Document 6554753

Transcription

Document 6554753
consumer council advises
caution
CC asked locals to inquire into
and understand the relevant
mainland regulations before
buying properties there
smg says
bad air
quality
‘normal’
for this
season
P2
P3
frenchman tirole wins
nobel prize
Tirole, 61, won the Nobel prize
for economics yesterday for
research on market power and
regulation
P20
TUE. 14
Oct 2014
T. 22º/ 28º C
H. 45/ 70%
N.º 2169
Blackberry email service
powered by CTM
MOP 5.00
HKD 7.50
Founder & Publisher Kowie Geldenhuys
Editor-in-Chief Paulo Coutinho
“ THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ ”
Senior HK politician says
to Macau: no striving, no
democracy
WORLD BRIEFS
CHINA has approved the
development of a USD3.3
billion Universal theme park
in Beijing that would be the
first major foreign-owned
theme park in the Chinese
capital. The U.S. company
Comcast NBCUniversal and
a consortium of four Chinese
state-owned companies
announced the plan, saying
the park will be developed on
about 120 hectares in eastern
Beijing.
P6,7 SPECIAL INTERVIEW
INDIA More than 1,000
rescue workers and soldiers
clear piles of uprooted trees
and electrical poles blocking
roads after powerful
Cyclone Hudhud slammed
into India’s eastern coast,
killing at least eight people
and demolishing tens of
thousands of mud huts.
In another storm lashing
Asia, Typhoon Vongfong
was downgraded to a
tropical storm as it hit the
Japanese island of Kyushu
after battering the southern
island of Okinawa. At
least 37 people were
injured, and authorities
advised 400,000 people to
evacuate. More on p12
Nobre de Carvalho Bridge
reaches its 40th anniversary
AFGHANISTAN A suicide
bomber targets a NATO
convoy in Kabul, killing one
civilian, while another strikes
an Afghan army patrol in the
eastern Nangarhar province,
killing two civilians, Afghan
officials say. NATO said one
of its vehicles was attacked in
Kabul, adding that there were
no immediate reports of any
casualties among members
of the military coalition.
9
days to go
Carmo Correia/Lusa
More on backpage
P4
MACAU
th Anniversary
澳聞
Autumn in Italy
Paulo Coutinho, Milan*
Flavors and gestures of Emiglia Romagna
Macau residents
and tourists are
pretty familiar with
Italian products and
flavors by now.
Over the past 10
years, all kinds of
“salumi” and pasta
have invaded neighborhood supermarkets and gourmet corners in Macau. Meanwhile,
Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia, Milan
Italian restaurants
have mushroomed up all over the place in the newly built hotel-casinos, bringing to town both experienced chefs and the real McCoy in
terms of gastronomic experiences.
First pioneering Italian products and restaurants in the city was
the Macanese-Italian Acconci family and a Roman couple, who
back in the 1980s dared to open a restaurant called ‘Roma’ in Rua
Nova a Guia - which now is known as the ‘pharmacy street’. The next step, truly a landmark, was the opening of ‘Toscana’ in Rua
Formosa, a narrow alley that intercepts Rua do Campo. ‘Toscana’ was
a hit in town. Soon enough it grew in popularity and moved to a larger
venue at the Grand Prix complex, for decades being the sole Italian
cuisine experience in the city - apart from fast food chain Pizza Hut,
whose first outlet opened in Hotel Lisboa in the early ’90s.
From a split over the initial ‘Toscana’ shareholders, two other restaurants opened in Nape (‘Trattoria da Isa’) and ‘La Gondola’ in Cheoc
Van, Coloane.
These thoughts came to mind as I was travelling by bus from Milan
to Bologna, crossing over the salivating Emiglia-Romagna region, led
by representatives from the Italian trade agency and the regional association of food producers.
The previous day, the Macau and HK press delegation was exposed
to a fine dining experience made entirely from regional IGP food, or
Indicazione Geografica Protetta. Well, that is an extremely bureaucratic way to put it, when you
are sitting at a two-starred Michelin restaurant in an affluent Jewish
neighborhood of Milan founded back in the sixties by Aimo and Nadia, the Tuscan-born parents of our very host, gracious Ms Stefania
Moroni; all the while listening to eloquent and passionate chef Alexandro Negrini talking and gesturing about how his food resembles
music and his work that of a maestro. You have to have the basics
right, the symphonic harmony, which translates into the traditional
palate, but as in any great piece of music you have to take risks in
order to gain the heart of the audience. He was describing his spaghetti alla carbonara that is made without bacon, replaced instead
by vegetarian ingredients grown at an altitude of 1,400 meters in
the Italian Alps.
Oh I get the passion, while savoring a deep fried sweet chili from
Senise, southern Italy, covered by 36-month aged prosciutto… The
authenticity of the ingredients is key to the integrity of the dishes: “We
have friends [farmers] all over Italy that send us the products they
grow to cook at the restaurant.”
Earlier yesterday, lunch went on in a more down to earth “osteria,”
run by a Neapolitan family at 29 Magenta Corso. Hence, their paccheri
sauce tasted different to chef Alexandro’s due to the way they work on
the southern herbs used to cook the dressing that stuck to the pasta
like skin to flesh.
Italy is territory of passionate people, who love food, fashion, art,
wine and coffee and proudly boast 300 meaningful gestures to cheer
up a conversation (as TK’s editor recalled citing a NYT post he had
just read).
As we approach Bologna an intriguing experience is awaiting us:
a home-cooked dinner with flavors and smells of fresh-made pasta,
Parma ham, parmigiano cheese and, I’m sure, more of those articulated stories.
* The writer is in Italy at the invitation of the
Italian Trade Agency
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Consumer Council
urges caution when
buying mainland property
T
he Consumer Council has
asked residents to inquire
into and understand the relevant regulations in mainland
China before choosing and
buying properties there.
In a press release, the Council
said that more Macau residents
have chosen to purchase properties on the mainland due
to the increasing interaction
between both regions. Some
property developers have also
organized events to attract Macau residents to purchase their
firsthand properties, including
those that are incomplete or
under construction.
The Consumer Council suggested that the mainland’s
regulations on the sales of residential properties are “very
strict”. There are various regulations that govern the sale of
residential properties, including the Measures for Administration of Pre-sale of Residential Buildings, Regulations on
the Development and Management of Urban Real Estate, and
Measures for Administration of
the Pre-sale of Urban Residential Buildings.
“According to the Measures
for Administration of Pre-sale
of Residential Buildings, the
developer of the residential building should possess the authorization certificate of land use,
paulo barbosa
2
14.10.2014 tue
Buildings in Zhuhai
construction planning permit,
and is also required to confirm
the construction process, and
completion date, as well as the
date of payment for the residential building. Meanwhile,
the permit for the pre-sale of
residential buildings can only
be applied when the capital invested has reached over 25 percent of the whole investment
amount, and the proposal of
the pre-sale project (including
the floor plan of the building) is
necessary for application. The
developer can only initiate presale activities when their permit
is approved and acquired. If the
building is intended for sale
outside China, a pre-approved
authorization is also required, and the developer must
state clearly the ratio of out-
of-border sale on their permit,”
the Council’s release stated.
Moreover, it reminded residents that according to the
Measures for Administration
of Pre-sale of Residential Buildings, both the seller and buyer
must sign a contract for the presale of such property.
Registration should also be
completed at the provincial
department for real estate and
land management within 30
days of signing the abovementioned contract.
The Council reiterated that
consumers should make inquiries about the relevant regulations and check the information
of the estate developer, prior to
making any decisions concerning the purchase of properties
in the mainland. JPL
Gov’t to launch new recruitment
examination for legal officers
T
he Public Administration and Civil Service
Bureau (SAFP) will re-launch a recruitment
process for legal officers seeking to work within
Macau’s public administration, the newspaper
Tribuna de Macau reported. SAFP said it would
launch another recruitment examination. The
department has been unable to fill current vacancies, as only one candidate out of 500 “survived” the latest exam.
SAFP released the results of a written exam for
the recruitment of first-rank second-level legal
officers (Técnico Superior naáreajuridica) early
this month, Out of the 508 applicants, only one
candidate passed. Only 380 took the test, and
five were disqualified.
The lone exam ‘survivor’ was already working
as a civil servant in Macau.
The new recruitment examination will be opened to new candidates, as well as to applicants
who did not pass the latest test. “We are hoping
Director and Editor-in-Chief_Paulo Coutinho [email protected]
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Contributing Editors_Eric Sautedé, Leanda Lee, Severo Portela
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Design Editor_João Jorge Magalhães [email protected] | Newsroom and Contributors_Albano
Martins, António Espadinha Soares, Catarina Pinto, Cyril Law, Emilie Tran, Grace Yu, Irene Sam, Jacky I.F. Cheong, Jenny Philips,
João Pedro Lau, Joseph Cheung, Juliet Risdon, Keith Ip, Renato Marques (photographer), Richard Whitfield, Robert Carroll (Hong
Kong correspondent), Rodrigo de Matos (cartoonist), Ruan Du Toit Bester, Sandra Norte (designer), Sum Choi, Viviana Seguí |
Associate Contributors_JML Property, MacauHR, MdME Lawyers, PokerStars | News agencies_ Associated Press,
Bloomberg, Lusa News Agency, MacauHub, MacauNews, Xinhua | Secretary_Yang Dongxiao [email protected]
that this group of candidates can repeat the
exam, so that they can access [a post] in the Public Administration,” SAFP said.
The Public Administration and Civil Service
Bureau also denied any anomalies in the recruitment process, stating it was conducted according to the usual procedure.
SAFP’s deputy director, Mr Kou Peng Kuan,
said last week that the government recruitment
process for legal officers was conducted in an
equal and just manner, even though only one
candidate passed the exam.
“We tried to recruit people based on equal,
just [criteria], so that they are able to perform
their duties in the legal domain of Macau’s Public Administration. Therefore, the demands
[of the test] are in line with the work they would be performing on a daily basis as legal officers,” he told reporters at a press conference
on Friday.
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ISSN 2305-4271
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
澳聞
Local administration
surplus increases
B
etween January and
September, Macau’s administration spent about
34 percent of its overall collected revenue, reaching a
MOP79,295,8 million surplus, according to data on
budget execution referring to
this year’s first three quarters.
Data released on the Financial Services Bureau website
shows that between January
and September, the administration recorded an overall
revenue of MOP120,109.7
million, six percent more
than in the first nine months
of 2013 and representing 85
percent of what had been forecast for 2014.
Current revenue, reaching
MOP119,575.6 million, recorded an increase of 9 percent, and its execution rate
reached 85.3 percent this
year.
Direct taxes are amongst
the Macau government’s
main sources of revenue,
amounting to MOP104,780.7
million, representing an
8.8 percent increase yearon-year.
Direct
taxes
from gaming amounted to
MOP101,132.3 million, representing 35 percent of the
operator’s gross revenue,
with an execution of 85.8
percent and representing
over 80 percent of the administration’s global revenue.
Revenue from gaming tax
does not exactly reflect the
gross gaming revenue progress, since they’re paid a
month after to which they
refer to.
Regarding
expenditure,
Macau’s administration presented an overall record of
MOP40,813.8 million, representing a 14.3 percent increase year-on-year, with an
execution of 52.6 percent of
what had been forecast for
2014.
Current expenditure reached MOP38,395.8 million,
recording an increase of 16.4
percent and an execution
of 62.2 percent of what had
been forecast.
Investments made on the
Public
Investment
Plan
(PIDDA) have decreased,
reaching a 19 percent decline from a year earlier,
with the government executing only 11.3 percent (with
MOP1.607,8 expenditure).
Macau’s
administration
surplus is 2.2 percent more
than in the first nine months
of 2013. Lusa
MACAU
3
SMG says bad air quality
‘normal’ for this time of year
Catarina Pinto
T
he air quality index forecast provided by Macau’s
Meteorological and Geophysical
Bureau (SMG) has recorded several days of bad air quality between September and October,
but meteorologist Frankie Tam
said that pollution levels for this
time of the year are a normal result of ozone pollution.
“We can see that the main air
pollutant is ozone, which is formed when there’s very strong
sunlight,” he stressed, recalling
that in the past few weeks the
weather has been mainly sunny
and with weak winds. “It is normal [during] this time of the year.
The ozone is at higher levels due
to weather conditions,” he added,
since by-products of burning gasoline and coal combine chemically with oxygen to form ozone,
particularly in sunny, high-temperature conditions in late spring,
summer and early fall.
Frankie Tam said that the
Weather Bureau advises people
with respiratory diseases to stay
indoors if possible, or at least
reduce exposure to pollution, as
well as refraining from taking
part in outdoor activities. They
should also avoid staying too
long in roadside areas when the
air quality is bad.
SMG provides a daily air quality index bulletin based on the
24-hour data from an automatic monitoring network, which
observes daily pollutants. The
current list of pollutants includes breathable suspended particulate, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen
dioxide, carbon monoxide and
ozone, among others.
They have recently partnered
with Guangdong province and
Hong Kong authorities to launch
a Regional Air Quality Monitoring Information System, which
is available on their website. Within the framework of this cooperation protocol, Guangdong
and Hong Kong have extended
their air quality monitoring network, while Taipa’s monitoring
station has joined the Pearl River Delta platform.
Hong Kong will add one more
monitoring station to its current
three, while Guangdong province will increase its number of
monitoring stations from 13 to
18, Macau’s Environmental Protection Bureau said recently in a
statement.
Hong Kong’s air pollution reached its highest level last month, and nitrogen dioxide levels
jumped as well. Poor roadside
air quality presents the biggest
daily health threat to Hong
Kong’s citizens, according to the
HKSAR’s government clean-air
plan, published in 2013.
ad
MACAU
Chinese
Estates
approves
Moon Ocean
sale
The Hong Kong-listed
company Chinese Estates
Holdings Limited has
approved the sale of its
subsidiary business Moon
Ocean to Hong Kong
tycoon Joseph Lau, who is
still a major shareholder
within the company. The
Moon Ocean sales and
purchase agreement reaches
approximately HKD4.83
billion. A Chinese Estates
announcement with the
Hong Kong stock exchange
revealed that the board
has approved the Moon
Ocean Special Dividend.
Moon Ocean was previously
granted the right to use
the land opposite Macau
International Airport, where
it was planning to build the
residential project La Scala.
The Macau government
would later revoke the land
grant, as the Court of First
Instance found Joseph Lau
guilty of bribing former
Secretary Ao Man Long – a
decision that Joseph Lau
has appealed.
ad
th Anniversary
澳聞
Nobre de Carvalho Bridge
reaches its 40th anniversary
T
he Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge - Macau’s oldest
bridge connecting the peninsula
to Taipa – has reached its 40th
anniversary, after emerging as “a
first step toward the integrated
development of the territory,”
said architect José Maneiras.
“As simple as it is, it’s still a
landmark in Macau. It is the
most beautiful and elegant and,
in a certain way, it continues to
serve the city’s public transportation. It made everything else happen. It was the first step toward
an integrated development” of
Macau, he said.
José Maneiras believes that the
old bridge also triggered Taipa’s
urban development, as before
everything was condensed in the
peninsula. “The territories were
very unbalanced, everything was
condensed in the Macau peninsula,” including Macau’s population itself, vehicles, industry, as
well as hotels.
The dual-lane bridge shows
the higher standards of engineer
Edgar Cardoso, “one of the great
Carmo Correia/Lusa
4
14.10.2014 tue
Portuguese engineers, an internationally renowned expert in
bridges.”
The Macanese architect added
that it was a huge achievement to
build such a thin structure, which might have an apparent brittleness but has proven its endurance over time, having survived
aggressive weather conditions
and strong typhoons. Besides,
“the bridge was built as cost-effectively as possible,” he added.
Mr Maneiras recalls how he used
to cross the river by boat to reach
Taipa, which at that time, he said,
was seen as a small village and a
rural area even. The bridge was
initially crossed upon payment of
a MOP5 fee, which was later revoked. Since 2007, the old bridge
is only used by public transportation, namely buses and cabs.
When the 2,569 meter-long bridge opened it “was such a joy”
for Macau people, the architect
recalled, stressing that the old
bridge has been a favorite ever
since, even though two more
have been built afterward. The
Friendship Bridge opened 20
years later and in 2004 the Sai
Van Bridge was built.
The old bridge opened on October 5, 1974. “For Macau’s Portuguese and Chinese population,
the Macau-Taipa bridge could
well be the future of Macau,” the
then-governor Nobre de Carvalho said.
Newspaper “Noticias de Macau” reported back then that the
Macau-Taipa bridge “was an important and grand happening,”
which came to turn one of the population’s oldest and greatest desires into reality, with the newspaper headline reading “And the
dream came true!”
Engineer Edgar Cardoso said
upon the bridge’s inauguration:
“It is a masterpiece we have before our eyes (…) for a number of
reasons it is one of the most passionate creations of our professional and scientific activity.” He
added that the bridge will always
represent the ancient friendship
between the Lusophone and Chinese communities.” MDT/Lusa
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
澳聞
A
udit commissioner Ho Veng On said
that it is impossible
for his department
to monitor every detail of the
expenses of all public departments. He has urged state institutions to manage their expenses well and review their
own work instead of merely
relying on the Commission of
Audit (CA).
“Frankly, how can the Commission of Audit monitor
every part [of a department]?
I think this is not very realistic. What is important is to
have every public department
do well in managing themselves and [utilize] public resources reasonably and in accordance to the law. That way,
the operation [of the departments] will be more… appropriate,” he said.
Mr Ho also refused to further comment on the “ghost
bus” issue, where bus companies allegedly dispatched
empty buses in order to boost
their total kilometer count
and get larger subsidies from
the government. He said that
the commission’s opinion has
already been included in the
audit report, and he has nothing to add to that for now.
The commissioner’s comments were made on the sidelines of the Cross-straits,
Hong Kong and Macau Accounting Profession Conference, which took place in
town yesterday. Around 500
accounting and auditing professionals from Macau, the
mainland, Hong Kong, and
MACAU
5
CA head claims difficulties in
monitoring public spending
LRT construction works
Taiwan attended the event.
Ho Veng On was one of the
senior officials to officiate the
opening ceremony, alongside
the Secretary for Administration and Justice Florinda
Chan and Chen Sixi, deputy
director of the Central Government Liaison Office in Macau.
In his speech, the president
of the Union of Associations
The Moreira Project wins Cotai
Jazz & Blues competition
M
ozambican band The Moreira
Project won last weekend’s Cotai
Jazz & Blues Festival competition. They
were followed by Old Style Sextet from
the USA, the Northern Governors from
Finland, and AfroJazz from Brazil, with
the latter winning a special recognition
award.
Led by Mozambican saxophonist Moreira Chongica, The Moreira Project is
comprised of musicians from South and
Southern Africa. According to the event’s
organizers, their style mixes urban modern and funky African jazz, while their
performances are known for being energetic, engaging and entertaining.
The festival awarded each of the four
winning bands a share of the competition’s HKD550,000 cash prize pool.
Between Thursday and Sunday, judges Xu Kui (representative of the Cultural Affairs Bureau), Antonio Cabrita
(jazz pianist), Michael Cloeren (founder
and producer of the Pennsylvania Blues
Festival) and Tomos Griffiths (creative
director of Entertainment for Venetian
Macau) watched each of the 12 finalists
perform a 30-minute set. Six were shortlisted by the judges, who assessed their
style, improvisation, technique, musicality, performance and audience response. Trio Ricardo Special (Hungary),
fected by the establishment
and development of accounting standards. The professionalism and judgment of
accounting professionals also
play crucial roles. JPL
CRIME
HK teenager alleged
of drug possession
P
AfroJazz (Brazil), The Moreira Project
(Mozambique), the Northern Governors
(Finland), Soulmate (India) and Old Style Sextet (USA) each played a 30-minute
set on Sunday in the final round of the
competition.
Ciaran Carruthers, senior vice president and director of Venetian and Plaza
Operations, Sands China, said in a statement that, “as they do in New Orleans,
we really let the good times roll at this
festival, and we hope everyone enjoyed
the outstanding musical performances
and exciting live entertainment throughout the weekend.”
The competition brought to Macau jazz
musicians from Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Brazil, India, Portugal, France, the Philippines, Mozambique, the USA, Finland
and Hungary. The event was organized
by The Venetian Macao with the support
of the Cultural Affairs Bureau. CP
of Professional Accountants
of Macau, Chui Sai Cheong,
said that professionalism is a
resource of the industry. He
also believes that the quality
of accounting is not only af-
ublic Security Police (PSP) has detained
a teenager from Hong
Kong who allegedly possessed 38 capsules of cocaine.
PSP officers were reportedly conducting random
vehicle inspections on
Avenida Dr Rodrigo Rodrigues in the early hours last Sunday when they
found the drugs on a taxi
passenger, who was under the age of 16.
The teenager admitted
that the drugs were cocaine. He claimed that
he met a friend in Hong
Kong who sold him the
capsules in Macau for
HKD500 each. The drugs
weighed 11.24 grams in
total.
A report from the Conde
de São Januário General
Hospital showed that the
boy tested positive for cocaine. He also claimed to
have bought the drugs for
his own use.
This is the second drug
case in a month that involved a Hong Kong minor. A 16-year-old Hong
Kong teenager was detained on September 24
after he was accused of
packing and selling drugs in Macau nightclubs.
The authorities found 95
bags of cocaine on him
and in a hotel room, with
a black market value of
MOP60,000.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Police (PJ) has detained a junket operator
and is tracking down at
least three of his associates after they allegedly
defrauded a Cotai casino
out of HKD10 million.
The detainee allegedly
partnered with a cage
officer to commit the crime. The cage officer returned to his workplace
in the early evening of
September 24 even thou-
gh he should have been
off-duty. He then forged
a client’s signature and
created a false deposit
record of HKD10 million.
An equal sum was later
transferred to the account
of one of his associates.
The account owner then
withdrew HKD9 million
while accompanied by an
associate and the detained man. They lost HKD7
million on the gambling
table and left the casino,
taking with them the remaining HKD2 million
and the HKD1 million in
the account.
PJ received a report
from the casino on October 8 when the management discovered the
crime after an audit. They
also found that the cage
officer who allegedly forged the deposit record
has been absent since the
crime was committed.
The police was able to
catch the detainee when
he attempted to depart
Macau through the Border Gate checkpoint late
Sunday evening, and retrieved HKD500,000. Several of his associates are
still at large. JPL
6
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
特別專訪
hong kong politics
Robert Carroll,
Hong Kong Correspondent
E
xecutive Councilor and
New Party leader, Regina
Ip, represents the pro-establishment views on democratic
reform, namely, that China has
spoken definitively on universal
suffrage of the Chief Executive
through the National People’s
Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. Chinese officials have
spoken of national security concerns and fear an antagonistic
pan-democrat CE, even though
China wields veto power over
the appointment of the CE, who
must - according to article 23 of
the Basic Law - be “accountable”, and article 28(8) “implement directives” by the central
government.
As a rule, observers and the
general public here believe that
Hong Kong’s notably pragmatic
and sensible citizens would only
elect someone who can get along
with the central authorities. The
NPC decision, although not as technically binding as an interpretation, is widely seen as largely
non-negotiable. If accepted by
the legislature, it looks set to be
the final stage of political reform
for the CE election; that reform
being a catalyst for Occupy Central. In an interview with the Ti-
I think we will
get there inch
by inch. It’s an
uphill battle but
we will keep
trying
ad
bloomberg
Ip to pan-democrats:
Stop grandstanding and be pragmatic
Regina Ip
mes, Ip called for the pan-democrats to engage, try to build trust
with Beijing by engaging in further consultation, to be pragmatic and “not say things in public
which are hard to reverse” and
for the students to also engage in
dialogue. Ip concludes that, “we
will get there inch by inch.”
Macau Daily Times - The
pan-democrats have not
been getting their message
across to Beijing for over
twenty years. Why?
Regina Ip (RI) - They’ve aimed too high; civic nomination
is unrealistic. They overshot the
mark. For example, they have
cold-shouldered Beijing’s invitation to Shanghai, and this
sort of protest is not helping
Beijing’s confidence. The goals
are therefore unrealistic. Civic
nomination is a red herring. If
we want more room for the democrats from Beijing’s point of
view, the starting point must be
at least some respect for the Basic Law.
MDT - Is there a cross-cultural barrier too?
RI - This is not just “one
country, two systems” but one
country, two cultures. In some
quarters it’s “one country, two
ideologies.” That’s what makes
governing Hong Kong so complex and challenging. It’s reality.
People who grew up in the colonial days, we have a stronger
sense of connection to China
emotionally and culturally. These young people don’t. It’s a problem that Beijing understands
and that, I think, takes a long
time to fix.
MDT - Crucial issues as
Beijing sees it include a lack
of respect for the authority
of the CCP and not insisting
on June 4 - which is very
sensitive. And after 1989
there was a loss of trust.
RI - Not only harking back to
June 4, but also down with one
party rule that’s really unrealistic. For Hong Kong to change
the destiny of China we should
try our best to improve our own
government step by step.
MDT - So what are you
calling for the democrats to
do now?
RI - To be pragmatic, to set
realistic goals, and not forgo the
chance of engagement.
MDT - How can they build
Beijing’s trust, which is so
crucial?
RI - I think some of my colleagues, having been politicians for
decades, are too used to grandstanding in public. They should
not say things in public which
are hard to reverse, and need to
get off their high horse. I think all
of us should approach this ultra
-important issue with humility,
mutual respect and tolerance.
That’s the way forward.
MDT - Tsang Yok-sing has
urged political coalition.
RI - Tsang Yok-sing has been
admirable in reaching across the
aisles; that has always been his
approach. He hails from (proBeijing party) DAB. As president
of the legislative assembly he has
always been fair-minded as possible and I respect that. As a Legco
Member I will continue to try to
reach across the aisles, and not
aggravate the conflict and tension. And vis-a-vis the protestors,
the best way to overcome the current impasse is through thorough public discussions. The whole
community must know the goals,
what’s not achievable, what’s
the best way forward - and build
a consensus. We are calling for
students (and Occupy leaders) to
talk to us (New People’s Party) because we are not the government
but independent and, as (NPP
consultant) Dr Allan Zeman said,
close to government.
MDT - But you’re in Exco.
RI - Yes. I’m also a popularly
elected legislator.
MDT - You have known CY
Leung for a long time.
RI - Well...yes. So I think we
will get there inch by inch. It’s
an uphill battle but we will keep
trying. I think it’s a question of
building goodwill with the students and that’s difficult.
in her corner:
regina ip
Pro-Beijing, Chairperson of thte New People’s
Party, popularly elected legislator. Regina Ip is a former senior
civil servant-turned-politician.
Failed to run for Chief Executive in 2012. May try to run
again. Champions the party line
and relationship with China.
Highly pessimistic about rapprochement with students.
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
特別專訪
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
7
Interview with Audrey Eu
Look at Macau: no striving, no democracy
Robert Carroll,
Hong Kong Correspondent
T
he Civic Party Chairman - and
for the moment, all pan-democrats - have rejected both the National People’s Congress Standing
Committee’s narrow framework
for political reform and participation in the second round of talks
on the subject. In their view, the
NPC decision does not offer a model consistent with democracy as
envisaged in the Basic Law, both
in intention and wording. Comparing Hong Kong to Macau, the
leading senior barrister rests her
case on the much stronger fight for
democracy here (which clearly has
produced a vigorous if obstructive
opposition, a more representative
legislature, and thorough public
political debate). This demonstrates that acquiescence doesn’t
always get results.
In an interview with MDT, Audrey Eu also reveals a great disconnect with Beijing that has dogged relationships between the
pan-democrats, consistently the
most popular party in the legislative council elections, and the central authorities. This dissonance is
a substantial challenge that must
be addressed if Hong Kong’s government, politicians, students
and general public are to reach a
mutually acceptable - and critical accord on the political means to go
forward. They must also overcome
governmental deadlock, which has
already reached alarming levels partly due to hostility in the legislative council - and which looks set
to worsen.
Macau Daily Times – Civic
Party’s Ronny Tong faulted
the Chinese leaders and officials expect a great deal of
respect, don’t they?
AE - I think if you listen to what
the central authorities always say,
people are not on the same level
and therefore you don’t negotiate.
You don’t make demands as such,
and that’s their attitude. You’re never on an equal level.
Contrast [the
political scene
in] Macau with
Hong Kong...
no matter how
much you
kowtow, you
won’t get more
Audrey Eu
the pan-democrats for not
accepting “the olive branch”
and not meeting Chinese
leaders in Shanghai. He said
there could have been more
room for compromise. Do
you think there could have
been more compromise? I
am not asking you to criticize your colleagues, I understand you have to (as party
chairman) have solidarity.
Audrey Eu (AE) - Oh I am
sure, having been a journalist all
these years, you know the Communist Party just as much I do.
MDT - I am not sure I do. I
don’t speak or read Chinese
like you do.
AE - Do you really think that if
you just agree to everything they
[Chinese Communist Party] say,
you will get more?
MDT - No I don’t. It’s the
opposite.
AE - Exactly. So you know.
That’s your answer. If you are not
asking for democracy, you are
not going to get it, and Macau is
a good example. You can contrast
[the political scene in] Macau
with Hong Kong… no matter how
much you kowtow, you won’t get
more.
MDT - On the other hand,
a permanent resident who
leaves Hong Kong after
three years loses that status.
Not in Macau. There was no
permanent residency for
the British until 1998, almost a year after the handover, unlike Macau (a result
of non-confrontational diplomacy by the Portuguese
as opposed to a confrontational approach by the UK).
There are some advantages.
AE - You’re not talking about
democracy there, it’s something
different. Your question to me,
in relation to Ronny Tong’s
question, was about democracy.
I really answered with another
question which was: ‘Do you
think that by not asking for democracy, you are going to get it?’
MDT - A former British diplomat said of the negotiations to the 1997 transfer of
sovereignty that while they
thoroughly disliked tough
stances, Chinese officials respected strength, not weakness. But when dealing with
Beijing isn’t there a balance
to be made?
AE - I don’t think it’s easy to find
the balance.
MDT - Obviously, in meetings, one has to show respect
on a basic human level, and
MDT - Speaking of unequal levels, one senior official in China, commenting
on the furore in Hong Kong
over mainland tourists’ rude
behavior and subsequent
reaction in the mainland,
said that China was not at
the same level of development. China accepts that
even as the world’s second
superpower, it lags behind
the developed world, including Hong Kong, in a number of areas, and states that
it has its own path to take.
Therefore, Western-style democracy is inappropriate].
Isn’t that a paradox? Isn’t
that a contradiction?
AE- Well they [Chinese officials]
can always quote whichever saying
they want at an appropriate time
or on an appropriate issue. For
example, when it comes to democracy, they will always say you are
scum and that the British government are stooges.
in her corner: audrey eu
Pan-democrat Chairman, Civic Party, former popularly elected
legislator , practicing senior barrister-turned-politician. Audrey Eu has
been touted as potential Chief Executive candidate. Champions prodemocracy movement. Highly pessimistic about the possibility of real
negotiations with Chinese officials. Sylvia Hui and Kelvin Chan,
Hong Kong
ap photo
Angry crowd charges Hong Kong protest barricades
A
n angry crowd opposed to pro-democracy
protests that have paralyzed parts of Hong Kong
for more than two weeks
charged barricades used
by the demonstrators
yesterday, clashing with
police as they attempted
to storm the protest zone.
Scuffles broke out as
about two dozen men
wearing surgical masks
to hide their faces tried
to forcefully remove the
metal barricades that
protesters have set up to
block off main roads near
the heart of Hong Kong’s
financial district. Some
were seen using box cut-
People wearing masks remove the metal barricades that protesters
have set up to block off main roads near the heart of the city’s
financial district
ters to snap cables connecting the barricades.
Several hundred of the
protesters’ rivals rushed
up to the barricades, punching their fists in the air
and chanting “Open the
road!” They also shouted
“Occupy Central is illegal,” referring to one of
the names of the pro-democracy movement that
has swept Hong Kong.
Taxi drivers joined in,
some driving their cabs
up to the barricades and
leaning on their horns to
express their anger about
the traffic disruptions.
A line of police officers
held the crowd back, keeping them separated from
the protesters on the
other side of the barriers.
Protester Alex Kwok
said he received a scratch on his arm after he
was attacked by several
men whom he accused of
being members of triads,
or organized crime gangs.
The tension later eased
as the most of the crowd
dispersed. Police took
away some masked men
inside the protest zone
who tried to pick fights
with the protesters, and
later said they arrested
three men, aged 18 to 47,
at the clashes on suspicion of assault and carrying weapons.
It was not immediately
clear who convened the
anti-protest crowd.
“Before the police came,
young
men
wearing
masks and dark clothing
came to pick fights with
people and we heard that
some of them had weapons,” said Kevin Ng, a
college student who was
at the scene and saw the
scuffles. “I don’t know
who the young men wearing masks were. We suspect they’re triad members, but it’s hard to say.
What other kind of group
would organize themselves to come attack us?”
Allegations have surfaced in the past few weeks
that some people were
paid to disrupt the protests. A local radio station
broadcast an audio clip
yesterday in which a man,
said to be a taxi driver,
discussed a payment of
2,000 Hong Kong dollars
(USD258) to take part in
the ruckus.
The clip cannot be independently verified and it
was not clear where the
alleged payment was coming from. AP
8
ADVERTISEMENT
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
廣告
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
分析
9
ap photo
ap photo
Growth slows in
China passenger
vehicle sales
BUSINESS
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, right, speaks during a joint press conference with Indonesian President-elect Joko
Widodo, left, after their meeting in Jakarta
Ford unveils its latest model of Escort at the China Auto show in Beijing
G
rowth in China’s car sales slowed again in September while the country’s own auto
brands increased their market
share slightly.
An industry group said yesterday that sales of passenger
vehicles in the world’s biggest
auto market rose 6.4 percent in
September from a year earlier,
slowing from 8 percent growth
in August.
Global automakers are looking
to China to drive global sales but
growth has slowed steadily from
May’s rate of 13.9 percent as the
world’s second largest economy
cools.
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said total
sales, including trucks and buses,
rose 2.5 percent over September
2013 to 1.98 million vehicles.
Passenger car sales totaled 1.69
million vehicles in September,
up from 1.5 million in August.
Sales growth for foreign brands
has largely outstripped that of
their Chinese counterparts, but
local models sold at a faster rate
in September, allowing a small
increase in market share.
The market share of Chinese
brands rose to 38.5 percent in
September from 37.1 percent in
August and was up 0.2 percent
from a year earlier.
German brands held a 19.8 percent share of the market in Sep-
tember, Japanese brands held
14.9 percent, American brands
13.6 percent, Korean brands 9
percent and French brands 3.9
percent.
In comparison, General Motors Co. said sales of GM brand
vehicles by the company and its
local partners rose 15.2 percent
to 319,936 vehicles. The company said that was a record for
September and the second-best
month for sales this year.
That brought its sales for the
year to almost 2.6 million vehicles, an increase of 11.6 percent
over the same period last year.
Also in September, GM and its
joint venture partners surpassed
20 million in all-time sales inChina, the company said.
Ford Motor Co. said sales fell
slightly in September to 95,875
vehicles, while overall sales for
the year through September
were up 26 percent to 813,412
vehicles.
Nissan Motor Co., the biggest
Japanese brand in China, said
September sales fell about 21
percent over the same month last
year to 166,000 vehicles, although year-to-date sales maintained
steady growth.
German luxury brand BMW AG
said its sales in mainland China over the first nine months
of the year rose 17.9 percent to
335,863 vehicles. AP
Zuckerberg in
Indonesia for
Internet-access push
O
n his first visit to Facebook-crazy Indonesia, Mark Zuckerberg met the president-elect, spread the word
about his company’s global
Internet-access initiative and
posted a photo of himself at an
ancient Buddhist temple.
The Facebook CEO arrived
Sunday, when he climbed
Borobudur temple in Central
Java and posted a widely shared photo of himself atop its
stupas on his Facebook page.
Yesterday he met Indonesian
President-elect Joko Widodo,
who used social media extensively in his campaign.
“It was a great conversation,”
Zuckerberg said. “One of the
big priorities that he communicated was growing jobs and
growing the economy. I think
that growing the Internet and
connectivity is one of the best
ways we can do that.”
The 30-year-old billionaire
is traveling to help advance
the Facebook-led project Internet.org.
“We are trying to get free basic services and affordable access to the two-thirds of (the
world’s) people who aren’t on
the Internet,” he said.
He added that while “obviously we want a lot of people to
connect and use Facebook ...
Internet.org and connecting
more people is not primarily
to make money, especially in
the near term.”
Indonesia is the world’s
fourth-largest
Facebook
user. Facebook spokesman
Andy Stone said there are 69
million active Facebook users
every month, and 61 million
of them are on mobile devices.
But the majority of Indonesia’s 252 million people do not
have Internet access.
When asked at a press conference about his experience
using the Internet in Indonesia, Zuckerberg said, “It
works,” generating laughs in
a country where many complain about Internet speeds.
“We hiked up this temple
and it was beautiful and someone on our team ... took
a photo on his phone and
uploaded it right after, and it
went quickly, and now that
photo is in a lot of places,” he
said. “There are places where you travel around and you
can’t do basic things like that.
“That’s obviously not the
most important economic or
cultural opportunity created
by connectivity, but it was a
good litmus test.” AP
corporate bits
venetian macau open to reach
millions of homes across asia
Millions of people across Asia
will be able to tune in to the 2014
Venetian Macau Open, scheduled
for 23-26 October at the Macau
Golf and Country Club. One of the
annual sports events in the city,
the 2014 entry list includes Spaniard Miguel Angel Jiménez and
defending Australian champion
Scott Hend.
With a total prize purse of
USD900,000, an increase of
12.5% compared to last year, fans
from around the world will be able
to catch the action on the Asian
Tour’s global media platforms,
which reach approximately 600
million homes. The main national
golf TV channels across Asia will
continue to broadcast the four
days of the tournament.
For those in China, there is the
option of live or delayed TV coverage on China Golf Channel
or online via LETV, a portal that
boasts 25 million visitors daily and
streams over 120 million videos
per day. Furthermore, tournament
highlights will also be broadcast
on The Travel Channel, which is
available in over 150 million homes.
field trip to galaxy macau inspires
students to go green
To raise environmental awareness among youth and to encourage them to go green in their
daily lives, Galaxy Entertainment
Group recently offered third-year
students of Institute for Tourism
Studies a field trip to Galaxy Macau where they learnt about a
wide range of energy-saving initiatives, such as turning food waste
into fertilizer, reducing pollution
and oil consumption as well as
participating in a glass bottle recycling campaign.
The field trip included an introduction to GEG’s environmental
missions and promises as well as
a variety of green initiatives adopted in its daily operation, such as
trash recycling, waste classification, energy conservation and
emission reduction.
sands china invites local families
to shoppes at cotai central
Sands China Ltd. invited families from the Against Child
Abuse (Macau) Association’s
(ACAM) Child Protection Centre
to enjoy some fun last Saturday
with a lunch buffet, interactive
exhibition and treasure hunt at
Shoppes at Cotai Central.
Accompanied by 30 Sands
China Care Ambassadors, 20
families from ACAM had an adventurous time together, starting
with a lunch buffet at Grand Orbit. The SCCA volunteers and
the families then experienced
the interactive Chinese Fables
exhibition, taking pictures together and enjoying the folklore.
“My son and I had a great time
today with the Sands China Care
Ambassadors,” said one of the
participating parents. “Exploring
the Chinese Fables exhibit was
a lot of fun, and my son liked reading about the ancient Chinese
stories. He also loved running
around during the treasure hunt.
It was an amazing afternoon.”
10
CHINA
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
中國
ECONOMY
Belinda Cao
C
entral bankers and International Monetary Fund
officials agree with Beijing: a
slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy is considered
healthy and there’s no need for
further monetary easing.
People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan reiterated
the need for “prudent” monetary
policy amid steady economic
growth and “mild” inflation in
an Oct. 11 report to the IMF in
Washington. His statement comes before government reports
of September inflation and credit
this week; August data showed
the weakest industrial-output expansion since the global financial
crisis and a 40 percent drop in
broadest measure of new credit
from a year earlier.
The slowing momentum in the
Chinese economy is being seen
as positive rather than alarming.
Moderating growth will make
it more sustainable, which will
benefit both China and Asia,
ad
bloomberg
Beijing finds agreement
with IMF about slowdown
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, center, shakes hands with Ali Babacan, Turkey’s deputy prime minister
Malaysia’s Central Bank Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said in an
interview with Bloomberg News
on the weekend. The balance between expansion and structural
reforms that China is seeking is
right so far, Markus Rodlauer,
deputy director of IMF’s Asia Pacific Department, said at an Oct.
10 briefing.
“China’s slowdown is a healthy
correction, in many ways an engineered slowdown,” Jorge Mariscal, Chief Investment Officer for
Emerging Markets at UBS AG,
said in an interview in Washington on the weekend. “So far, this
rate of decline of the economy
isn’t so concerning to justify a very
aggressive stimulus program,
whether fiscal or monetary.”
Chinese policy makers are focusing on employment even as
industrial production to property investment are slowing. Premier Li Keqiang said last week
that China has already achieved
its employment target for 2014.
“Stamina and perseverance” are
as important as speed in the economic policy mix, underlining
why China has avoided stimulus
measures including using monetary policy to help meet its growth
target, he said.
Li said China still expects economic growth of about 7.5 percent
this year in a weekend speech in
Germany. The median forecast in
a Bloomberg survey of economists from Sept. 18 to Sept. 23 is 7.3
percent this year. That would be
the slowest pace since 1990.
The government won’t need
to do “big stimulus” as the job
market looks “pretty stable,” according to PBOC’s chief economist Ma Jun.
“We need to avoid further increase in leveraging in some
sectors, for example, real estate,
some state-owned enterprises
and local government financing
vehicles,” Ma said on a panel at
the Institute of International Finance annual meeting in Washington Oct. 11.
While the PBOC injected 500
billion yuan (USD81 billion) of
liquidity into the nation’s five
largest commercial lenders last
month, and eased mortgage policies to aid the housing market,
it has refrained from a broader interest-rate cut. The benchmark one-year lending rate
has been 6 percent since July
2012. Bloomberg
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
中國
xinhua
Declining teacher ethics
ring alarm bells
A
spate of scandals regarding
teachers in China has not only
underscored a fall in ethics in the
profession, but also shamed the
country’s education authorities for
lax inspection.
On Sunday, southwest China’s Sichuan Fine Arts Institute barred
Wang Xiaojian, a retired associate
professor, from attending any of the
institute’s teaching, research and academic activities, after pictures of him
forcibly kissing and sexually harassing
two female students in a restaurant
circulated on the Internet.
Coincidentally, Wang’s fall from grace came just a day after the Ministry of
Education issued a guideline on ethics
for university professors, a provision
aimed at enhancing ethical conduct
among education staff.
The guideline, which bans college
staff from sexually harassing or engaging in improper relationships with
students, aims at curtailing China’s
scandal-ridden education sector amid
growing public disquiet.
It also puts forward seven prohibitions for college teachers, promising
sanctions for violators. The provisions include conduct undermining
national or student interests, research
fraud and plagiarism.
A haze of corruption has shrouded
China in recent years, and the toxic
trend has spread to ivory towers, engulfing teachers, who are traditionally
regarded role models.
But, according to Xinhua’s analysis,
teacher’s ethics are not in decline. The
education sector is.
Beijing’s official news agency
claims that lowered ethical standards have reflected loopholes with
China’s education system, characterized by a dearth of sufficient inspection and stiff penalties. This has
left local officials large room to mull
punishment on their own, allowing
them to turn a blind eye to corruption and misconduct.
Still according to Xinhua, to plug the
loopholes, specific inspection teams
should be established to reverse the
trend. The agency says that China
does not lack regulations, but the patchy enforcement of such regulations
at the local level that has fueled a surge in these incidents. Xinhua
11
Xinjiang
Court sentences 12 to
death for terrorism
A
court in China’s western Xinjiang region
has sentenced to death 12
people blamed for terrorist
attacks that killed 37 people
in July, state media reported yesterday.
Xinhua News Agency said
the court in Kashgar prefecture sentenced another
15 people to death with a
two-year reprieve, and nine
people received life sentences. Xinhua said another 20
defendants received terms
of four to 20 years.
Xinhua reported in August that attackers armed
with knives and axes had
stormed a police station
and government offices in
Elixku township before moving onto nearby Huangdi
township. Xinhua said the
police had killed 59 of the
attackers.
The U.S.-based Uyghur
American
Association,
however, said police opened
fire on people protesting
ap photo
analysis
CHINA
a security crackdown on
Muslims during Ramadan,
killing more than 20.
Verifying what happened
is impossible due to China’s tight control over the
region.
Tensions have run high
between the Muslim Uighur
ethnic group and Han Chinese in Xinjiang, with ethnic
violence claiming hundreds
of lives over the past year.
Chinese authorities say
they are battling separatist
terrorists in the region, but
Uighur groups say Chinese
authorities have suppressed
their religion and culture
and violently cracked down
on Uighurs who have voiced
discontent. AP
ad
ASIA-PACIFIC
Mohammed Shafeeq, Hyderabad
M
ore than 1,000
rescue
workers
and soldiers cleared away piles of
uprooted trees and electrical
poles blocking roads yesterday
after powerful Cyclone Hudhud
slammed into India’s eastern
coast, leaving at least eight
dead.
In another storm lashing
Asia, Typhoon Vongfong was
downgraded to a tropical storm
as it hit the Japanese island
of Kyushu after battering the
southern island of Okinawa.
At least 37 people were injured, and authorities advised
400,000 people to evacuate.
Train service and flights were
disrupted in Kyushu and the
neighboring island of Shikoku.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency said the storm could reach
the Tokyo area by early morning today.
In India, rescuers readied dozens of boats, helicopters and
other aircraft to carry out relief
operations once they obtained
a clearer idea of the extent of
damage in Andhra Pradesh
and Orissa states, said Anil
Shekhawat, an Indian official.
Weather forecasters downgraded Hudhud to a tropical
depression as it moved further
inland on a course north-northwest of the city of Visakhapatnam, where it made landfall
Sunday. However, they warned
that heavy to very heavy rainfall
th Anniversary
亞太版
TWIN STORMS
Workers clear debris after
Indian cyclone kills 8
ap photo
12
14.10.2014 tue
Two Indian villagers walk through the Bay of Bengal coast at Gopalpur, Orissa
would lash parts of six Indian
states.
The death toll stood at eight
yesterday, five in Andhra Pradesh state and three in Orissa
state, mostly because of injuries
from collapsed walls and falling
trees, officials said.
At least 400,000 people were
evacuated from coastal areas of
the states ahead of the storm,
and hundreds of shelters were
set up to house them, helping
to reduce casualties.
Visakhapatnam, one of the
largest cities in southern India and a major naval base, bore
the brunt of Hudhud’s fury. Television footage from Visakhapatnam showed downed electrical poles, uprooted trees and
massive debris strewn in the
streets. Electricity was disconnected in parts of Andhra Pradesh to avoid electrocutions,
said Arvind Kumar, a relief and
rescue official.
Andhra Pradesh’s chief minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu,
said Sunday that while the early
evacuations had saved lives, the
cyclone caused “huge damage”
to buildings and crops in coastal districts.
Authorities were trying to restore train service which remained suspended for a second day
in the region. Cellphone service was also disrupted because
of damage to communication
towers in and around Visakhapatnam.
The National Disaster Response Force said rescuers were
trying to reach 320 villages in
four districts of Andhra Pradesh state badly hit by the cyclone. AP
SRI LANKA
Jayampathi Palipane, Jaffna
C
heered by tens of
thousands of people,
a train decorated with banana plants and colorful
flower garlands arrived in
Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil heartland yesterday,
24 years after the “Queen
of Jaffna” was suspended
due to civil war.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa bought a ticket
and boarded the train for
the last 43 kilometers of
the journey and opened
several railroad stations
along the way.
“Yarl Devi,” as it is known
in Tamil, was once a popular mode of transport
between the ethnic Tamil
-majority north and the
Sinhala-majority south but
was scaled back in 1990
because of the heightening
of the civil war between the
government and the Tamil
Tiger rebels.
The civil war that raged
since 1983 ended in 2009
when Sri Lankan troops
crushed the rebels.
ap photo
Train service back in former war zone
Sri Lankan ethnic Tamils get themselves photographed in front of the train “Queen of Jaffna,” after it
arrived at Jaffna
“This is not just a train
journey but a bridge between north and south,”
Rajapaksa told The Associated Press onboard the
train.
“Today what is left to us
is to win over hearts and
minds, healing of minds.
I think this train journey
today will help connect
hearts and minds once
again.”
Many government ministers and military
commanders joined Rajapaksa on the journey
as thousands of people
gathered at every station
to greet the train and
rushed to take photographs with it.
An old woman using a
walking aid clasped her
hands in a sign of worship
as the train reached Cha-
vakachcheri, a town south
of Jaffna. Since the service stopped, Jaffna has
had no trains, meaning
few of the city’s children
have seen one in real life.
Before the civil war
erupted in 1983, the train
was not only the most
convenient way to travel
between north and south,
but also was a symbol of
unity between the Sinha-
lese majority and Tamil
minority. At the time, Tamils dominated bureaucratic and state service
posts, and many civil servants based in Colombo
used it to visit friends and
family in the north.
It was a main artery in
Sri Lanka’s commerce,
transporting fish from
the north to the capital, and connecting the
islanders regardless of
ethnic identity.
As militants from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam increased their attacks in the 1980s, the government stationed many
soldiers, mostly Sinhalese, in Jaffna, and they
used the train to return
home for visits.
In January 1985, rebels
blew up the train, killing
22 soldiers and 11 civilians and wounding 44
other people, in the single-biggest attack on the
military at the time. The
train was shut down in
1990 as rebels stepped
up attacks in the north to
push for their own independent state.
During the war, both
sides attached immense
strategic and symbolic
importance to capturing
and holding key access
roads to Jaffna, including the railroad and the
parallel A9 highway, dubbed “the highway of death” for the many lives lost
in battles over its control.
That highway has since
been restored.
Resumption
of
the
“Queen of Jaffna” train
service, thanks to an
USD800 million loan
from India, completes
the restoration of government authority in the
north. The government is
dominated by the majority Sinhalese.
But many Tamils feel
such infrastructure projects alone won’t bring
true ethnic reconciliation.
Deep wounds have been
left by the war, which took
at least 100,000 lives on
both sides over more than
25 years, according to
conservative estimates by
the United Nations.
The U.N. is investigating
into allegations of war crimes against the government and Tamil rebels. AP
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
廣告
ADVERTISEMENT
13
14
ASIA-PACIFIC
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
亞太版
MYANMAR
Gabrielle Paluch, Naypyitaw
T
he only question opposition lawmaker U Win
Htein asked Parliament last
session was for permission
to remove his silk turban,
saying it was causing him
headaches and hair loss. The
72-year-old, known for his
irreverent sense of humor,
admits he was just teasing.
But the speaker shot him
down just the same.
The
civilians
elected
to Myanmar’s legislature are
required to wear hats when
taking the floor. The appointed military members are
not.
Hats hold meaning here,
embodying political allegiances,
accomplishments
and failures of a nation transitioning from a half-century
of dictatorship to democracy.
The dress code in parliament’s two chambers, based
on old laws of the bygone
king’s courts in Mandalay,
reflects the major political
camps and the legislature’s
ethnic makeup.
Military members distinguish themselves from their
civilian counterparts with a
conspicuous absence of both
headwear and elections. Men
in uniform are appointed to
a quarter of the 664 seats by
armed forces chief Min Aung
Hlaing.
The Burman majority don
a silk-wrapped, cane-frame turban known as a gaun
baung, which has come to
symbolize the nascent civilian government. Ethnic
minorities wear everything
from feathers and claws to
tea towels on their heads.
The most famous legislator,
Aung San Suu Kyi, wears
simple white flowers.
Like the hats, political allegiances in Parliament are as
complicated as they are colorful.
Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition and Nobel Peace laureate, spent decades under
house arrest. She now sits
alongside her former captors, in turns scolding or
praising the military. It concerns some members of her
National League for Democracy party, who quietly observe her tone shifting with
her presidential prospects, which were never bright
thanks to a law that was designed to keep her out of office.
Meanwhile, the military is
even better represented than
the 166 hatless heads would
suggest.
Many of those wearing the
ap photo
In Parliament, colorful hats cap divisions From left to right, top, Myat Ko, an ethnic Naga wears a traditional Naga hat, Ye Tun, an ethnic Burman wears a Shan hat, In
Phong San, an ethnic Kachin wears cane hat with wild bore horns. Middle left to right, Army Major Soe Moe, has five different
hats but doesn’t wear any in the Parliament, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi wears flowers, Shwe Maung, an ethnic
Rohingya keeps a soft, brown, tassled fez-like cap. Bottom, left to right, Je Yaw Wu, anethnic Lisu wears a cushioned white hat,
Aye Maung, an ethnic Rakhine, wears a traditional hat known as Rakhine Gaun baung, Saw Thein Aung, an ethnic Karen wears
a scarf in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.
Like the
hats, political
allegiances in
Parliament are
as complicated
as they are
colorful
gaun baung of the ruling
Union Solidarity and Development Party are retired
men of uniform. But while the heavy influence of
the armed forces has drawn
cynicism, the party has not
always voted in lockstep with
the military.
The military, viewed abroad
as being responsible for driving the country into decades of poverty, war, and dys-
function, sees itself as the
glue that binds the country
and, perhaps counterintuitively, the arbiters of peace in
the world’s longest running
civil war involving a number
of armed ethnic groups. The
posting to Naypyitaw’s parliament is seen as unglamorous, as it’s not well paid and
offers no chances for promotion.
The most brightly colored
headgear belongs to ethnic
politicians from conflict-stricken states. Previously marginalized, they now
find themselves with a little
bargaining power and are
seeking greater autonomy.
President Thein Sein, a
retired general, has promised a ceasefire ahead of the
2015 election. Ethnic armed
groups have proven tough
negotiators despite clashes
between them and gover-
nment forces, which have
continued throughout the
stalling peace talks.
Win Htein typifies Parliament’s web of paradoxes. A
close friend of Suu Kyi and a
member of her party, he, too,
was a soldier, under socialist
dictator Gen. Ne Win.
Win Htein was erroneously
accused of being an accomplice in an assassination plot
against Ne Win and forced to
retire in 1976. In 1988, when
a student uprising shook the
government before a military crackdown that left
thousands dead, Win Htein
joined Suu Kyi’s party and
was soon imprisoned. His
transition is not dissimilar
to Thein Sein’s, from military uniform to gaun baung.
The jovial politician says
he tries to avoid meetings with the top leadership,
explaining that their re-
lationship is complicated
enough.
“I was senior to them when
I was in the army,” he says
with a mischievous smile, referring to the president and
other major players in government. “They call me ako gyi
(big brother) when we meet.”
If history had gone only slightly differently, Win Htein
might himself be a powerful
general. Or at least in Parliament, he would not have to
wear his dreaded hat.
U Shwe Maung is one of
three MPs who identify as
Rohingya. The number is
surprisingly high, given that
the government considers
nearly all 1.3 million members of the Muslim minority
to be illegal migrants from
neighboring
Bangladesh.
The contradiction has taught
Shwe Maung to blend in and
choose his battles.
“People refer to my people as ‘Bengali,’” he says. “I
know I have to accept this
sometimes.”
On the floor of Parliament
in Naypyitaw, he wears the
gaun baung that is worn by
ethnic Burmans and other
members of his ruling USDP
party.
But in a cupboard at home in
Yangon, the commercial capital, he keeps a soft, brown,
tassled fez-like cap, modeled
after one worn by a Rohingya
who sat in the national legislature of Myanmar’s first
prime minister. Shwe Maung
says he won’t be needing it in
Parliament.
Myanmar’s recent steps
toward democracy and freedom have been disastrous
for the Rohingya, who have
been attacked by Buddhist
extremists
in
northwestern Rakhine state, where
most Rohingya live. Up to
280 Rohingya were killed in
communal violence in 2012,
more than 140,000 Muslims remain in displacement
camps and tens of thousands
have fled on boats to seek
asylum.
Shwe Maung is possibly the
most hated man in Parliament. His seat is flanked two
ethnic Rakhines deep on either side.
Rohingya were allowed to
vote in 2010, but they will
not be allowed to vote or join
political parties in 2015, except for those few who have
managed to become citizens.
For his family’s safety’s
sake, Shwe Maung feels
pressure to remain in the
public eye and get re-elected. “Maybe,” he says, “I will
send them to another country beforehand.” AP
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
分析
Health worker’s infection raises
concern for caregivers
ap photo
T
A health worker, right, sprays a man with disinfectant chemicals as he is suspected of dying due to the Ebola virus while
onlookers stand behind in Monrovia, Liberia
confirmed by the Atlanta-based
CDC Sunday.
The CDC will investigate how
the lapse occurred while increasing training and safety procedures, Frieden said.
The infected worker, who has
asked to remain anonymous,
was involved in Duncan’s second visit to the hospital, said
Dan Varga, chief clinical officer
at Texas Health Presbyterian.
The worker was wearing full
protective gear, Varga said.
Protective gear doesn’t gua-
rantee that an infection won’t
occur, said Ashish Jha, professor of health policy at Harvard’s
Public School of Health in Boston, in a telephone interview.
“The hard part is during the
disrobing, when you take the
suit off,” he said. “You’re removing material, getting skin
exposed.”
New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport began
added screening for arriving
passengers over the weekend to
help stem the spread of Ebola.
Workers are using special procedures for people listed on airlines’ manifests as having traveled from Liberia, Sierra Leone
or Guinea, the countries at the
center of the outbreak in West
Africa.
In Madrid, Teresa Romero,
a nursing assistant, is hospitalized after becoming infected
last month when helping care
for two missionaries who had
fallen ill in West Africa. Her
situation remains stable, Fernando Simon, a health ministry
official, said yesterday.
One of 16 people being monitored for Ebola in Madrid was
released, and none of the others
are showing symptoms of the
virus, officials said.
An international effort is under way to control the worst
outbreak of Ebola on record,
which has infected more than
8,300 people and killed more
than 4,000. Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea have accounted for most of those cases. Bloomberg
ebola strike threat in liberia hospitals
Some nurses in Liberia defied calls for a strike yesterday and
turned up for work at hospitals
amid the worst Ebola outbreak in
history.
In view of the danger of their
work, members of the National
Health Workers Association are
demanding higher monthly hazard
pay. The association has more
than 10,000 members, though the
health ministry says only about
1,000 of those are employed at
sites receiving Ebola patients.
Some nurses were turning up
for work yesterday, according to
Gobee Logan, a doctor at a government hospital in Tubmanburg,
60 kilometers from the capital of
Monrovia.
The call to strike was for nurses,
physician assistants, lab technicians and other health workers,
but not doctors.
South Africa
ap photo
Psychologist says Pistorius is ‘broken man’ Christopher Torchia
and Gerald Imray, Pretoria
O
scar Pistorius is a
«broken man» after
killing girlfriend Reeva
Steenkamp because he
lost her, his reputation,
friends, income and sense
of self-worth, a psychologist called by the Olympic
runner’s lawyers testified
yesterday.
Dr. Lore Hartzenberg
gave the testimony ahead
of Pistorius’ sentencing
for culpable homicide,
and it was almost immediately characterized by
the chief prosecutor as
unbalanced.
15
Ebola
Darrell Preston, Margaret Newkirk
and Caroline Chen
he U.S. health worker
who contracted Ebola after being in contact with an infected
patient in Dallas is leading officials to examine how widespread the danger is for those
who cared for him.
The unidentified employee
at Texas Health Presbyterian
Hospital wasn’t among the 48
people who were being watched
because they may have been in
contact with the patient before
he was placed in isolation, said
Thomas Frieden, director of the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Under the safety
procedures in place, the caregivers were monitoring their own
health.
“At some point there was a
breach in protocol,” Frieden
said at a press conference in
Atlanta Sunday. “It is possible
that other individuals were exposed.”
It’s the first time someone
is known to have contracted
Ebola inside U.S. borders, and
only the second known case
of an infection outside Africa.
The diagnosis adds pressure
on the U.S. government to tighten controls aimed at stemming the spread of the virus
that’s killed more than 4,000
people this year in three African nations.
The health worker had been in
contact with the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, on multiple
occasions, Frieden said.
The medical team members
who helped care for Duncan
once he was isolated at the hospital were responsible for monitoring their own conditions because they were considered to
be at low risk, Frieden said. The
infected worker noticed she had
a fever, notified the hospital
and was admitted on Oct. 10,
Texas Health Presbyterian said
in a statement. Her Ebola was
WORLD
Oscar Pistorius arrives at the high court in Pretoria, South Africa
A sentence for culpable
homicide can range from
a suspended sentence
and a fine to as many as
15 years in prison. Judge Thokozile Masipa
last month found Pistorius not guilty of both
premeditated
murder
and murder in his killing
of Steenkamp in the predawn hours of Valentine’s Day at his home last
year.
Several police officers stood guard on
the dais where the judge sat amid concerns about her security.
Masipa drew criticism
from some South Africans who thought Pistorius could at least
have been convicted of
a lesser murder charge
on the grounds that he
knew a person could die
when he fired four bullets through a toilet door
and into a small cubicle,
killing Steenkamp.
Prosecutors said Pistorius had opened fire
in anger after the couple argued. The runner
testified that he mistook
Steenkamp, a 29-year-old
model and budding reality TV star, for an intruder
who was about to come
out of the toilet and attack him.
Hartzenberg said the
double-amputee runner
had sometimes cried, retched, perspired and paced up and down during
sessions in which she
tried to assist him.
“Some of the sessions
were just him weeping
and crying and me holding him,” Hartzenberg
said. She testified she
had been counseling
a grief-stricken Pistorius since soon after the
Feb. 14, 2013 killing of
Steenkamp.
The testimony was part
of an effort by the runner’s legal team to persuade Masipa that Pistorius has suffered emotionally and materially and
that he is remorseful.
The team hopes the judge will be lenient when
she sentences Pistorius,
once a celebrated athlete who ran in the 2012
Olympics, after what is
expected to be a week of
legal argument and testimony. AP
16
INFOTAINMENT
what’s ON
...
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
資訊/娛樂
TV canal macau
Russian Romanticism - St. Petersburg
Philharmonic Orchestra (Russia)
Time: 8pm
Venue: Macao Cultural Centre Grand Auditorium
Admission: MOP300, MOP480, MOP580, MOP680
Enquiries: (853) 2836 6866
13:00
TDM News (Repeated)
13:30
News (RTPi) Delayed Broadcast
14:30
RTPi Live
17:45
Heavy Load (Repeated)
18:30
TDM Sports (Repeated)
19:30
Soap Opera
Macau Arts Window: Pictures of Nothing at
All - The Art and Poetry of Kit Kelen
Time: 10am-7pm (Closed on Mondays, no admission
20:30
Main News, Financial & Weather Report
21:00
TDM Interview
21:45
Happy Endings S1
22:10
Heavy Load
23:00
TDM News
23:30
Miscellaneous
00:30
Main News, Financial & Weather Report (Repeated)
after 6:30 pm)
Until: October 19, 2014
Venue: Macau Museum of Art, Av. Xian Xing Hai, s/n,
NAPE
Admission: MOP5 (Free on Sundays and public
holidays)
Enquiries: (853) 8791 9814
Calendar Illustrations by Guan Huinong
Time: 10am-7pm (Closed on Mondays, no admission
after 6:30 pm)
Until: December 28, 2014
Venue: Macau Museum of Art, Av. Xian Xing Hai, s/n,
NAPE
Admission: MOP5 (Free on Sundays and public
holidays)
Enquiries: (853) 8791 9814
Western Views on China: Prints of the 19th
Century about China
Time: 10am-7pm (Closed on Mondays, no admission
after 6:30 pm)
Until: December 31, 2014
Venue: Macau Museum of Art, Av. Xian Xing Hai, s/n,
NAPE
Admission: MOP5 (Free on Sundays and public
holidays)
Enquiries: (853) 8791 9814
Offbeat
cinema
cineteatro
09 Oct - 15 Oct
annabelle_
room 1
2.30, 7.30, 9.30 pm
Director: John R. Leonetti
Starring: Ward Horton, Annabelle Wallis, Alfre Woodard
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 98min
the maze runner_
room 1
4.30 pm
Director: Wes Ball
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelarioi
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 113min
dracula untold_
room 2
2.15, 4.00, 5.45, 9.30 pm
Director: Gary Shore
Starring: Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 92min
the maze runner_
room 2
7.30 pm
Director: Wes Ball
Starring: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelarioi
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 113min
Large
mosaic in ancient tomb
uncovered in Greece
Demetris Nellas, Athens
Archaeologists digging through a vast ancient tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece have uncovered a floor mosaic
that covers the whole area of a room seen as the antechamber to the main burial ground.
The mosaic, 3 meters long and 4.5 meters wide, depicts
a horseman with a laurel wreath driving a chariot drawn by
two horses and preceded by the god Hermes. According
to a Culture Ministry announcement on Sunday, Hermes is
depicted here as the conductor of souls to the afterlife.
The mosaic is made up of pebbles in many colors: white,
black, gray, blue, red and yellow. A circular part, near the
center of the mosaic, is missing, but authorities say enough
fragments have been found to reconstruct a large part.
The ministry says that archaeologists have dated the mosaic to the last quarter of 4th century B.C. (325-300 B.C.),
consistent with their belief the grave contains the remains of
a contemporary of Alexander the Great, the ancient Greek
King of Macedonia, who conquered the Persian Empire and
reached present-day India, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in a
whirlwind campaign, from 334 to 323 B.C. The grave may
be that of a relative or general of Alexander’s, archaeologists
have speculated. Alexander himself, who died in Babylon in
present-day Iraq at age 32, in 323 B.C., is believed to have
been buried in Egypt. But his tomb hasn’t been found. AP
this day in history
Juon - the beginning of the end_
room 3
2.30, 4.30, 7.30, 9.30 pm
Director: Masayuki Ochiai
Starring: Nozomi Sasaki, Sho Aoyagi, Reina
TriendlLanguage: Japonese (english and Chinese)
Duration: 98min
macau tower
09 Oct - 22 Oct
dracula untold_
2.30, 4.30, 7.30, 9.30 pm
Director: Gary Shore
Starring: Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon
Language: English (Chinese)
Duration: 92min
1973 Thai army shoots
protesters
Dozens of people have been killed in the Thai capital of
Bangkok in street battles between government troops
and demonstrators. Most of the victims were students
from Thammasat University, who had gathered in large
numbers for a second day of protests against the Thai
military regime.
Violence broke out when several thousand students
took to the streets demanding the military government
step down. They are also calling for an early introduction of a constitution.
Today demonstrators barricaded streets leading to
government offices. Witnesses say protesters threw
stones and petrol bombs but were driven back by police and troops using live rounds. Several people fell
after shots were fired - reportedly the work of snipers.
There have also been reports of fire engines and
buses being commandeered and driven into tanks.
Clashes between troops and students also occurred at
Thammasat University after students began returning
from the street demonstrations.
The students are angry with Field Marshal Thanom
and his regime - successive military governments have
ruled Thailand since 1947.
The field marshal abolished the existing constitution
in a coup in November 1971, and less than 10 days
ago 13 pro-democracy campaigners were arrested for
calling for a permanent constitution.
After a peaceful protest march of about 200,000 people yesterday, the government pledged to introduce a
new constitution within 12 months. But there is considerable public scepticism about the government’s
promises - the last constitution took 10 years to be
introduced.
Bangkok is now under a state of emergency. Newspaper censorship and curfews have been imposed, and
schools in the capital will remain closed until the situation calms down.
Courtesy BBC News
In context
Numerous testimonies indicate the regime opened fire on unarmed civilians. The official death toll was 77. Over 800 were
wounded. Later that day, Marshal Thanom resigned along with two
other senior officers. The three were temporarily exiled. Dr Sanya
Dhammasak, rector of Thammasat University, became the new
Prime Minister.
Civilian government survived until October 1976, when a military
regime took over again. There was another military coup in 1991.
Elections in 1992 returned democracy to Thailand. But in September 2006 the military intervened again, to remove Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra. Most Thais celebrate the ‘October 14 Uprising’
anniversary as Thai People’s Rights and Freedom Day.
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
資訊/娛樂
17
The Born Loser by Chip Sansom
YOUR STARS
Aries
INFOTAINMENT
Taurus
Mar. 21-Apr. 19
April 20-May 20
You should see about shaking things
up — your energy is just right for
taking action and making your mark
on the world. See if your people can
back you up as you bring big things
to life.
Try not to get too caught up in the
excitement of the day — remember
that not all that glitters is gold! Your
energy is better spent on shoring up
what you do have and making sure
that things stay on track.
Gemini
Cancer
May 21-Jun. 21
Jun. 22-Jul. 22
You are filled with great social
energy — even more than usual —
and should make sure that you’re
partnered up for nearly everything
you do. It’s a great time for dates and
for business deals.
Take care of a personal issue that
has been troubling you for a while
— you’ve got the right kind of energy
to spend on yourself. Once you feel
better, you can look beyond your
limits and help the world!
Leo
Virgo
Jul. 23-Aug. 22
Aug. 23-Sept. 22
You aren’t about to mince words
when it comes to things you find
important today — so make sure that
you’re as clear as can be! Anyone
who doesn’t get your message is sure
to regret it!
You’ve got to push yourself and
really take a risk today — even if
people are watching too closely for
your comfort. If you can get past
your worries, you can really make a
difference!
Libra
Scorpio
Sep.23-Oct. 22
Oct. 23 - Nov. 21
You
are
in
an
unusually
communicative mood today — and
you can get across whatever it is
you’re feeling with ease! Make sure
that your VIPs know they can count
on you, and how.
You need to listen to your gut — it’s
got good advice, and you may go
astray if you let your cerebrum do all
the driving today. There’s a time for
instinct, and you can feel it coming
on.
Sagittarius
Capricorn
Nov. 22-Dec. 21
Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Your almost unnaturally good mood
may make some suspicious — but
you know that you’re just riding
a positive wave that comes from
somewhere deep within. Enjoy it
and spread the love!
Your self-discipline is legendary, and
today calls for every last ounce of it.
You may have to field distractions or
weird requests, but eventually, you
just need to say ‘no’ and get on with
your business.
Aquarius
Pisces
Jan. 20-Feb. 18
Feb.19-Mar. 20
You need to deal with your social life
— but it’s all good! New connections
are easier to come by, and you may
find that you meet someone new
who could turn into a lifelong friend,
or something even better.
Your boss, or teacher — or
aggressively demanding teenager —
thinks they know better than you,
and this time you may just have to let
them enjoy their delusions. Give it a
few days before opening the topic.
SUDOKU
Weather
Easy
Medium
Hard
Beijing
10
17
Harbin
-2
13
clear
Tianjin
11
19
cloudy/clear
Urumqi
9
19
cloudy/clear
Xi’an
16
25
cloudy/overcast
Lhasa
6
16
overcast/shower
Chengdu
19
27
cloudy
overcast/cloudy
Condition
clear/cloudy
Chongqing
21
29
Kunming
16
23
shower
Nanjing
19
23
shower/overcast
Shanghai
21
24
shower/drizzle
Wuhan
18
24
cloudy
Hangzhou
20
24
drizzle
Taipei
23
31
clear/drizzle
Guangzhou
24
32
cloudy
Hong Kong
27
32
cloudy
Moscow
4
11
drizzle
Frankfurt
12
23
drizzle
Paris
12
18
drizzle
London
12
19
clear
New York
15
25
overcast
world
Crossword puzzles provided by BestCrosswords.com
Down: 1- To the extent that; 2- Incentives; 3- OK to vend; 4- Poker declaration; 5- Club
alternative; 6- Long Island town; 7- Chantilly
product; 8- ___ little teapot...; 9- Electric fish;
Yesterday’s solution
10- Consumers; 11- Atheistic; 12- Salt of
oxalic acid; 13- Tedium; 19- Brief letter, paper
money; 21- Actress Peeples; 25- Object of
devotion; 26- Maritime; 28- Upper limb; 30Alpaca’s cousin; 33- Male sheep who may
play football for St Louis!; 34- Thin as ___; 36Writer LeShan; 39- Baby’s cry; 40- Begley
and Bradley; 41- Marshy; 42- Greed; 43- Old
entertainment; 46- Seaport in New Zealand;
47- Put up; 48- Parsonage; 50- Clockmaker
Thomas; 52- Neither’s partner; 55- Hotelier
Helmsley; 57- “Olympia” painter; 58Twisted expression?; 61- Small combo; 62Shrivelled, without moisture; 64- Cambodia’s
Lon ___; 65- Baseball’s Mel;
Max
China
Easy+
Crosswords
Across: 1- Birthplace of St. Francis; 7- In ___ of; 11- Lump; 14- Seals; 15- Iowa
city; 16- Tic-tac-toe loser; 17- Pert. to a son or daughter; 18- System of reckoning
time; 20- Prepared with almonds; 22- Esther of “Good Times”; 23- Chafe; 24- Center
starter; 25- In the place of; 27- ___ breve; 29- “Betsy’s Wedding” star; 31- This, in
Tijuana; 32- Mountain range; 35- Deep affection; 37- Religious sch.; 38- Jellylike
citrus preserve; 41- Bit of butter; 44- Polite address; 45- Climbing device; 49- Gardner
and others; 51- ___ old cowhand...; 53- Deodorant brand; 54- Folium; 56- Mantra
sounds; 59- Japanese computer giant; 60- Liquid waste component; 61- Cut
across; 63- Ignominy; 66- Must; 67- Cologne cry; 68- Denier’s words; 69- More
spine-tingling; 70- Pasture used for grazing; 71- Choir member; 72- Up-to-date;
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
14.10.2014 tue
th Anniversary
廣告
tue 14.10.2014
th Anniversary
體育
S
even teens face sex crime charges as a solidly
middle-class town and its
beloved high school football program find themselves at
the center of the broader debate
over how to deal with hazing.
Hazing generally involves endurance rituals to which prospective
members of an organization are
subjected. The school’s superintendent says abuse by the Sayreville War Memorial High School
students was so pervasive he had
no choice but to call off the season for a football team that has
won three sectional titles in four
years. His decision angered team
parents but drew applause from
advocates who called it the kind
of bold stand necessary to confront hazing.
Hundreds of people came out
for an anti-bullying rally Sunday evening in a park across the
street from the high school. Organizers said the goal of the event
is to promote unity and healing
within the community, as well as
to show support for the victims
of bullying. Participants were
given balloons, ribbons, stickers
and candles. They were asked to
walk around the lake at Kennedy
Park and eventually release the
balloons or show other forms of
support.
No coaches have been charged, and it isn’t clear if any knew
19
US high school football case
puts hazing in focus
ap photo
David Porter, Sean Carlin
SPORTS
Banners for state championships for the Sayreville War Memorial High School
football team are lined up on a sign along Main Street in Sayreville, N.J.
about the alleged incidents. In
his first public comments, head
coach George Najjar told the
Star-Ledger of Newark on Saturday that he would comment on
the allegations but that “now is
not the time.”
Najjar could not be reached by
telephone Saturday evening.
The allegations involved attacks
on four students over a 10-day
span last month, authorities said.
Six defendants were arrested Friday and the seventh surrendered
Saturday. Their names were not
released because they are juveniles.
One of the attacks involved sexual penetration upon one of the
alleged victims, Middlesex County prosecutor Andrew C. Carey
said.
In a statement on the arrests,
Superintendent Richard Labbe
said the district will “come together as a school district and greater community to harness the
strength required to support the
young men who may have been
victimized and then to begin the
healing process for our beloved
community.”
Stuart Green, founder of the
New Jersey Coalition for Bullying
Awareness and Prevention, praised Labbe’s decision as one that
could change the conversation
on the issue of bullying.
Though he sympathized with
those who feel it unfair to punish an entire team, Green said
responsibility for such conduct
generally extends beyond the individual players.
“When these problems arise
they’re never primarily a function of the individual kids or
players,” he said. “These problems primarily arise because of
the behaviors of the adults and
leaders who manage these environments.”
The arrests came four days after
the rest of the season was called
off, prompting angry responses
from parents of players. At an
emotional school board meeting
Tuesday night, some players denied seeing any of the alleged
incidents occurring, and one parent said the cancellation “victimizes the kids who had nothing
to do with it.”
Reports of hazing surface regularly around the U.S., but rarely
do they result in a sports season’s
cancellation.
One well-publicized exception
was Mepham High School on
New York’s Long Island, which
canceled its 2003 season after
reports of alleged sexual assaults by upperclassmen on younger
players during a preseason trip
to Pennsylvania.
Steve Timko, executive director
of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association,
said he couldn’t recall any seasons being forfeited because of
hazing-related allegations in his
38 years involved with scholastic
sports in the state.
Hazing can be hard to define
and harder to detect precisely
because it occurs within the confines of a closed group such as a
team, fraternity or sorority that
wields it as a requisite for inclusion, experts say. AP
ad
THE
Cambodia detains 3 after
Robert Carroll
Not time to throw in the towel
Hong Kong is no stranger to massive street
protests. The last was in 2003, when half a
million people took to the streets to protest
the proposed anti-subversion law, required
by Article 23 of the Basic Law. Beijing sat
up and heads rolled. First it was the Secretary for Security, Regina Ip, who resigned
from her position, followed by no less than
Chief Executive Tung Chee-wah. Later, large street demonstrations were successful in
changing government policy. However, things have changed. The question is why has
Beijing purposefully and continuously ignored mainstream popular sentiments, as evidenced by many polls and voting patterns.
When I say mainstream popular sentiment,
the most identified example is reflected in
the results of Legislative Council elections,
determined by “one person, one vote” since
1995. The parties which are closest to being
Communist or seen to be controlled by the
Chinese government have consistently failed to get a majority vote in the “one person,
one vote” geographical Legislative Council
elections, despite having vastly greater resources. However, the legislature has no
initiating power to make law by design, only
a degree of blocking power. The directly
elected sector is counterbalanced by an indirectly elected sector, which can be controlled by business interests that are dependent
on the Chinese government’s goodwill.
If the popular vote is not mostly with the
pro-China communist-backed parties for
the legislature, then why would the Chinese
Communist Party want a real popular vote
for the Chief Executive too?
Another pertinent question is that if the prodemocracy camp, the pan-democrats, had
been more willing to bend in their demands
for genuine democracy as promised by the
Basic Law, would we have had a better offer
from Beijing?
The deal as it stands keeps the promise of
universal suffrage for the next chief executive election. On the other hand, it keeps a
deeply flawed system. It means that 1200
people, many of whom are open to pressure
from Beijing, will decide from a list of two or
three candidates who have been approved
by the Chinese government. Even then the
final veto rests with Beijing.
How can this be considered reform when
three screening processes are still controlled
by Beijing ? Aren’t we supposed to be talking
about democratic reform and progress?
On the other hand, any form of universal
suffrage can be considered a step forward,
if candidates need to get the public behind
them - by real campaigning - then this “one
person, one vote” proposal, however diluted,
must be another step towards real democracy. Beijing does not want an unpopular chief
executive; therefore, however small the
voting circle, the eventual candidates must
fight through television debate and furious
lobbying to get as much support as they can
from the public, business, and professional
sectors that make up the nominating committee. These sectors still have the penultimate
say.
As we have seen in the last chief executive
election, whoever gets through the filtering
process must still fight a hard campaign.
If this is an interim solution, as the standing
committee of the NPC - the constitutional authority on these matters - has claimed, there
is still room for optimism that a future CE
election can be tailored to be more representative of the popular will.
Frenchman Tirole wins
Nobel economics prize
Karl Ritter, Nathalie Rothshild
F
rench economist Jean
Tirole won the Nobel
prize for economics yesterday for research on market
power and regulation that
has helped policy-makers
understand how to deal with
industries dominated by a few
companies.
Calling Tirole “one of the
most influential economists
of our time,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
said he’s made contributions
in a range of research areas.
But it highlighted his role in
clarifying “how to understand
and regulate industries with a
few powerful firms.”
Tirole, 61, works at the Toulouse School of Economics in
France and has a Ph.D. from
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Left unregulated, industries that are dominated by a
few single firms can produce undesirable results, such
as unnecessarily high prices
or unproductive companies
blocking new firms from entering the market. From the
mid-1980s, Tirole “breathed
new life into research on such
market failures,” the academy
said, adding his work has
strong bearing on how governments deal with mergers or
cartels and how they should
regulate monopolies.
“In a series of articles and
books, Jean Tirole has presented a general framework
for designing such policies
and applied it to a number of
industries, ranging from telecommunications to banking,”
the academy said.
The vision
according
to which
economists
have
unlimited
trust in the
efficiency of
markets is 30
years behind
the times
Jean Tirole
His work is credited with
helping drive the deregulation
of industries in developed
economies in the 1980s and
1990s, when many sectors
were dominated by state-owned companies or monopolies. More recently, however,
Tirole has argued for stronger
regulation in the wake of the
global financial crisis.
In a 2012 interview, Tirole
told the financial journal Les
Echos that the 2008 financial crisis stemmed primarily
from regulatory failure. “The
vision according to which economists have unlimited trust
in the efficiency of markets is
30 years behind the times,”
he said, adding his research
“does not advocate necessarily more or less of the state,
but rather better state intervention.”
Harvard University professor and economist Philippe
Aghion said on France’s BFM
television yesterday that Tirole’s work is particularly useful
to governments as they try to
determine the best level of regulation, notably of banks after the global financial crisis.
“Tirole is at the frontier of this
domain,” Aghion said.
It was the first economics
prize without an American
winner since 1999.
“I’m so moved,” Tirole said,
speaking to a news conference in Stockholm on a telephone link from Toulouse.
In an interview with France
-Info radio yesterday, Tirole
said his work applied theories
derived from game theory
to industry. “The idea is to
give companies the analytical
means to deal with new contexts and also to give regulators the analytical tools they
need,” he said. “For example,
how to deregulate electricity
or railroads without creating
infrastructure problems. How
to allow entrants who are
perhaps more dynamic without expropriating from the
companies already in place.”
Before Tirole, the academy
said, policy-makers advocated simple rules including
capping prices for companies
with a monopoly and banning
cooperation between competitors. Tirole showed that
in some circumstances, such
rules can do more harm than
good.
“His contribution is that he
has given us a whole toolbox,”
said prize committee secretary Torsten Persson. “More
than that, he has given us an
instruction manual for what
tool to use in what market.”
Drawing on insights based
on Tirole’s work, “governments can better encourage
powerful firms to become
more productive and, at the
same time, prevent them
from harming competitors
and customers,” the academy
said.
The economics prize completed the 2014 Nobel Prize
announcements.
In Nobel Prizes awarded
last week, Taliban attack survivor Malala Yousafzai, 17,
became the youngest Nobel
winner ever as she and Kailash Satyarthi of India won
the peace prize for fighting for
children’s rights. French writer Patrick Modiano won the
literature prize for his lifelong
study of the Nazi occupation
and its effect on his country.
U.S. researchers Eric Betzig
and William Moerner and
Stefan Hell of Germany shared the chemistry prize for
finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than
previously thought possible;
while Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and
Japanese-born U.S. scientist
Shuji Nakamura won the
physics prize for the invention
of blue light-emitting diodes
used in mobile phones, computers and TVs.
The awards will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred
Nobel’s death in 1896.
Even though the economics
award is not an original Nobel
Prize — it was added in 1968
by Sweden’s central bank — it
is presented with the others
and carries the same prize
money.
Last year the economics prize went to three Americans
who shed light on the forces
that move stock, bond and
home prices. AP
Air quality
Roadside
65-95
Moderate
High
Density
85-115
Residental Moderate
Area
Ambient
85-115
Moderate
WORLD BRIEFS
N KOREA says the remains
of American soldiers killed
during the Korean War are
being neglected and “carried
away en masse,” in an
apparent effort to pressure
Washington to resume
recovery efforts that could
also lead to much-needed
money for the impoverished
country. The United States
suspended efforts to recover
the remains of thousands of
U.S. soldiers who died during
the Korean War because of
the North’s plans to launch a
long-range rocket in 2012.
AUSTRALIA’s prime minister
warns that he intends to
use tough language with
Russian President Vladimir
Putin in Australia next
month in demanding full
cooperation from Russia
with the Dutch investigation
into the shooting down of
a Malaysian airliner in July.
Putin has confirmed that
he will attend a summit
of the world’s 20 biggest
economies to be chaired by
Australia in the east coast
city of Brisbane on Nov.
15-16.
ap photo
HK Observer
der the protection of government agencies or
influential people, environmental groups have
charged.
Taing Try was investigating illegal timber
trading with several colleagues at the time of
the shooting. Sok Savann said that at around
midnight Saturday they observed timber being
transported on several ox carts, and that afterward — when their vehicle got stuck in the
mud on a dirt road — they were approached by
the timber’s owners.
ap photo
opinion
Cambodian police said yesterday that they
have detained three men, including a timber
trader, believed to be linked to the weekend
shooting death of a local journalist who was investigating illegal logging in the country’s east.
Freelance journalist Taing Try, 49, was shot
in the forehead and died instantly early Sunday
at a remote forestry site in Kratie province, said
Sok Sovann, who heads the Khmer Journalists for Democracy Association. Illegal logging
is rampant in Cambodia, and often occurs un-
source: dsmg
BUZZ journalist is killed
Station
PERU Evo Morales
(pictured) coasted to victory
in Bolivia’s presidential
elections, winning an
unprecedented third term
as voters rewarded the
former coca grower for
delivering economic and
political stability in what
has traditionally been one
of South America’s most
ungovernable nations.
Morales, an Aymara Indian,
received 60 percent of the
vote against 25 percent for
cement magnate Samuel
Doria Medina.
TURKEY’s foreign minister
insisted yesterday there
was no new agreement with
the United States on using
Turkish bases for operations
against the Islamic State
militants. In comments
carried by the state-run
Anadolu Agency, Foreign
Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu
said, however, that the two
countries had agreed to train
and equip opposition forces.
VATICAN CITY Catholic
bishops showed
unprecedented openness
yesterday to accepting the
real lives of many Catholics
today, saying gays had
gifts to offer the church and
should be accepted and that
there were “positive” aspects
to a couple living together
without being married.