Food lovers raced to grab fake abalones this morning in a contest to win the real thing at the opening of the five-day Hong Kong Food Expo, one of the most popular annual events in the city.
About 10 particular eager foodies queued up early in the morning to participate in the contest to buy discounted abalones, a Chinese delicacy.
The contestants had to grab as many mock abalones stuck on a mountain-like structure as they can in a minute. For each fake one they grab, they can buy a real abalone for HK$1.
One contestant, who only gave his name as Mr Wong, grabbed about 150 abalones worth HK$5,000, but he paid just HK$150.
“I am very happy,” a triumphant Wong said. “They will be all eaten up!”
For people who experience acute liver failure, the only proven treatment has been liver transplantation.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic in the US have developed and are testing an alternative to liver transplantation called the Spheroid Reservoir Bioartificial Liver that can support healing and regeneration of the injured liver, and improve outcomes and reduce mortality rates for patients with acute liver failure – without requiring a transplant.
Developed by Dr Scott L. Nyberg, principal investigator in the Artificial Liver and Liver Transplantation Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, and liver transplant surgeon, the device uses healthy hepatocytes, or liver cells, from pigs to do the job of a normal, healthy liver, which aids in digestion and the removal of waste and toxins from the bloodstream.
Treatment with the Spheroid Reservoir Bioartificial Liver (SRBAL) has been shown to reduce the severity of liver disease and improve survival in pigs.
Tianjin (China) – A series of enormous explosions at an industrial area in the Chinese port of Tianjin killed at least 44 people and injured more than 500, state media reported Thursday, unleashing a fireball that ripped through the night sky.
An AFP reporter at the scene saw shattered glass up to three kilometres (two miles) from the blast site, after a shipment of explosives detonated in a warehouse, raining debris on the city and starting huge fires.
Images showed a monumental blast soaring into the air, walls of flame enveloping buildings, ranks of burned-out cars, and shipping containers scattered like children’s building blocks.
Paramedics stretchered the wounded into the city’s hospitals as doctors bandaged up victims, many of them covered in blood after the impact of the explosion was felt for several kilometres, even being picked up by a Japanese weather satellite.
“The fireball was huge, maybe as much as 100 metres tall,” said 27-year-old Huang Shiting, who lives close to the site.
“I heard the first explosion and everyone went outside, then there was a series of more explosions, windows shattered and a lot of people who were inside were hurt and came running out, bleeding,” he told AFP.
Images obtained by AFP showed residents, some partially clothed, running for shelter on a street strewn with debris.
Citing rescue headquarters, the official Xinhua news agency said 44 people were killed, including 12 firefighters.
Scores of firefighters were already on the scene before the explosion, responding to reports of a fire, and at one city hospital a doctor wept over the remains of a firefighter still in uniform, his skin blackened from smoke, as he was wheeled past, along with two other bodies.
A breakthrough in the search last week came when the Dato Seri Najib (Malaysian PM) confirmed that parts of the aircraft had been found on Reunion Island, off the coast of Africa.
Further debris was found in the Maldives with many hopeful more could be identified as part of the missing plane.
But Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai confirmed last night that “most of the debris are negative. They are not related to MH370 and they are not plane material.”
Around 1.15 pm, the ringgit was trading around 2.89 to the Sing dollar. It had earlier fallen to an all-time low of 2.9346 to the Sing dollar, according to Bloomberg data.
SINGAPORE: The Malaysian ringgit dropped to new lows against the Singapore and US dollars earlier on Friday (Aug 14), hurt by falling oil prices, political turmoil at home, as well as jitters about emerging markets following China’s surprise decision to devalue its currency earlier this week.
Kayla Mueller, the United States aid worker killed this year while being held hostage by Islamic State militants, was raped repeatedly by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while in captivity in Syria, US officials said on Friday.
Her parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, were told by US government officials that their daughter had been raped by al-Baghdadi and tortured during her captivity, family spokeswoman Emily Lenzner told Reuters by telephone. Mueller was 26 at the time of her death and would have turned 27 on Friday.
“We can confirm that the Mueller family learned in June of Kayla’s treatment from the FBI,” Lenzner said.
ABC News first reported al-Baghdadi’s sexual abuse of Mueller, and US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the report. ABC News quoted Mueller’s parents as saying they were told by the US government their daughter “was the property of al-Baghdadi”.
Consortium Zenith BUCG Sdn Bhd will begin construction works on three major highways under its RM6.3 billion transportation project early next year.
Expecting to begin construction work on the three highways by early 2016.
The three highway projects are
12km paired road from Jalan Tanjung Bungah to Teluk Bahang 4.6km bypass from Air Itam to Lebuhraya Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu 4.2km bypass from Gurney Drive to Lebuhraya Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu
The three highway projects is part of the RM6.3 billion transportation project that also includes a 6.5km undersea tunnel linking Penang island and the mainland.
Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN)- Indonesian searchers believe they have located debris from an airliner that crashed in a mountainous area with 54 people on board.
A search plane spotted the wreckage Monday, but a ground team hasn’t yet been able to reach it, said Raymond Konstantin, an official for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency.
Authorities had said earlier that villagers in a remote area of Indonesia’s eastern Papua province reported seeing the passenger plane crash into a mountain.
It’s the Southeast Asian nation’s third air disaster in less than eight months.
The ATR42-300 turboprop aircraft operated by Trigana Air Service was carrying 44 adult passengers, five children and five crew members when it went missing during a short domestic flight Sunday. All of those on board were Indonesian, authorities told CNN Indonesia.
I agree that funding the Malaysia-Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) will be a challenge.
Given that the projected costs are substantial, funding of such magnitude is best left to a state-investment model, whereby the system is publicly funded, and management delegated to a specialised firm.
Given the operational complexity and requisite expertise, existing HSR operators would be the most suitable candidates to supply a complete system under a turnkey model at competitive prices and favourable terms to make the project cost-effective.
SHAH ALAM: The days of “free” water for Selangor residents may be over as the state government is mulling the re-evaluation of its free 20 cubic meters water programme.
Mentri Besar Mohamed Azmin Ali said the move to re-evaluate the programme was to ascertain if it is actually fulfils its main objective of benefiting the lower income group as was intended.
“Instead of the poor benefiting from the free water, we see that there have been cases where it was used for other purposes like gardening,” he said.
Uber is once again sharpening its focus on India after the U.S. company announced it has landed a strategic investment from Tata Opportunities Fund (TOF), a third-party private equity fund sponsored by Tata Capital, one of India’s largest wealth management organizations.
The size of the investment has not been disclosed, but it is described as “significant.” TOF is around $600 million in size, of which $400 million has been committed to date across engineering, hotels, real estate and other verticals. The fund is backed by Tata Capital, and this closer alliance will help Uber “expand its services and solutions in India” using the fund and Tata Capital’s extensive network. The deal is also notably TOF’s first investment in a non-Indian company.
A woman found a use for her excess breast milk – making more than 100 bars of soap.
The mother Qi Tsao, a resident of Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, said she had wondered what to do with the left over milk that her four-month-old baby turned his nose up at.
She said: “He only ever drinks around half of the milk that I produce, so I decided to keep the surplus and ended up creating soap.
According to The Star, the controversial East Klang Valley Expressway (EKVE) project has been approved by the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ). Its council president, Abdul Hamid Hussain, said the project was approved during a special One Stop Centre (OSC) committee meeting on August 12.
Speaking to the daily, Abdul Hamid said that “some of the conditions that the project developer Ahmad Zaki Resources Bhd (AZRB) must adhere to include submitting the latest Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA) study, verified by an independent body. A latest study of the Social Impact Assessment must also be submitted to the council, and AZRB must take into account improvements suggested by the residents in the proposed construction of the highway.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China has reclaimed more land in the disputed Spratly Islands of the South China Sea than previously known, according to a new Pentagon report, and a senior U.S. defense official said it was unclear whether Beijing had stopped island-building in the region.
“China has said that it … has stopped reclamation. … It’s not clear to us that they’ve stopped,” Assistant Defense Secretary David Shear told a Pentagon briefing on Friday as the department released a report on its Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy.
Shear said ongoing Chinese activity may simply be “finishing up” what Beijing started rather than adding more territory, but “we are watching it carefully” for signs of further construction or militarization.
Researchers say extra nights of passion may leave people feeling tired out Scientists from U.S. studied intimate habits of around 80 married couples Half asked to have sex twice as often and others told to stick to routine Those who had more sex had reduced sexual happiness and enjoyment
BANGKOK — When a military coup last year ended months of political turmoil and violence in Thailand, even some democracy advocates welcomed the junta’s promise to restore stability and return “happiness to the people”.
But 15 months later, a deadly bomb that ripped through a venerated shrine in downtown Bangkok highlights a critical question: Are the generals losing their grip on troubles blitzing them from all directions, in a land that once seemed endowed with a magic touch?
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the former army chief who engineered the May 2014 coup, has said he had to take over the government to end protests and political clashes that left about 30 people dead. With the junta cracking down on dissent, most of the country had been relatively peaceful until the Aug 17 bombing, which killed 20 people and injured scores of others.
Speculation about possible motives and culprits ranges from anti-government radicals to Muslim extremists to a renegade military faction, underscoring the array of woes facing the country. Prayuth described the attack as “the worst incident that has ever happened in Thailand”.
Even now, 17 months after Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 vanished from the radar, some quarters are disputing the accuracy of the data from United Kingdom-based global satellite communications firm Inmarsat, from which Malaysia drew the conclusion that the flight had ended in the southern Indian Ocean.
Did Inmarsat get its numbers right?
The answer, according to local satellite communications expert Zaaim Redha Abdul Rahman, is a resounding “Yes”.
He said based on his own study on the analysis of the Inmarsat data, the information which led to the conclusion the flight had ended in the southern Indian Ocean was “correct”.
According to him, the Inmarsat data was to a certain extent also consistent with the radar data, which yielded the flight paths, in the first one hour and 41 minutes of the flight.
“When our Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Najib Razak) made the announcement (on March 24, 2014 that flight MH370 had ended in the southern Indian Ocean), a number of people had criticised Inmarsat’s analysis and some even thought that the conclusion was deliberately made up to satisfy everyone.
“After the MH370 aircraft vanished from the military radar somewhere above the Andaman Sea, we pretty much had zero information… only Inmarsat data kept giving us clues.
“After the raw data was eventually released to the public, most critics became quiet as the data extracted from the Inmarsat database was not easy to read, let alone analyse. Only those with a background in mobile satellite systems were able to comprehend it,” he told Bernama in an interview here recently.
BANGKOK – Police said on Monday the trail had gone cold in the hunt for a bomber a week after 20 people were killed in Thailand’s worst ever bomb attack, and they were unsure if the chief suspect was still in the country.
Although half of the 14 foreigners killed in the blast at Bangkok’s most famous Hindu shrine were from mainland China or Hong Kong, tour operators said there was little sign that Chinese holidaymakers had been put off visiting Thailand, providing some relief for the economy, at least.
The main evidence police have to go on is security camera footage. Some, from the Erawan shrine, shows the suspected bomber slipping off a backpack and walking away.
Ten people were killed while thousands fled to higher ground as powerful typhoon Goni brought torrential rains to the northern Philippines, triggering landslides and floods, officials said Saturday.
Nine people died in Mountain Province and Benguet in the northern highlands after their houses were buried in rocks and mud. A man was killed in nearby Ilocos Norte province after he was hit by a falling tree, the national disaster council said in a report.
Three people were reported missing in flooded areas while seven others were injured. Close to 13,000 people had been evacuated by nightfall, the report said.
Typhoon Goni was 130 kilometres northeast of the Batanes island chain on Saturday evening, with winds of up to 185kph (115mph), according to the state weather bureau.
In the northern province of Abra, two straight days of heavy rains caused a major river to overflow, governor Eustaquio Bersamin said.
“The Abra river has turned into an ocean,” Bersamin told DZMM radio.
“The rains were much stronger than we expected,” he said.
Thirteen domestic flights were cancelled on Saturday, the disaster council said.
GEORGE TOWN: Penangites woke up to a hazy morning with the horizontal visibility level decreased sharply in Bayan Lepas, Penang.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department monitoring station in Bayan Lepas showed the visibility level decreasing from 7km at 8am to 4km at 11am.
The monitoring station in Butterworth also showed a decrease in horizontal visibility level from 6km (8am) to 5km (11am).
The Department of Environment online portal showed that the Air Pollutant Index (API) readings at its monitoring station in Seberang Jaya 2 recorded a constant increase from 49 (6am) to 50 (7am) followed by 51 (8am) and 53 at 11am.
The monitoring stations in Universiti Sains Malaysia recorded an API of 47 at 11am, while in the reading was Perai 35 (11am).
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