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01/12/2010
Pamelyn Chee: I’m three parts boy, one part woman
In Point of Entry, both Carl and Pam share a superior-subordinate relationship, forming 'Team Epsilon' which is made up of four highly-trained special ICA agents with different specialties. Expect sparks to fly as Pam's character locks horns with her superior played by Carl, no thanks to her brash and reckless personality.
Will this be the start of a romantic love line in the story?
"Well, we're not really lovers. There is a lot of me jabbing him and him dissing me, which is part of what I think early romance is, because it's not really that obvious," Pam smiled.
According to Pam, the crew from Team Epsilon received some basic gun and operational training which taught them how to react, move, and cover one another's back in confrontational situations.
Aside from Carl's minor bruises from a boxing scene with Los Angeles actor Jourdan Lee, the team has yet to sustain any broken bones from this action-laden series - though we heard the rough factor was upped when the crew traveled to Thailand for an intensive 12-day shoot .
Shrugging off the boxing incident nonchalantly, Carl explained, "It was a little bit tough 'cos for the whole day we were boxing. You get a little bit tired; let your guard down, and all of the sudden you get hit in your face. I got hit in my face a few times though nothing too big, no big bruises or anything."
Calling the actions scenes "great", Pam mused, "Actually I always feel that I'm three parts boy, one part woman. I sort of love jumping onto cars, jumping up buildings, guns, and fights."
Point of Entry debut tomorrow night on Ch 5 and airs every Thursday, Ch 5, 8pm.
Watch Carl Ng & Pamelyn Chee's video interview here!
Related articles:
Things you never knew about Pamelyn Chee
Carl Ng the 'optimistic pessimst'
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01/12/2010
Pamelyn Chee: I’m three parts boy, one part woman
Never judge Pamelyn Chee by her statuesque and slender frame, this versatile actress packs a mean punch as military sharpshooter Vivian de Cruz in Ch5 drama series, Point of Entry
Text: Joanna Goh
Video: Tay Yixuan
"Drop your gun! Drop your gun! Hands up!" a deep voice boomed through the creaks of the upper floor at a tapas restaurant located in Little India.
At one of the film sites for upcoming Ch 5 drama series Point of Entry, Fly Entertainment artiste Pamelyn Chee was exacting a couple of high kicks and over-the-shoulder throws with one of her co-star who was unfortunately, villain for the day.
Prior to the shoot, we were informed that the cast will be filming an "action scene" but Pam took us aback when we saw her decked in heels, body-hugging floral dress with a crystal hairclip fastened to her locks.
The 27-year-old was clearly enjoying the stunts and hand combat action as she grabbed, kicked, and elbowed her villainous co-star before us with much ease and fluidity.
When we overheard Pam's growls and the heated scuffle taking place on the second floor, her co-actor Carl Ng, pointed to the floor above and cheekily exclaimed, "That's a man upstairs!"
"She's really strange. She's got a man's voice, really weird," the Eurasian lad chuckled when asked for his impression on Pam.
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Big strides towards 2020
Malaysia unveils tax breaks, multi-billion-dollar projects
KUALA LUMPUR
Prime Minister Najib Razak said the government would waive up to 100 per cent of taxes on investment in capital intensive petroleum projects, especially in deep-water and infrastructure activities. Tax rates will be cut from 38 per cent to 25 per cent for the development of marginal oil fields, while export duties on oil produced from these fields will be waived.
“By lowering risks and increasing the rewards for investment, this initiative will potentially lead to additional petroleum-generated revenue of more than RM50 billion ($20.85 billion) for Malaysia over the next 20 years,” said Mr Najib, who is also Finance Minister.
He said state-owned Tenaga Nasional will invest RM4 billion next year to build two hydropower plants and a large coal plant in peninsular Malaysia to cater to rising domestic demand. Private firm Tanjong Agas Supply Base and Marine Services will pour in RM3 billion over the next two years to develop an oil and gas hub in Pahang, he added.
Three new hotels costing nearly RM1 billion will be built by private investors, he said.
The projects are part of Mr Najib’s ambitious economic blueprint to secure US$444 billion ($585 billion) of investments over the next decade.
He aims to raise per capita income from US$6,700 to at least US$15,000 — meeting the World Bank’s benchmark for a highincome nation.
Also in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, Finance Ministers from the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations said there was no need to coordinate on the massive inflows of foreign capital into the region for now.
Meanwhile, the proposed link-up between the Singapore Exchange and Bursa Malaysia will be expanded to include Thailand in the second half of next year and the Philippines in 2012, in a move that is expected to enhance access and liquidity in capital markets across the region.
— Malaysia yesterday announced plans for tax incentives to boost its oil and gas industry as well as new multi-billion-dollar projects to drive it towards the goal of becoming a developed nation by 2020.Agencies, with additional reporting by Melissa Goh
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When does scuttlebutt become inside information?
Andrew Ross Sorkin
On Wall Street, it is called the “mosaic theory”.DealBook’s website: “If major banks, whose compliance departments are presumably staffed with former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers, regularly publish industry data like iPhone build and Dell motherboard production changes, the rest of us can reasonably conclude that this must have regulators’ blessing. Otherwise, why would it have been allowed to proceed unchecked for years?”
The New York Times
Andrew Ross Sorkin is an assistant editor of business and finance news at The New York Times.
Every day, professional investors and research analysts work the phones to ferret out information about companies that cannot be found by simply reading news releases. Some will walk through shopping malls interviewing Gap store managers, for example, to gauge how sales are going.
Investors use multiple tidbits of nonpublic information from various sources to build a “mosaic” to try to get an edge on other investors. For better or worse, that is what passes as “research” in the finance world.
Amid a wide-ranging investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal prosecutors into hedge funds and the “expert networks” that supplied them information, some investors may be asking themselves if their “mosaics” may soon be considered “insider trading”.
“The SEC’s recent enforcement docket reflects a belief that certain buy-side investors’ investment activities were rife with insider-trading violations and that there are more to be found,” the law firm Fried Frank wrote in a note to its clients last week.
Indeed, the mosaic theory itself is one of the central defences in the insider trading investigation of Mr Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group.
“Throughout his career, Mr Rajaratnam has worked tirelessly as permitted by the securities laws to build a mosaic of public information about the companies he follows,” his lawyer said.
In other words, Mr Rajaratnam contends that none of the individual bits of scuttlebutt they pick up constitute material insider information; the edge they get, they say, comes from putting it all together. That is the “value add”, in Wall Street parlance.
When young analysts are trained on Wall Street, they often read the CFA Institute’s standards and practices handbook, which declares: “The idea behind the mosaic theory is that each individual piece of information is non-material by itself ...
Taken together, however, the bits of information can form a meaningful mosaic. This practice is perfectly legitimate.”
But is it?
While it has long been considered standard practice to ask the local Gap store manager how sales are going, the store manager’s answer may actually fall into a grey area.
According to most white-collar lawyers, the ultimate test is whether the information is “material”.
In truth, knowing the sales at one Gap store is not material because the company has some 3,100 stores around the globe.
However, if you went store to store and managed to find out sales figures for 1,000 of them, you might have something closer to “material” information. Materiality, according to law firm Fried Frank, is “information that a reasonable investor would consider significant in deciding whether to purchase or sell a company’s securities”.
It is the breadth of that definition that has some people worried that it will be stretched even further.
Mr John Kinnucan, a principal at Broadband Research in Portland, Oregon, wrote on
Many of the “expert networks” that may be a target of the government’s investigation help investors ferret out such behind-the scenes information. “The intrinsic purpose of these firms, which is to help uncover non-public information, does not violate insider trading regulation,” Integrity Research Associates wrote on its website last week after a series of FBI raids of hedge funds.
Whatever suits are brought, many of them may be compared to a 1973 insidertrading case against Raymond Dirks, a research analyst. According to Fried Frank’s memo, the court in that case determined that insider trading could be established only if prosecutors proved three separate points:
That the tipper has breached his fiduciary duty to the shareholders by disclosing the information to the tippee; the tippee “knows or should know that there has been a breach”, and that some benefit inured to the tipper as a result of providing the information.
But there may be an even more important and larger lesson in the Dirks case. All this “research” is actually quite important, even if it gets close to the line. Otherwise, investors would be left making decisions simply based on what they are fed by companies.
The Supreme Court, which ended up ruling against the SEC in the Dirks case, wrote that if he had been found guilty, it “could have an inhibiting influence on the role of market analysts, which the SEC itself recognises is necessary to the preservation of a healthy market”.
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MFA spokesma n expresses concerns over WikiLeaks
In response to media queries, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman “expressed deep concerns about the damaging action” of WikiLeaks in releasing “confidential and secret-graded US diplomatic correspondence”.
The spokesman said: “It is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence, which is why Singapore has the Officials Secrets Act.
In particular, the selective release of documents, especially when taken out of context, will only serve to sow confusion and fail to provide a complete picture of the important issues that were being discussed (among) leaders in the strictest of confidentiality.”
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WikiLeaked:
MM’s closed-door meeting with US Deputy Secretary
Loh Chee Kong
SINGAPORE
Among the some 250,000 US diplomatic memos — which are marked as “secret” — released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks were details of a meeting in May last year held at the Istana between US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
The leaked six-page document was published in full on
During the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue last year, Mr Steinberg stressed the importance of Chinese cooperation in addressing the North Korean nuclear issue and sought Mr Lee’s take on China and the rogue state.
Mr Lee was also asked for his views on the Chinese economy, Taiwanese and Chinese leaders, as well as Sino-American relations.
According to the document, Mr Lee said that, while China does not want North Korea to have nuclear weapons, “the Chinese do not want North Korea ... to collapse” — given that if South Korea takes over the North, China “could face a US presence at its border”.
Mr Lee also noted that the North Korean leadership has “no friends, not even Russia” and has not trusted China since the Chinese began cultivating ties with South Korea with an eye on attracting foreign investment.
Describing the North Koreans as “psychopathic types, with a ‘flabby old chap’ for a leader who prances around the stadium seeking adulation”, Mr Lee said he had learnt from living through the Japanese Occupation that “people will obey authorities who can deny them food, clothing and medicine”.
Mr Lee also said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s successor “may not have the gumption or the bile of his father or grandfather ... and may not be prepared to see people die like flies”. China is calculating all these, said Mr Lee, who also expressed worry about the effect of North Korea on Iran.
Unlike North Korea, Iran “has very high ambitions”, is rich and has ties to Shiite communities in other parts of the world, Mr Lee noted.
On the Chinese economy, Mr Lee said China’s leadership would shift temporarily — by providing microfinance — to a more consumption-oriented economy, “if only to avoid unrest”.
Mr Lee noted that “the pragmatists are in charge. There is nothing Communist about it.
They just want to preserve one-party rule.”
Turning to cross-straits relations, Mr Lee said that China’s President Hu Jintao — unlike his predecessor Jiang Zemin — was “more patient and does not have any fixed timeline” to resolve the Taiwan issue.
“What mattered to Hu was that Taiwan not seek independence”, Mr Lee said, according to the document.
On China’s rise, Mr Lee noted that the Chinese “are not stupid” and have avoided the mistake of Germany and Japan which tried to “challenge the existing order”.
Mr Lee said China would not reach America’s level of military capabilities “anytime soon, but (it) is rapidly developing asymmetrical means to deter US military power”.
“China understands its growth depends on imports, including energy, raw materials and food,” Mr Lee said.
Revealing that his own experience as a student in the United Kingdom had left him with “an enduring fondness”
for the UK, Mr Lee said the best course for the US on China is to “build ties with China’s young people” — by treating Chinese students in the US as equals and “with the cultural support they may need as foreigners”. — The Republic has also fallen victim to the massive leak of classified documents which were sent from United States embassies around the world to the US State Department.The Guardian’s website and was picked up quickly by news wires and blogs. news editor | cheekong@mediacorp.com.sg
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The SECRET
A Secret Is nOt SECRET
nO Secret Is SECRET
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Secrets? Wait, we’ve heard it all before
Praveen Swami
Breaking news: Secret United States diplomatic cables tell us there’s corruption in Afghanistan. Mr Ahmed Zia Massoud, Afghanistan’s former Vice-President, was found to be carrying US$52 million ($69 million) in cash — which a message from the American Embassy in Kabul, recently made public by WikiLeaks, said he was “allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination”. But wait a minute: I’d read that already, and not in the thousands of diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.Ariana later named Mr Massoud and Mr Yunus Qanuni, the Speaker of Afghanistan’s Parliament.The Washington Post and The New York Times on Afghanistan’s corrupt elite than from WikiLeaks.
The New York Times
It couldn’t have been that much of a secret because the
Learning that US diplomats have discussed what to do if North Korea implodes isn’t a revelation, either. Leaving aside the minor point that it would have been grossly irresponsible for US and South Korean diplomats not to discuss the prospect, these discussions have been public for months.
This isn’t the only very public secret in the WikiLeaks pile. One cable records a Chinese contact telling the US Embassy in Beijing that the hacking of Google’s computer servers was carried out by government operatives and Internet outlaws recruited by its government. Mr Shawn Carpenter, an analyst at Sandia National Laboratories, provided evidence on China’s cyber attacks in 2005, and Mrs Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, publicly demanded an explanation from the Chinese in January.
WikiLeaks tells us that Bonn was pressured by US diplomats not to enforce warrants against Central Intelligence Agency operatives for kidnapping German national Khalid Al Masri, who was mistaken for a top Al Qaeda operative. Appalled? Many were, when
Oh, and there’s news that the US spies on the UN — which broke back in 2003.
There’s bound to be embarrassment in some countries, of course. Yemen’s President, for example, might not be thrilled to be outed as a closet supporter of US air strikes against Al Qaeda units in his country — even though the rest of the world has known they’re going on for many months.
Saudi Arabia’s King might also be irate at seeing a written record of his ambassador to the US saying his country wanted attacks to end Iran’s nuclear programme — “to cut off the head of the snake”, as he put it. But, like Yemen’s counter-terrorism policy, Saudi Arabia’s sentiments are hardly secret. In August, as Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr prepared to go online, the Saudi newspaper
For anyone looking to make sense of our troubled world, then, the release of these diplomatic cables offers little beyond some validation of what has long been known — but there are important lessons to be learned from the media attention they’ve generated.
In a thoughtful interview, Chip Berlet, a political researcher, noted that both the political Left and Right in the US were increasingly prone to “Manichean thinking: There are evil forces in the world and good people have to expose them, and everything will be fine once they are exposed. This is a magical explanation of how the world works.”
The fact is that the paranoiacs are gaining strength because of the diminishing time both the media and its consumers are willing to devote to real knowledge about the world around them. In recent years, conspiratorialist thinking has led to the exercise of state power being cast as a dark art practiced by sorcerers in the service of evil power.
WikiLeaks’ media partners have done a real disservice by having pandered to this delusion.
The answer, though, isn’t outrage:
It’s information.
The Daily Telegraph
The writer is the Daily Telegraph’s diplomatic editor. , for example, claims to have discovered that “the United States has mounted a highly-secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly-enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device”.Washington Post knew about it four years ago.Der Spiegel reported it years ago.Al Madina editorially observed that “some may consider the military option to be the best solution”.
For all the column inches of space being lavished on the WikiLeaks cables, the secrets they contain are spectacularly underwhelming. There’s a lot more to be learned about the world around us from nothing more secret than old newspapers, than from the treasures Mr Julian Assange has brought up from the beast’s lair.
The tale of Mr Massoud’s cash-laden suitcases is a case in point. Back in 2007, Arab newspapers had reported that unidentified Afghan officials had been held in the UAE with several million in cash and antiques. The Afghan television station
Both denied wrongdoing.
Even if I hadn’t known about the tale, I’d still learn much more from reporters for
The United Nations kindly hosts a very helpful history of the relationship between corruption and state-building in Afghanistan.
It’s hard not to suspect that headline writers have attempted to sex up the socalled WikiLeaks secrets to justify the hype.
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The Result of Cutting Down Too Many Trees.....
We have to stop cutting down trees. This is getting serious.
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RWM to aid in BIMPEaga opportunities
by Ting Chiong Ping. Posted on November 29, 2010, Monday
MANILA: The Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga) has much business opportunities in store with the presence of Resorts World Manila (RWM), one of the numerous integrated resorts under the Genting brand.
SIGNED AND SEALED: (From left) Chua, Lim and Abdul Farid Alias, Maybank deputy head, head of global wholesale banking, Abdul Farid Alias show the members of the press the signed documents at the signing ceremony.
David Chua, president of Genting Hong Kong Ltd (Genting Hong Kong) which operates RWM said, “The BIMP-Eaga countries share a common heritage and we are working to bring more tourists into the immediate Philippines area.”
He further said that there was lot of growth potential where the region was concerned and the natural heritage of the Philippines was a strong factor in attracting tourists to the country.
In addition, RWM was still pretty much an ongoing project with more infrastructure in terms of hotels still to come and also some new attractions to ensure it catered to tourists from all walks of life.
Chua also reiterated that while this was the case, the majority of RWM would be geared towards the emphasis on a lifestyle-theme of operations.
Furthermore, he divulged that Genting Hong Kong, which also operated global cruises under the Star Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Lines brands, would be embarking on a new route sometime in February or March next year.
“Superstar Libra will be taking on the Penang- Phuket-Krabi route,” he added. Chua was speaking on the sidelines of the recently concluded signing of a US$600 million syndicated loan facility agreement by Genting Hong Kong.
The company believed that it was an opportune time to undertake such a refinancing exercise given the attractive terms and pricing. It secured this loan facility with its eight-vessel Asian fleet.
“We are pleased to have this opportunity to work with our key relationship banks which have a sound understanding of our company and have shown consistent support over the years,” said Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, chairman and CEO of Genting Hong Kong.
Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank), Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, DnB NOR Bank ASA, RHB Bank (L) Ltd, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Ltd acted as joint mandated lead arrangers, underwriters and bookrunners in the transaction.
The signing ceremony was held at the newly opened Genting Club in RWM, the host of the Genting Group’s 45th year anniversary celebrations.
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O V E R H E A R D :
Healthway Owner was nOt wIllIng tO sell.
Thomson Owner was wIllIng tO sell.
yummygd ( Date: 22-Nov-2010 10:45) Posted:
| chill la. He wanna collect or take over. But 0,19 too high lor. So he sell make some money den side line. |
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The Eight of Clubs Person
The Card of Mental Power
BullishTempo ( Date: 29-Nov-2010 11:26) Posted:
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As the curtain rose in Cancun, Mexico, on the next round of international talks on climate change, expectations are low that the delegates will agree on a new treaty to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. They were unable to do so last year in Copenhagen and since then the negotiating positions of the biggest countries have grown even further apart. Yet it is still possible to make significant progress.
METHANE AND HFCS
Take methane, for example, which is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing warming.
It is emitted by coal mines, landfills, rice paddies and livestock. And because it is the main ingredient in natural gas, it leaks from many older natural-gas pipelines.
With relatively minor changes — for example, replacing old gas pipelines, better managing the water used in rice cultivation (so that less of the rice rots) and collecting the methane emitted by landfills — it would be possible to lower methane emissions by 40 per cent. Since saved methane is a valuable fuel, some of this effort could pay for itself.
Unfortunately, the accounting systems used in climate diplomacy are cumbersome and offer relatively few incentives for countries to make much effort to control methane. Big cuts are also possible in HFCs, many of which are used as refrigerants in air-conditioners and other cooling systems.
The most troubling of the shortlived HFCs were invented to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), refrigerants that were thinning the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere and were also a major warming agent.
CFCs were regulated under the Montreal Protocol starting in 1987.
These representatives just want to get OTHER PEOPLE to DO the RIGHT THING
but NEVER WANT TO COMMIT THEMSELVES to DO the SAME RIGHT THING ? ? ? ?
The warming effect of these HFCs is at least 1,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Unless they are regulated as CFCs have been, their warming effect will increase substantially in the coming decades.
Shifting from HFCs to substitutes that are 100 times less potent as climate warmers could offset nearly a decade’s increase in warming that is expected from rising emissions of carbon dioxide. The delegates in Cancun would need only to ask that the Montreal Protocol take on the further authority to regulate HFCs.
OZONE AND SOOT
From a political point of view, the most appealing greenhouse emissions to reduce are ozone and soot because they contribute so much to local air pollution.
After all, people everywhere care about the quality of the air they breathe and see — even if most of them are not yet very worried about global warming. A desire to clean up the air is a rare point of commonality between developing and industrialised nations.
Ozone, which is formed in the lower atmosphere from carbon monoxide, methane and other gases mitted by human activity, is a particularly hazardous component of urban smog. And every year it causes tens of billions of dollars in damage to crops worldwide. So pollution restrictions that reduce ozone levels, especially in the rapidly growing polluted cities of Asia, could both clear the air and slow warming.
Soot likewise offers an opportunity to marry local interests with the global good. A leading cause of respiratory diseases, soot is responsible for some 1.9 million deaths a year. It also melts ice and snow packs. Thus, sooty emissions from Asia, Europe and North America are helping to thin the Arctic ice. And soot from India, China and a few other countries threatens water supplies fed by the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers.
New air pollution regulations could help reduce soot.
Such laws in California have cut diesel-soot emissions in that state by half.
In China and India, a programme to improve power generation, filter soot from diesel engines, reduce emissions from brick-making kilns and provide more efficient cookstoves could cut the levels of soot in those regions by about two-thirds — and benefit countries downwind as well.
Reducing soot and the other short-lived pollutants would not stop global warming but it would buy time, perhaps a few decades, for the world to put in place more costly efforts to regulate carbon dioxide. And it would help the major economies demonstrate credibility on climate change, which has been in short supply in the diplomatic talks so far.
The impasse that was evident in Copenhagen last year and is likely to reappear in Cancun arises in part from the inability of China, India, Europe and the United States to show that they are adopting practical measures to slow climate change.
Agreeing on a shared strategy to curtail short-lived pollutants would be a good way for all of them to start.
For too long, overly ambitious global climate talks have focused on the aspects of global warming that are hardest to solve.
A few more modest steps, with quick and measurable effects are a better way to proceed.
The New York Times
To give these talks their best chance for success, the delegates in Cancun should move beyond their focus on long-term efforts to stop warming and take a few immediate, practical actions that could have a tangible effect on the climate in the coming decades.
The opportunity to make progress arises from the fact that global warming is caused by two separate types of pollution.
One is the long-term buildup of carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries. Diplomacy has understandably focused on this problem because, without deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, there can be no permanent solution to warming.
The carbon dioxide problem is hard to fix, however, because it comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which is so essential to modern life and commerce. It will take decades and trillions of dollars to convert all the world’s fossil fuel-based energy systems to cleaner systems like nuclear, solar and wind power. In the meantime, a fast-action plan is needed.
But carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that contributes to global warming.
Other potent warming agents include three short-lived gases — methane, some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and lower atmospheric ozone — and dark soot particles. The warming effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several days to about a decade, is already about 80 per cent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes.
The world could easily and quickly reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems needed to do so are already in place.
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Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. David G Victor, a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of the forthcoming “Global Warming Gridlock”.
pharoah88 ( Date: 29-Nov-2010 11:12) Posted:
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Clear the air to fight climate change
Why do global talks focus on hardest-to-solve problems, when we can start with modest, quicker steps?
Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G Victor
The warming effect of methane, HFCs, soot particles and lower atmospheric ozone is already about 80 per cent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes.
The world could easily and quickly reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems needed are already in place. |
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Clear the air to fight climate change
Why do global talks focus on hardest-to-solve problems, when we can start with modest, quicker steps?
Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G Victor
The warming effect of methane, HFCs, soot particles and lower atmospheric ozone is already about 80 per cent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes.
The world could easily and quickly reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems needed are already in place.
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Why the income cap on this merit bursary?
Letter from Paul A Fernandez
THE Edusave Merit Bursary is given at the end of every year to deserving students who have done well in their examinations.
Every year, both my children study diligently knowing very well that the Government will reward those who do exceptionally well.
This year, my children have been dismayed by a new income cap on the bursary and wonder why they are being discriminated against when their parents have upgraded themselves so that they can earn more in order to provide their children with a better life.
We have received letters from our Member of Parliament congratulating our sons on their academic excellence.
This made them happy.
However, on reading the whole letter, my children found that they did not qualify for the award because there was an income cap of $4,000.
My children have received similar awards from the community development council in previous years and these were the impetus for them to strive to do better.
As this award is given out only yearly, I would like to urge the authorities not to penalise children whose parents upgrade themselves to provide a better life for their families.
cOntrary tO merItOcracy practIce ? ? ? ?
jUst REWARD The BEST wIthOUt restrIctIOn ? ? ? ?
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WHO is STRONG ? ? ? ?
WHO is weak ? ? ? ?
Is North sO STRONG ? ? ? ?
Is sOUth sO weak ? ? ? ?
Is Rest Of wOrld sO sO weak ? ? ? ?
firewood ( Date: 28-Nov-2010 14:56) Posted:
YEONPYEONG ISLAND,
South Korea – South Korea's government ordered journalists to leave a
front-line island Sunday, citing tensions with North Korea, hours after the U.S. and South Korea launched a round of war games in Korean waters.
The
South Korean Defense minister said journalists must leave because the
"situation is not good" on Yeonpyeong Island, which was targeted last
week by a deadly North Korean barrage.
Earlier
Sunday, the sound of new artillery fire from North Korea sent residents
and journalists on the front-line island scrambling for cover.
None
of the rounds landed on the island, military officials said, but the
incident showed how tense and uncertain the situation remains along the
Koreas' disputed maritime border five days after a North Korean
artillery attack decimated parts of the island and killed four South
Koreans.
As the rhetoric from North Korea
escalated, with new warnings of a "merciless" assault if further
provoked, a top Chinese official made a last-minute visit to Seoul to
confer with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Washington and Seoul
have urged China, North Korea's main ally and benefactor, to help
defuse the situation amid fears of all-out war. Beijing has called for
restraint on all sides.
Lee pressed State
Councilor Dai Bingguo, a senior foreign policy adviser, to contribute
to peace in a "more objective, responsible" matter, and warned that
Seoul would respond "strongly" to any further provocation, his office
said in a statement.
Dai forwarded Beijing's condolences and pledged China's help in preventing tensions from worsening, Lee's office said.
Meanwhile,
the chairman of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, Choe Thae Bok,
was due to visit Beijing starting Tuesday, China's official Xinhua News
Agency said.
The border between North and South
Korea is among the world's most heavily fortified, with the peninsula
still technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 war ended with
a truce, not a peace treaty.
North Korea also
disputes the maritime border drawn by U.N. forces at the close of the
war, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong Island — 50 miles (80
kilometers) from the South Korean port of Incheon but just 7 miles (11
kilometers) from the North Korean mainland — its territory.
The
area has seen several bloody skirmishes, including the sinking of a
South Korean warship eight months ago, killing 46 sailors. An
international team of investigators concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the ship, but Pyongyang denies any involvement.
Tuesday's
attack on the island, which has military bases as well as a civilian
population of 1,300 who mostly make their living from fishing, marked a
new level of hostility. Two marines and two civilians were killed, and
18 others wounded, when the North rained artillery on Yeonpyeong in one
of the worst assaults since the Korean War.
North
Korea said Saturday the civilian deaths were "regrettable," but blamed
South Korea for staging military drills against Pyongyang's warnings
that it would consider such exercises a provocation. Pyongyang accused
Seoul of using Yeonpyeong's residents as human shields.
The
North Korea military also has mounted conventional, surface-to-air SA-2
missiles on launch pads on a west coast base, aiming them at South
Korean fighter jets flying near the western sea border, the Yonhap news
agency reported, citing an unidentified South Korean government source.
South Korea's military
said it couldn't confirm the deployments. An official at the Joint
Chiefs of Staff said the North had already deployed anti-ship missiles
on its west coast bases.
The previously planned joint war games launched Sunday by the U.S. and South Korea were sure to heighten the tensions.
Ships
from both countries entered the exercise zone Sunday, an official with
South Korea's joint chiefs of staff said on condition of anonymity,
citing office rules.
Washington, which keeps
28,500 troops in South Korea to protect the ally, insists the drills
involving the USS George Washington supercarrier were routine and
planned well before last Tuesday's attack. However, North Korea
expressed outrage over the Yellow Sea drills.
"We will launch merciless counter-military strikes against any
provocative moves that infringe upon our country's territorial waters,"
the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an editorial carried
by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Sunday's burst of artillery fire in North Korea was the second
in three days. Authorities briefly ordered residents to evacuate,
before recalling the order.
"We got the report that North Korea's artillery batteries were
in the 'ready-to fire' posture," police chief Choi Du-gyu said. "So we
decided to order residents to evacuate to keep them safe."
North Korea also staged an apparently artillery drill Friday,
the guns sounding just as the U.S. military's top commander in the
region, Gen. Walter Sharp, was touring Yeonpyeong Island. No shells landed anywhere in South Korean territory.
Tuesday's attack reduced dozens of homes on the island to rubble. All but a handful of residents have evacuated to the mainland.
As monks chanted their morning prayers at Jogye Temple, Shim
Jeong-wook, 74, said he didn't think North Korea would attack again,
not with a U.S. aircraft carrier group in South Korean waters.
"I don't think North Korea will provoke while the U.S. Navy
fleet is in the Yellow Sea," he said. "But who knows what will happen
when it leaves?"
___
Jean H. Lee reported from Seoul. AP writers Hyung-jin Kim and
Kelly Olsen in Seoul, Christopher Bodeen and Gillian Wong in Beijing
and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.
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World’s Largest Family Home Completed
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the photo below is off some new, European, eco-friendly apartment complex but it is actually the world’s largest, and most expensive family home.
Just completed, the 27-storey ‘house’ (the equivalent of 60 floors in a regular skyscraper) is owned by India’s richest man – and No. 4 On Forbes’ Rich List – Mukesh Ambani, and cost a mere $1 billion to build. Recession? What recession?
Mukesh will be living in some small part of it with his wife and three kids but let’s not forget the 600 staff needed to keep it spic and span.
The Antilia house was designed by…..
…..architecture firms Perkins+Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates and alongside the almost 400,000 square feet – yes, 400,000 square feet – of living space, there’s three helicopter pads, full health gym, cinema, nine elevators, ballroom, lounges and 160-car garage. Oh, and it’s meant to be pretty green too although there’s not much evidence of that here.
The building was meant to be draped in a jungle of greenery according to the original plans – but maybe that was just to slip it past planners. More shots below.
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World's Most Expensive USD1 Billion 27-Storey Apartment
MUKESH AMBANI [USD27 Billion Billionaire]
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