leaving the U.S.
to make its own reductions for nothing.
Many of those same readers also insisted that climate change is a hoax, so it’s
unclear how many of them would support
any emissions agreement, regardless of the
conditions it sets. But their arguments raise valid questions: What reason is there to
think that China will honor its pledge - and
will we even know, before 2030, whether it
intends to?
I put those questions to the White House,
which responded with a few points. (The
administration insisted that because the
people I talked to were policy staff and not
spokespeople, I not identify them by name
or quote them directly.)
First, for China’s emissions to level off
by 2030, it’s going to have to start moving
right away. Those emissions are growing
at about 5 percent a year; avoiding severe economic disruption means that before
those numbers can level off, they need to
slow down, and huge levels of new renewable-energy capacity needs to come online.
So the argument that China can do nothing
until just before 2030, while still claiming
to be honoring its commitment, is incorrect.
Second, there are a number of milestones
over the next year that will test China’s pledge. Those include:
- The government’s next five-year plan
for its economy, for 2015-2020, which will
need to lay out how China intends to meet
its commitment on emissions.
- China’s report under the United Nations’
Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will show its emissions by sector.
- China’s commitments at the UN climate
summit in Paris, which should include more
details on the targets announced this week.
If any of those reports or commitments
don’t reflect the reductions China pledged
this week, and the steps needed to reach
them, it’ll be a signal that the country isn’t
serious about the deal.
Third, there’s no need to take China’s
word for the changes it’s making to its energy sector. The White House staff I spoke
with pointed out that it’s not hard to count
the new nuclear power plants China builds
-- or new wind turbines, or new large- scale solar power installations. If construction
doesn’t ramp up soon, it means China isn’t
keeping its pledge.
So the U.S. will know whether China is honoring its agreement - not in a decade, or
even in a few years, but arguably within the
next few months. And if it looks like China’s
reneging, the Obama administration or its
successor can decide whether, and how, to
change U.S. policy in response.
The administration staff I spoke with expressed strong doubts that China will undercut this deal. If that calculation is wrong,
we’ll find out, and quickly. Bloomberg
Chileans design a ‘bike
that can’t be stolen’
Luis Andres Henao, Santiago
I
t’s a bicyclist’s dream: a
bike that can’t be stolen.
The “Yerka,” a prototype designed by three young Chilean engineering students,
is the latest entry in a recent
trend of bikes that can be
locked using some of their
own parts. They include
Brooklyn-based “Seatylock,”
which uses its saddle seat
as a lock, and Seattle-based
“Denny,” which is locked
with its detachable handlebars.
But the inventors of the
Yerka have made a twist in
that approach. The bike’s
lower frame opens up into
two arms that are then connected to the seat post and
locked to a post, so thieves
would have to destroy a
Yerka to get it unlocked, leaving it valueless.
“That’s why our motto is
‘a bike that gets stolen is no
longer a bike.’ What we have
here is truly an unstealable
bike,” said Cristobal Cabello,
who came up with the design
during a college engineering
class with childhood friends
Andres Roi Eggers and Juan
Jose Monsalve.
In Chile and elsewhere in
Latin America, the spread
of designated cycling lanes,
storage racks and bike share programs are encouraging commuters to switch
from cars to bikes, which are
cheaper and environmentally friendly.
Cristobal Galban, who
A rider pedals on a bike trail
next to the “Yerka Project,”
a prototype design for an
“unstealable bike” in Santiago
holds a doctorate in naval
and environmental engineering and is director of
the sustainability research
center at Santiago’s Andres
Bello University, said a study by his team in 2013 found that “the use of bikes has
doubled among Chileans” in
five years.
“The main problem in Chile and elsewhere are the robberies, so the Yerka could
help solve this,” said Galban,
whose own bike was recently
stolen.
Tony Hadland, co-author
with Hans-Erhard Lessing
of “Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History,” called the
Chileans’ design “very clever.”
There have been relatively
few attempts to incorporate
anti-theft precautions into
bicycle design, the British
writer said.
Leaving aside the familiar
shackle locks and chains
with locks, most anti-theft
accessories have been bolt-on devices, he said. The
latter usually involve a piece that passes between the
spokes to stop the wheel rotating, but they can still be
easily picked open by a thief,
he said.
“The most effective strategy commonly used in London today is to take the bike
into the office with you,”
Hadland said. “The Brompton folding bicycle, now almost an icon of London, is
so compact and so easy and
reliable to fold that many cycling commuters take their
Bromptons into the office.”
“Other anti-theft strategies involve using a bike that
looks so unattractive that
nobody will want to steal it,”
he said.
The young Chilean engineers said they began experimenting with their idea after Roi’s bicycle was stolen.
First they built a PVC model,
then constructed a working
prototype.
Now, while waiting for
the patent to be approved
and carrying out more tests on the bike’s resistance
to thieves, the team plans
to launch a crowd funding
campaign seeking to raise
funds. They’re also looking
for a partner who can invest USD300,000 needed
to produce a first batch of
1,000 bikes that they hope
will be sold by mid-2015. AP
The
decisive moment
Xinhua/Mao Siqian
A visitor yesterday experiences a 3D fitting mirror at the 16th China Hi-Tech Fair (CHTF) in Shenzhen.
Over 3,000 exhibitors from over 50 countries and regions took part in the event
Air quality
Roadside
70-100
Moderate
source: dsmg
High
Density
70-100
Residental Moderate
Area
Ambient
70-100
Moderate
WORLD BRIEFS
MALI For many months,
Mali had been spared the
Ebola outbreak despite the
fact the country shared a
porous border with Guinea.
Now there are least three
deaths in Mali believed
linked to one cluster, and
a fourth victim may stem
from another chain of
infection.
TUNISIA Campaign
posters and banners for
upcoming presidential
elections are sprouting
on the walls of Tunisia’s
cities and towns, covering
over the flaking posters
from the parliamentary
elections two weeks ago.
The presidential campaign,
featuring 27 competitors,
kicked off last weekend.
It’s the first time since
Tunisians overthrew
dictator Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali in 2011 that they
will choose their head of
state through universal
suffrage.
USA A surgeon who
contracted Ebola in Sierra
Leone has arrived in the
United States for treatment.
Dr. Martin Salia landed at
Eppley Airfield in Omaha
on Saturday afternoon and
will be transported to the
city’s Nebraska Medical
Center.
ap photo
World Views
pired against Mugabe are false. Rugare Gumbo,
the ousted spokesman, was identified in The
Sunday Mail as a plotter against Mugabe, who
has been in power since independence in 1980.
The Sunday Mail cited a voice recording and
reported comments as evidence of the alleged
plot but it did not attribute the information to
security officials or other sources. AP
ap photo
opinion
Zimbabwe’s vice president, once seen as a
possible successor to President Robert Mugabe, has been linked to an alleged plot to assassinate the 90-year-old leader, a state-run newspaper reported yesterday.
An ally of Vice President Joice Mujuru who
was recently ousted from his post as ruling party spokesman said the allegations that he cons-
Station
GERMANY The
pioneering lander Philae
completed its primary
mission of exploring the
comet’s surface and
returned plenty of data
before depleted batteries
forced it to go silent, the
European Space Agency
said Saturday. The lander
has performed a series of
scientific tests and sent
reams of data, including
photos, back to Earth.
Philae was lifted on
Friday by about 4 cm and
rotated about 35 degrees
in an effort to pull it out
of a shadow so that solar
panels could recharge
the depleted batteries,
ESA’s blog said.
BRAZIL A jury in
northeastern Brazil delivers
sentences of 20-23 years
in prison for three people
convicted of killing two
women, eating parts of
their bodies and using
some of their flesh to
make and sell stuffed
pastries, a court official
says. Authorities said the
trio used the victims’ flesh
to make thick “empada”
pastries, which were
eaten by them and a child
who lived with them. The
pastries were also sold to
some neighbors.