Space shuttle under attack!

1216 Sports Carnival

Dear 6AB1 students,

Here's the map of the venue (The Sir Philip Hadden-Cave Sports Field). You can either take the school's shuttle bus at the train station or you can do a bit of exercise by walking uphill along the Station Road. Once you've reached the roundabout, I'm sure you can see the sports field.

Regards,
Mr. Fu

Picnic photos

Dear 6AB1 students,

The photos are ready. You all can go to this website to view or download them. I also encourage you to upload your photos onto my photo sharing site. So that all of you can have access to others' photos.

Enjoy! :-)

Mr. Fu

http://gallery.mac.com/williamfu#100039

Newspapers make move on free online TV

Hong Kong's two leading Chinese-language newspaper publishers are transforming into multimedia content providers by launching full, free online video services soon to extend their exposure to youngsters who seldom read newspapers.

Oriental Press Group, the publisher of Hong Kong's best-selling Oriental Daily News, and Next Media, publisher of Apple Daily, have increased their online video content in recent months to attract more users to their websites.

Sources told Media Eye that Oriental Press will soon launch an online television service called ONTV. The new service has recruited a team of journalists and camera men and technicians for the video content production. Apple Daily, meanwhile, has introduced three weekly video online chat room programmes on football, horse racing and stock investing to get the audience to interact with journalists.

"It's natural for newspaper publishers to explore the online audience as the circulation and advertising of traditional newspapers is under threat from emerging media such as the internet," said Kevin Huang, chief executive of Pixel Media, an online advertising agent.

Mr Huang said a survey by research firm Synnovate, found youngsters spent 16 hours on the Web against 15 hours watching television. Newspapers were not part of the survey.

The introduction of online news should help turn viewership into advertising dollars.

However, Hong Kong online advertising accounts for only 5 per cent of the market while traditional media such as television and newspapers take up about a 5 per cent share each.

Oriental Press strengthened its traditional newsroom operation to support video and television production. Its flagship news portal on.cc already offers video clips on local and financial news as well as real time entertainment clips.

Media Eye learned that ONTV is on trial and crew are already shooting. You soon may spot a microphone with the on.cc logo - the largest among electronic media.

"The new ONTV will have a series of news programmes to be aired online every day. The company even has clothing sponsorship for the programme hosts, and news anchors," a source told Media Eye, adding that fashion brand Calvin Klein is on the list of sponsors.

Apple Daily, for its part, has been pushing a relatively small-scale web television service offering three to four weekly online video chats that focus on football betting, horse-race betting and stock advice.

Apple Daily encourages online video show participants by giving away cash coupons.

"Our programmes are not the same as traditional television as we emphasise increased interaction rather than just delivering video content on the internet," a Next Media source said.

However, such a move may challenge the government's cross-media ownership policy which states media owners are banned from holding assets in other media platforms to avoid dominance in the media sector, industry watchers told Media Eye.

"The regulatory framework is absolutely outdated and needs review," a media executive said. "As technology evolves for news production, it is impossible to limit media owners such as newspaper publishers from distributing news content in video format."

PCCW's NOW TV and the Hong Kong Economic Journal, which is owned by a trust held by PCCW's chairman Richard Li Tzar-kai, is still under investigation for breach of cross-media ownership.

Sex a festive gift for some youths, survey finds

Nearly one in five young people say a one-night stand would be acceptable at Christmas, a survey has found.

The finding prompted the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups to warn that some youngsters might offer sex as a Christmas gift.

The federation interviewed 509 youngsters aged between 12 and 29 last month, and 212 of them said Christmas should be spent with their intimate partner.

Some 85, or 17 per cent, said a "one-night stand" during the festival was acceptable.

The group's supervisor, Hsu Siu-man, said the Christmas party atmosphere fuelled by alcohol could make the teenagers more relaxed about intimate contact.

"Some teenagers might offer sex as a Christmas present to their partner," she said. "They should really know the consequences of their acts before making any rash decision."

She said every year the group's call centre received about 350 calls for help about love or sex around Christmas, while the average number of calls on the topic is about 100 a month.

According to the group, the calls were mainly about pregnancy, sexual diseases and relationship troubles.

For couples in a rocky relationship, the group advised them to break up after Christmas as the festival could increase their feelings of loneliness and sorrow.

Ms Hsu said volunteers at the centre needed to spend more time counselling youngsters who broke up at Christmas.

About 30 per cent of those questioned said they found breaking up at Christmas "unacceptable" or "totally unacceptable".

For 22-year-old Vincent, who broke up with his girlfriend in May, Christmas will be spent visiting homes for the elderly.

He admitted the atmosphere at Christmas parties could be seductive but he believed that a person could stick to their principles if they had firm ideas about sex.

He felt that ending a relationship at Christmas might do more harm as the person would remember it every year. "Before you start a relationship, you should know the other's expectation and be responsive," he said.

Joee Tong, said she had no plans to begin a more intimate relationship with her boyfriend at Christmas. "I am not sure whether my boyfriend is my lifetime partner yet," she said.

Microsoft's new Zune

The new Zune: better than before, but not quite good enough

We all cheered Microsoft on when learning that the same firmware powering its freshly announced second-generation hardware would also be made available as a free update to all first-gen Zune users. Not that we really need to explain this to Engadget readers, but early adopters are far from accustomed to the kindly occurrence of getting software and feature parity for free and without having to buy later hardware.

Link to the story.

Campaign launched against ATM limit

A city-wide signature campaign is being launched by the Liberal Party against the controversial plan by HSBC to raise the minimum for cash withdrawals from cash machines to HK$300.

Party chairman James Tien Pei-chun said the bank's decision was disappointing. He also criticised it for having failed to consult the public.

The bank announced last week that from January 6, the minimum cash withdrawal from its ATMs would be increased from HK$100 to HK$300.

The bank said the goal was to shorten customer waiting times by up to 10 per cent.

The move, however, has sparked a public outcry.

Mr Tien, who yesterday led about a dozen party colleagues to collect signatures at a shopping centre in Sha Tin, said he had written to Vincent Cheng Hoi-chuen, chairman of HSBC's Asia Pacific operations, urging him to reverse the decision. "It will be a big blow to elderly or underprivileged people. There are also fears other banks will follow suit," Mr Tien said.

"If HSBC really wants to cut the waiting time, a simple and easy way is to set up more ATMs.

"More importantly, there is no evidence that the long waiting time is because too many people withdraw money at ATMs. We all know that many services are now provided by ATMs, like paying fees."

The party said 1,000 signatures were collected in a few hours yesterday.

Mr Tien said a similar signature campaign would be launched in other districts and he would arrange a meeting with HSBC management.

The bank has 620 ATMs at 350 locations in the city.

Other major banks, including Bank of China and Standard Chartered Bank, said they had no plans to raise their minimum cash withdrawal limit.

The end of cheap food

Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the world with an enormous opportunity

FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.

That is why this year's price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist's food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years. That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.

But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America's reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America's (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world's overall grain stocks.

Dearer food has the capacity to do enormous good and enormous harm. It will hurt urban consumers, especially in poor countries, by increasing the price of what is already the most expensive item in their household budgets. It will benefit farmers and agricultural communities by increasing the rewards of their labour; in many poor rural places it will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth.

Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill also depends in part on governments. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery, especially among the urban poor. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor, rescue farming from subsidies and neglect—and minimise the harm to the slum-dwellers and landless labourers. So far, the auguries look gloomy.

In the trough

That, at least, is the lesson of half a century of food policy. Whatever the supposed threat—the lack of food security, rural poverty, environmental stewardship—the world seems to have only one solution: government intervention. Most of the subsidies and trade barriers have come at a huge cost. The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging markets. And for what? Despite the help, plenty of Western farmers have been beset by poverty. Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land. Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that.

With agflation, policy has reached a new level of self-parody. Take America's supposedly verdant ethanol subsidies. It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version of ethanol (far better to import Brazil's sugar-based liquor); they are also offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging overproduction. Intervention multiplies like lies. Now countries such as Russia and Venezuela have imposed price controls—an aid to consumers—to offset America's aid to ethanol producers. Meanwhile, high grain prices are persuading people to clear forests to plant more maize.

Dearer food is a chance to break this dizzying cycle. Higher market prices make it possible to reduce subsidies without hurting incomes. A farm bill is now going through America's Congress. The European Union has promised a root-and-branch review (not yet reform) of its farm-support scheme. The reforms of the past few decades have, in fact, grappled with the rich world's farm programmes—but only timidly. Now comes the chance for politicians to show that they are serious when they say they want to put agriculture right.

Cutting rich-world subsidies and trade barriers would help taxpayers; it could revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boosting the world economy; and, most important, it would directly help many of the world's poor. In terms of economic policy, it is hard to think of a greater good.

Where government help is really needed

Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas. The depressed world prices created by farm policies over the past few decades have had a devastating effect. There has been a long-term fall in investment in farming and the things that sustain it, such as irrigation. The share of public spending going to agriculture in developing countries has fallen by half since 1980. Poor countries that used to export food now import it.

Reducing subsidies in the West would help reverse this. The World Bank reckons that if you free up agricultural trade, the prices of things poor countries specialise in (like cotton) would rise and developing countries would capture the gains by increasing exports. And because farming accounts for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries, it is the most important contributor to the early stages of economic growth. According to the World Bank, the really poor get three times as much extra income from an increase in farm productivity as from the same gain in industry or services. In the long term, thriving farms and open markets provide a secure food supply.

However, there is an obvious catch—and one that justifies government help. High prices have a mixed impact on poverty: they hurt anyone who loses more from dear food than he gains from a higher income. And that means over a billion urban consumers (and some landless labourers), many of whom are politically influential in poor countries. Given the speed of this year's food-price rises, governments in emerging markets have no alternative but to try to soften the blow.

Where they can, these governments should subsidise the incomes of the poor, rather than food itself, because that minimises price distortions. Where food subsidies are unavoidable, they should be temporary and targeted on the poor. So far, most government interventions in the poor world have failed these tests: politicians who seem to think cheap food part of the natural order of things have slapped on price controls and export restraints, which hurt farmers and will almost certainly fail.

Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are hogging the world's wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though, is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.

HK supertanker in massive oil spill

Fear of ecological disaster off South Korean coast
A Hong Kong-registered supertanker spilled more than 66,000 barrels of crude oil into the sea off South Korea yesterday, threatening a maritime park and tourist area in what is the nation's worst oil spill.

A crane-carrying barge, Samsung No1, slammed into the Hebei Spirit at 7.30am as it waited for a pilot ship about 11km off Daesan port, 150km southwest of Seoul.

The barge tore holes in three of the ship's oil tanks, causing the crude to gush into the heavy seas and leaving authorities battling to contain a slick stretching for 8km.

"We are worried about an ecological disaster," said Kim Jong-sik, an official with the South Korean ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries.

"We have set up a boom, trying to stop oil from spreading along the coast, but oil sometimes overflows it, depending on the currents. If we fail to contain the spread it is feared it will inflict serious damage to the coast."

Sub-zero temperatures are slowing the spread of the oil, which could help limit the damage. If not contained, the oil would take about 48 hours to reach shore, a ministry spokesman said.

The spill, about a quarter of the size of the Exxon Valdez spill which devastated the Alaskan coastline, happened in the Yellow Sea off South Korea's Taean county.

The spill threatens the Taean Marine National Park, which encompasses about 130 islands and includes Mallipo Beach and Anmyeon Island, two of South Korea's most popular holiday spots.

The area is also an important transit stop for migratory birds.

The 146,000-tonne ship is owned by giant Hebei Ocean Shipping, the mainland's third-largest shipping firm, which listed on the Hong Kong stock market in 2005. A company spokesman said an investigation would be held into the incident. But he praised the crew for taking quick action that prevented far more oil from emptying into the sea.

There were 30 Indian crew on the ship, which was transporting 260,000 tonnes of oil - about 1.8 million barrels - from the Middle East.

Four helicopters and more than 15 vessels from the South Korean coast guard and navy were sent to try to help contain the spill. Initial efforts were hampered by 3-4 metre seas but good progress was made once the leak was blocked at about 4pm.The spill is already twice the size of the previous largest oil spill off South Korea. In 1995, the 144,567-tonne tanker Sea Prince hit a reef, releasing 5,035 tonnes of oil off the south coast, causing US$80 million damage.

The Hong Kong Marine Department said it was keeping in contact with South Korean authorities and would carry out its own investigation.

The world's most damaging, but not biggest, oil spill occurred in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez supertanker released about 260,000 barrels into Alaska's Prince William Sound.