scmp: Food allergies take high toll on Hong Kong children

調查顯示十五歲以下港童15%患嚴重食物過敏症，超國際平均水平，當中對貝殼類過敏人數最多。

Lo Wei wei.lo@scmp.com
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1138176/food-allergies-take-high-toll-hong-kong-children

More Hong Kong children suffer from severe allergic reactions than the international average, the first large-scale study on food allergies shows.

The findings have prompted calls for more government support in schools and better community understanding for these children

[Percentage of children under 15 years old with allergies] Percentage of children under 15 years old with allergies

"The proportion of children in Hong Kong with a food allergy is no less than that in other countries. The situation should not be underestimated," said Dr Marco Ho Hok-kung, one of the researchers from Queen Mary Hospital.

The city-wide survey of more than 7,000 children aged 14 and under found that 4.8 per cent reported having a food allergy, with shellfish topping the list of culprits. The researchers said Asians should not overlook the possibility of a peanut allergy as the survey found that four in every 1,000 children had it, compared with six in 1,000 in the United States.

Of the 352 children with a food allergy, 15.8 per cent had severe reactions like breathing difficulties and heart problems, higher than the internationally accepted average of 10 per cent.

Ho, a paediatrician who is also an honorary clinical assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the research, completed last year, served as a baseline study.

As chairman of the Hong Kong Allergy Association, he hopes further studies will be done to influence Hong Kong's policies, such as the need for more allergy specialists in hospitals' paediatric departments.

Schools may need to be equipped to give more support to children with allergies as many pupils have meals at school.

Association executive committee member Rosa Li Yu Kar-wai said her 15-year-old daughter had multiple food allergies and faced many problems when her family returned to Hong Kong from Canada 10 years ago. Li asked mainstream schools if they were able to support her daughter if she needed help, such as ensuring that she could get an injection during an emergency.

Some schools told her they could not guarantee help, adding that Li might want to come and take care of her daughter herself. In the end, she found an international school with a nurse on the staff who could help her daughter in emergencies.

Li often had to bring home-cooked food for her daughter when eating out, she said, and sometimes she felt pressured by restaurant staff when trying to get special meals.

"Many Hong Kong people lack understanding of food allergies," Li said. "Overseas, you only have to mention it and people know what it's about."

Ho added that children with food allergies who needed a special diet could be discriminated against. There were cases of bullying reported overseas, he said, and more awareness and support was needed.

WHEN TO REACT

You should seek medical help:

If your child says they cannot breathe or if they seem to be having difficulties breathing.

If there are signs of shock, such as extreme tiredness or a rapid heart rate.

Is it food poisoning or an allergic reaction?

Ninety per cent of allergic reactions affect the skin - so check for rashes.

How to minimise the chances of an allergic reaction when food is introduced to a child's diet for the first time:

Cook the food thoroughly - for example, peanuts in a soup or congee are easier to handle than a serving of peanut butter.

Source: Dr Marco Ho Hok-kung, Queen Mary Hospital

[Harry's view] Harry's view

scmp: Universities offer help with public referendums

港大理大聯合運作民間公投系統，仿效民間特首選舉平台，供團體或政黨對重大社會議題收集民意。

被問及會否怕被北京干預，鐘庭耀教授指選題不會考慮會否引來政治壓力，"we will just do our work"

支持！！

Colleen Lee colleen.lee@scmp.com
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1134645/universities-offer-help-public-referendums

Hongkongers may soon get a chance to make their voices heard on contentious issues like national security legislation and political reform, in a new project from two local universities.

The University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University have put the call out to any groups or politicians who want to hold a public referendum on a particular topic.

The researchers welcomed any submissions on suggested topics, but applicants whose ideas were chosen must bear all operational costs of the public vote, said Robert Chung Ting-yiu, director of the HKU public opinion programme.

"We will not consider the political background of the group when vetting applications," Chung said. "We will kick-start our voting system if they think our PopVote Civil Referendum can help them gauge the public's opinions and if we find the topic appropriate."

HKU launched the project jointly with PolyU's Centre for Social Policy Studies yesterday, citing the lack of a statutory referendum system in the city.

The initiative came 10 months after some 220,000 people picked their ideal chief executive in a mock ballot in March, ahead of the real election and in the absence of universal suffrage. That citywide exercise was conducted by the public opinion programme.

Chung said the PopVote project would not run a vote on "trivial matters". "Civil referendums can be used to collect views on issues of major public interest in society … such as the Article 23 legislation," he said, referring to the Basic Law provision that requires Hong Kong to pass laws prohibiting any act of treason, secession, sedition or subversion against the central government.

Electoral reform for the 2016 Legislative Council and 2017 chief executive elections as well as the government's plan for a new town in the northeastern New Territories could fall within the scope of the plan, Chung said.

But he ruled out a vote on Hong Kong independence as it did not involve major public interest and was impractical. Researchers would not initiate a referendum on their own, he said.

Asked if they feared incurring Beijing's wrath, Chung said: "We won't consider whether there could be huge political pressure on us as we will just do our work."

The project is seeking funds to improve the electronic voting system after hackers disrupted HKU's ballot in March. HKU programme information technology manager Jazz Ma said they aimed to raise HK$800,000 to build a system to handle 800,000 votes.

The March vote also prompted activists to publish a Chinese-language book, Hong Kong My Home Ground . The title hit major bookstores last week.

scmp: British Council removes 'GREAT' ads after colonial flags debate

英國領事館: "GREAT Britain"廣告是推廣來臨的英國升學展覽會，這個全球性宣傳活動，在其他地方內容都一致，唯部份內容在香港被扭曲，數日前決定删去MTR站內的廣告，以免影響整個宣傳活動的原意及成功。

食晒檸檬啦~~ 我都有同感，港英政府比特區政府優秀得多，但講緊嘅地方一直都係香港，同英國本土毫不相干！唔好搞到好似日日都想咸濕返個英國身份來得唔得也。。。單戀到嚇親人，囉到爆！

Patsy Moy patsy.moy@scmp.com
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1134666/british-council-removes-ads-after-great-debate

The British Council has removed eye-catching train station advertisements bearing the UK flag and the slogan "This is GREAT Britain" amid sensitivity over the growing use of the colonial flag as a symbol of opposition to the Hong Kong government.

The ads were put up in Admiralty MTR station last week to promote an education exhibition being held at the weekend but were taken down a few days early. They sparked widespread discussion on the Facebook sites of both private users and the British consulate, with some posters glorifying colonial rule.

Asked why the ads had been taken down, the British Council said some of the wording was "open to misinterpretation".

"The GREAT campaign is being used to promote the upcoming British Council education exhibition," a spokeswoman said. "As a global campaign it has uniform messaging for all markets. Given some of the wording has been subject to misinterpretation in Hong Kong, it was decided to remove those posters a few days early in order not to detract from the positive nature and overall success of the campaign."

The MTR Corporation would not comment beyond saying that advertising in its stations were commercial agreements between the firm and its clients.

On Facebook, one user wrote: "Yes! This is Hong Kong, here is Great Britain!"

Another wrote: "Great Britain built Great Hong Kong!" and "UK has always seemed to mean less at home than to its own nationals and admirers abroad." A picture of the ad attracted more than 90 likes on Facebook.

In recent anti-government rallies, some protesters have waved colonial Hong Kong flags, which have a prominent image of the British flag.

City University political scientist James Sung Lap-kung said those who were enamoured of the colonial regime were mostly young people born in the 1980s and '90s, when Hong Kong was enjoying its heyday socially and economically.

"Before the 1970s, Hong Kong was plagued by a string of injustices and social problems, such as corruption and a wide poverty gap, as well as a lack of social services," he said. "Establishment of the [Independent Commission Against Corruption] in 1974 marked a milestone in Hong Kong's anti-corruption history."

The generation born before the 1970s and those who lived through those days "might not be so impressed by the British rule", Sung said. Many protesters also felt upset by post-handover rule "amid all the ups and downs of Hong Kong", he said, including the 1997 Asian financial turmoil, the Sars epidemic in 2003 and the financial crisis in 2009.

In contrast, they remembered pre-handover Hong Kong as corruption-free, booming economically with an efficient civil service and better public services, "so it is no surprise that they are expressing appreciation for the British government", he said.

scmp: Public could be confused over Leung's policy committees

劉兆佳: 成立16委員會研究政策，顯示梁推行政策遇阻力大

Gary Cheung gary.cheung@scmp.com
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1133948/public-could-be-confused-over-leungs-policy-committees

Committees set up by Leung Chun-ying to study policy issues could cause confusion over whether top officials or committee members are calling the shots in the areas under scrutiny, the government's former top adviser has warned.

Professor Lau Siu-kai, former head of the Central Policy Unit, said the formation of more than a dozen special committees spoke volumes about the resistance to the embattled chief executive's initiatives within the government and the community.

"Judging from my previous experience in the government, Leung would have pressed ahead with those initiatives if there was no resistance," Lau said.

Leung announced in his policy address last week the establishment of 16 committees to study the feasibility of his proposals. Their tasks include standard working hours, free kindergarten education and the development of traditional Chinese medicine.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Lau said Leung's strategy was to drum up support for his initiatives from committee members he appointed in an attempt to overcome opposition within the government.

"But I'm worried that civil servants may face huge difficulties in equipping those committees with research capacity," he said.

"Many Hong Kong people are quite impatient. The Leung administration may land itself in trouble if those committees fail to come up with constructive and thought-through proposals."

Lau, who stepped down in June after a 10-year stint as chief of the government's top think tank, said there was a risk that many committee members would voice their views publicly.

"If their views differ from senior officials, it would unavoidably send conflicting messages to members of the public. People will ask whether policy secretaries or committee members in their policy areas are calling the shots," he said.

Lau said the biggest problem facing Hong Kong was while the old consensus on government, such as positive non-interventionism, had been eroded, the community had yet to reach a new one.

"Most Hong Kong people agree that we must address the poverty gap and ageing population, and that the government should play a more proactive role in tackling these problems. But how big should the government be? Should the government introduce a universal retirement protection scheme? Obviously there is a lack of consensus."

scmp: US software worker outsources his job to China

美國軟件軟件開發人員，用少於自己6位數目薪酬的20%，私下*外判*自己公司工作到中國，控制項目進度於預期計劃之內，獲公司頒發最佳開發員獎，卻平日公司主要是上facebook, eBay。

'Bob’ was a model employee – until an audit found someone in Shenyang doing his work

Amy Li and The Guardian

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/article/1130541/us-software-worker-outsources-his-job-china

A US-based software engineer shocked his bosses and inspired some of his industry peers by outsourcing his job to a company in China for less than one-fifth of his six-figure American salary.

The 40-year-old, whose identity was reported only as "Bob", was at one stage awarded the company's "best developer in the building award" for maintaining a work schedule that in reality consisted mainly of taking long breaks, chatting on Facebook and shopping on eBay.

Bob's fraud was discovered after his employer turned to US telecom services provider Verizon for "help in understanding some anomalous activity that they were witnessing in their VPN [virtual private network] logs", Andrew Valentine, a senior investigator, wrote on his website.

The US company had begun to allow its software developers to work from home occasionally and had set up "a fairly standard VPN concentrator" to facilitate remote access, Valentine wrote.

When its IT security department started monitoring logs being generated at the VPN, "what they found startled and surprised them: an open and active VPN connection from Shenyang ", he said.

"Plainly stated, the VPN logs showed him logged in from China, yet the employee is right there, sitting at his desk, staring into his monitor."

Valentine described Bob as a "family man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn't look twice at in an elevator."

But an examination of his workstation revealed hundreds of PDF invoices from a third party in Shenyang. "Bob spent less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese [consulting] firm to do his job for him."

Based on his web-browsing history, a typical "workday" for Bob was: arrive at 9am and surf Reddit or watch cat videos for a couple of hours; take lunch at 11.30am; go on eBay at 1pm; view Facebook updates and LinkedIn at around 2pm; send an update e-mail to management at 4.40pm; and go home at 5pm.

The evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple firms in the area.

"Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building," wrote Valentine.

The story triggered heated debate when it was translated and posted on China's social network sites, including Sina Weibo.

"Learn English and let's find work in US," read one of 1,600 comments on Sina Weibo. "Why do we have to do the dirty work for such a cheap price in China?"

Valentine did not disclose the identity of Bob's ex-employer. Many Weibo users speculated that Shenyang-based Neusoft was the most likely provider.

REUTERS: Apple executive dismisses cheaper phone as a market share grab: report

路透：中國為iPhone主要生產國
新華網：Time Cook有信心中移動將成為Apple單一最大巿場

咁點解中國無一間型象類似Samsung既公司既?

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Jan 10, 2013 6:46pm EST

(Reuters) - Apple Inc will not resort to a cheaper iPhone to expand its market share, marketing chief Phil Schiller told a Chinese newspaper in an interview when asked about speculation the company is developing a less expensive version of its popular smartphone.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/us-apple-iphone-idUSBRE9091CR20130110

Schiller pointed out that though Apple commanded just 20 percent of the smartphone market, it had 75 percent of the profit, according to an interview he gave the Shanghai Evening News.

The Shanghai Evening News, paraphrasing Schiller's comments, cited the Apple executive as saying the company will not develop a cheap smartphone for the sake of expanding its market share.

Apple confirmed the interview had taken place, but had no further comment for now.

"Originally, many in the Chinese market used feature phones (regular wireless phones). But now a few companies are starting to use cheap smartphones to take the place of feature phones," Schiller was cited as saying in his first interview with a Chinese newspaper.

"But this is not a direction that we want to be heading in with our products," he was quoted as saying in the Chinese-language report.

Apple rarely addresses rumors about upcoming products, which often invite intense speculation. This week, the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources as saying Apple could release a cheaper iPhone as early as this year.

China is Apple's second-largest market and an area of intense focus for the iPad maker as it tries to sustain a rip-roaring pace of growth.

Chief Executive Tim Cook flew to China this week for at least the second time in 12 months, meeting partners and government officials. On Thursday, he called on the chairman of the country's largest wireless carrier, China Mobile, raising hopes that a long-awaited deal between the two can proceed.

In an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency, Cook said he was confident China will someday become the company's single largest market.

(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

scmp: Hongkongers' median income grew only 10 pc in last decade

過去十年，價品上升:
通脹30%
食品90~100%
房屋200~400%
薪酬10%

2011年收入中位數
男13'000
女11'000

City's median wage goes up by only 10 per cent between 2001 and 2011, with income of young adults unchanged in period of rocketing costs

Phila Siu phila.siu@scmp.com
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1125083/hongkongers-median-income-grew-only-10-pc-last-decade

Hongkongers' median pay rose by only about 10 per cent between 2001 and 2011, despite property prices going through the roof and food prices climbing steadily.

According to the Census and Statistics Department, the 2001 median monthly income for men was HK$12,000.

But a decade later it was HK$13,000 - a rise of just 8.3 per cent, and that does not take inflation into account. Women's incomes went up 10 per cent, from HK$10,000 to HK$11,000.

Even more surprising is that the median income for men and women aged 15 to 24 remained unchanged over the 10 years at HK$8,000. The figure also remained unchanged for women aged between 25 and 34, standing at HK$12,000.

Labour Party chairman and lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan was appalled by the findings.

Then and now
https://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/2013/01/11/scm_news_wage_11.art_2.jpg

He said: "This is shocking and miserable. Hongkongers' lives have not improved in a decade and have even turned worse. When the economy is prosperous, bosses offer pay rises of only 2 to 3 per cent.

"But when the economy was not good, like during the Sars crisis, bosses cut their employees' pay by 20 to 30 per cent."

The slow growth in median income was evidence that the wealth gap was still wide, he said.

The gap, measured by the Gini coefficient, hit a record high of 0.537 in 2011.

The index works on a scale from 0 to 1, with a higher score indicating greater income inequality.

Lee urged Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to introduce standard working hours and offer more allowances to the poor when he delivers his first policy address on Wednesday.

An associate professor of economics at Chinese University, Terence Chong Tai-leung, estimated the inflation rate for the decade was about 30 per cent.

But while inflation takes into account a range of goods, he believed the cost of food had increased a lot more.

Statistics from the census department supported his views.

The average retail price for 1kg of top-grade chicken was HK$35.81 in 2001 but had shot up to HK$83.4 in 2011.

The price for 1kg of hung sam yu, or golden thread, a common type of fish, also soared, from HK$40.35 to HK$74.39, while a kilogram of white cabbage rose from HK$9.61 to HK$15.61.

Dixon Sing Ming, associate professor of social science at the University of Science and Technology, said the sharp increase in food prices could be attributed to the lack of competition in the supermarket sector.

As rents skyrocket, shops are forced to sell their products at a higher price, he added.

Lee asked: "Why can't the government introduce a form of tax like the new BSD [buyer's stamp duty] on landlords who always increase the rents?"

The average price of private housing - depending on the size and location of the residence - has almost quadrupled in some cases.

The average per square metre price for a property measuring between 100 and 160 square metres in Kowloon went up 3.76 times over the 10 years to HK$154,327. A property of the same size on Hong Kong Island went up 2.95 times to an average of HK$167,939 per square metre.

The figure was HK$34,812 for a New Territories property in 2001, which increased to HK$73,228 in 2011.

Sing urged the government to build more houses under the Home Ownership Scheme so that the middle-class, who cannot afford private housing, can have a place to live.

Lee noted that 10 years ago, Hongkongers spent 30 per cent of their monthly income on paying their mortgage, but for many it now accounts for half their salary.

"Hong Kong people just don't have much money left after paying for the mortgage and food," Lee said.