H O N G K O N G
Did someone ask about population density?
ASIA PACIFIC NEWS -
Macau, neighbor of Hong Kong, competition for Connecticut. Wikipedia
research here.
C O N T E N T S O F T H I
S P A G E
HONG
KONG HIGHLIGHTS: Density is
destiny.
Introduction: for those who
have forgotten history or never knew about it...
Human settlement in the location now known as Hong Kong
dates back to the Paleolithic era. The region was first incorporated
into Imperial China in the Qin Dynasty, and served as a trading post
and naval base during the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty. The area's
earliest recorded European visitor was Jorge Álvares, a
Portuguese mariner who arrived in 1513.
In 1839 the refusal by Qing Dynasty authorities to import opium
resulted in the First Opium War between China and Britain. Hong Kong
Island was occupied by British forces in 1841, and then formally ceded
to Britain under the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the war. The
British established a Crown Colony with the founding of Victoria City
the following year. In 1860, after China's defeat in the Second Opium
War, the Kowloon Peninsula south of Boundary Street and Stonecutter's
Island were ceded to Britain under the Convention of Peking. In 1898
Britain obtained a 99-year lease of Lantau Island and the adjacent
northern lands, which became known as the New Territories.
Hong Kong was declared a free port to serve as an entrepôt of the
British Empire. The Kowloon-Canton Railway opened in 1910 with a
southern terminus in Tsim Sha Tsui. An education system based on the
British model was introduced. The local Chinese population had little
contact with the European community of wealthy tai-pans settled near
Victoria Peak.
In conjunction with its military campaign in World War II, the Empire
of Japan invaded Hong Kong on December 8, 1941. The Battle of Hong Kong
ended with British and Canadian defenders surrendering control of the
colony to Japan on December 25. During the Japanese occupation,
civilians suffered widespread food shortages, rationing, and
hyper-inflation due to forced exchange of currency for military notes.
Hong Kong lost more than half of its population in the period between
the invasion and Japan's surrender in 1945, when the United Kingdom
resumed control of the colony.
Hong Kong's population recovered quickly as a wave of mainland migrants
arrived for refuge from the ongoing Chinese Civil War. With the
proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 more migrants
fled to Hong Kong from fear of persecution by the Communist Party. Many
corporations in Shanghai and Guangzhou also shifted their operations to
Hong Kong.[8] The colony became the sole place of contact between
mainland China and the Western world, as the communist government
increasingly isolated the country from outside influence. Trade with
the mainland was interrupted during the Korean War, when the United
Nations ordered a trade embargo against the communist government.
The textile and manufacturing industries grew with the help of
population growth and low cost of labour. As Hong Kong rapidly
industrialised, its economy became driven by exports to international
markets. Living standards rose steadily with industrial growth. The
construction of Shek Kip Mei Estate in 1953 marked the beginning of the
public housing estate program...
Then came The Cultural
Revolution.
SOME BASIC INFORMATION FOR PLANNERS:
The
Geography of Hong Kong
The
Ecology of Hong Kong
The
Climate of Hong Kong
Some data:
Area
- Total 1,104 km² (183rd)
- 426 sq mi
- Water (%) 4.6
Population
- 2007 estimate 6,963,100[3] (98th)
- 2001 census 6,708,389
- Density 6,352/km² (3rd) or 16,469/sq mi
THE
DISTRICTS OF HONG KONG
This design of the Hong Kong
sub-page of About Weston is a work in
progress...NOTE: The Wikipedia
map (top center) shows the Peoples' Republic of China as an insert
with
Hong Kong and Macau at enlarged size. Links off the Wikipedia
page led us to more resources...
T
R A N S P O R T
"The mission of Transport Department is to
keep Hong Kong
moving by managing road traffic, regulating public transport services,
licensing drivers and vehicles, promoting road safety as well as
planning for the future to cope with the growth in demand for transport
facilities and services. We also provide information on Hong Kong's
traffic and transport services and infrastructure, advice to road users
and how members of the public can apply for the services of the
Department." That means, among other parts of the infrastructure,
these modes - ferry, highway, road
traffic, pedestrians,
escalators...and lots of
traffic cams (including info on backup wait to tunnels).
In Search of a Sustainable Transport
Development Strategy for Hong Kong
by L. H. Wang (no year noted in translated version)
Introduction
Hong Kong has succeeded in transforming itself from a pre-industrial
settlement to a dynamic global urban centre within a rather short
period of time. This obviously is a result of a combination of factors,
including a rather sustainable and hardworking labour force. In order
to accommodate a massive structural change of both the physical and
human landscapes, a series of infrastructure development programmes
were introduced over the years, one of which is the rather
comprehensive transport system serving as the backbone of the city.
Indeed, Hong Kong has created a transport system that commands high
respect in the urban world. We have, more or less, incorporated all the
major modes of transport into our system, thus creating an interesting
and equally productive structure for the smooth functioning of the
society. New routes and new modes are being introduced from time to
time, in the hope to make the already complicated system more workable.
Perhaps, in view of the limited land space and resources that are
available to us, and a National Policy of enhancing sustainable
development, it appears appropriate now to review our transport
development strategies.
The Sustainability Concept and Hong
Kong
The concept of sustainability in all things including transport can be
summarized in the following quote from the World Commission on
Environmental and Development in 1987:
"..being able to meet the needs of today without
compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own
needs..."
Taken into consideration the spatial and temporal contexts of
development, and the uniqueness and diversity of the Hong Kong society,
a sustainable transport development scenario should be such that its
accessibility, efficiency and equity levels so achieved do not and will
not compromise the ability of any group of people as well as any area
within the city to satisfy their needs now and in the future. In short,
a sustainable transport development system allows an equal opportunity
for all to commute within an affordable cost and time constraint, now
and in the future. Further, the level of spatial and temporal
externalities so generated should be kept to its minimum. To meet such
a high standard requires the full support of all sectors within and
outside the transport sector.
How Good Are We?
It is a known fact that our transport service is efficient and the cost
of transport is relatively affordable, especially when compared with
other major cities in the world. We have over the years established a
system that attains a high level of efficiency in its service
performance to meet the ever increasing demand of the general public.
Geographical constraints of the urban landscape allow the creation of a
huge captive ridership to sustain the high level of services of our
public transportation system. The robust economy generates a high
demand in private transport as well. Limited parking space does to some
extent discourage car ownership. In terms of private car ownership per
unit of population, we have less than half the number of vehicles of
Singapore, and one-third of that of Taiwan. Over 80% of trips in Hong
Kong are on public transport. Our fleets are manageably new, although
the enforcement of a more stringent environmental measure appears
required for further improvement of some vehicles.
Notwithstanding the so-called non-intervention policy the
Administration has been upholding, the Transport Department in fact
rightly adopts a set of rather stringent management guidelines to
ensure the smooth operation of our transport services. Perhaps because
of the high level of commuting efficiency provided, the general public
has chosen to ignore the invisible hand actively moving behind the
scene. There is a price to pay, and the price is right in this context.
Difficulties in Transportation
Development and Traffic Management
One must not assume the provision of an efficient traffic management in
Hong Kong is an easy task. There are at least several factors that may
not be conducive to the development of a sustainable transport system.
Geographical constraints
First, the geographical constraints of the city layout have direct
implications for the smooth operation of the traffic system. The narrow
and winding street patterns, the crowdedness of an active urban centre,
and a mis-match between employment and residence, among others, have
all contributed to the complexity of the traffic system. Limited road
space per car and the lack of parking facilities ensure congestion and
delay as well. The lack of sufficient east-west highways across Kowloon
Peninsula and the New Territories generates unnecessary trips to the
city centre which deprives the opportunity of other commuters. It also
increases traffic and highway maintenance cost. It is, however, to be
noted here that the Administration is introducing new highways and rail
roads to tackle this problem.
Land use intensification and succession
Secondly, the success of Hong Kong as a major commercial centre and
financial hub depends to a great extent on the adoption by the
Administration of a strong urban centre strategy in urban design. The
process of extensive land use intensification and land use succession
over the years has created a very impressive urban centre full of
vitality and energy. The speed of office block development in the urban
area explains vividly the success of such a strong urban centre
strategy in promoting confidence in the international investment
sector. The backup with efficient communications and other public
utilities infrastructure together with a modern work force further
ensures the structural transformation process.
Such a development process, however, poses a serious challenge to
traffic management. Each round of land use intensification and land use
succession, which are usually taking place hand in hand, demands a
similar round of improvement of transportation infrastructure and
upgrading of traffic management services. The improvement of
transportation and traffic development in turn induces a further round
of urban expansion. Being at the supportive end of the cycle, the
Transport Bureau and Transport Department are forced to face with a
serious challenge in providing a service that is efficient, equitable
and sustainable at the same time.
Each round of land use succession implies the outward movement of
people to the new towns and the New Territories. Huge investment in
transportation infrastructure, such as the mass transit railway, is
required to ensure efficient commuting between work place and
residence. Areas that are of less significance to such a loop will
inevitably be neglected in transportation development planning. Groups
of residents that do not constitute part of the active labour force
will also be bypassed. In short, the level of transport sustainability
gives in to transport efficiency, in meeting the demand of an economy
in which its success relies on the continuous upgrading of a strong
urban centre. There appears to be a need to strike a balance between
sustainability and efficiency here. Such a balance is difficult to come
by.
Spatial
integration with the Pearl River Delta
Thirdly, the emphasis on spatial integration with the Pearl River Delta
and the opening up of the New Territories also introduce a new
challenge to our transportation development programme. In theory, the
outward movement trend is reverse in direction to the initial concept
of promoting a strong urban centre strategy. The development in fact
provides more room for land use intensification and land use succession
in the urban centre as more and more dwellers and commercial activities
that do not demand a central location will move away from the high-rent
urban centre to the periphery. This demands a heavy investment in
transportation facilities in the newly developed areas.
With the establishment of Hong Kong into a Special Administrative
Region, the transportation linkages between Hong Kong and the Pearl
River Delta will be further strengthened. This in turn will encourage a
further movement of industrial and manufacturing activities into the
interior from Hong Kong. The present strategy of turning Hong Kong into
a transportation and transhipment centre supports the idea of
continuously expanding our port facilities in the hope to accommodate
the ever increasing freight transport from the Mainland.
The issue here is an interesting one, as far as transportation
sustainability is concerned. Expanding port facilities means the need
for a complicated highway system to support the vast number of
container trucks and similar vehicles. Increasing freight transport
deprives the opportunity of passenger transport, and hence the majority
of the general public. The economic gains generated from the freight
transportation services may not be sufficient to cover the opportunity
cost induced by a reduction of efficiency in passenger transportation.
By promoting the international freight transport sector, the
Administration may be accused of ignoring the interest of the passenger
transport sector.
The Need to Redefine Our Transport
Policy
Therefore, it appears necessary for us to re-examine our existing
transport development and traffic management policies if the aim is to
achieve a high level of sustainability in the long run. This, however,
has to be considered in conjunction with the overall development
strategies of Hong Kong, both in terms of the SAR as a stand-alone
entity and as an active member of the Motherland. Sustainability is a
yard-stick in development. Notwithstanding this, the end should not be
the means, and the means at present and in the near future at least is
to ensure we can maintain an efficient transportation system at a
reasonable cost to support the needed economic growth.
Dr. L. H. Wang is the Chairman, The
Hong Kong Institute for Infrastructure
Our main reason to follow Hong
Kong news now over, as family has returned to the U.S.A. in 2011.
NEWS
OF THE DAY - WHICH DAY? ALWAYS A DAY AHEAD OF CONNECTICUT!
Hong Kong Democracy March Draws Thousands
NYTIMES
By KEITH BRADSHER
July 2, 2009
HONG KONG — Thousands of people joined a pro-democracy march here on
Wednesday, although the turnout fell short of a candlelight vigil held
nearly four weeks ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the
Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing.
An enormous crowd for the annual June 4 candlelight vigil, the largest
since 1990, had raised the hopes of Hong Kong democracy advocates that
the same enthusiasm might carry over to their movement. The movement
has been struggling after several small successes from 2003 to 2005,
including winning support for blocking the government’s planned
introduction of stringent internal security legislation.
The immediacy of democracy demands here has faded somewhat as Beijing
officials have ruled out direct elections for the chief executive until
2017 and the legislature until 2020.
The march on Wednesday, on the 12th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return
from British to Chinese rule, nonetheless drew a large crowd. Advocates
for a wide variety of causes were represented, including those seeking
improvements in public housing, wages, investment protections and
anti-poverty spending.
Many marchers said they were dissatisfied with government policies to
deal with the economic downturn. Unemployment in Hong Kong rose sharply
over the winter and has leveled off this spring at 5.3 percent — a
little over half the rate in the United States, but a shock for a
territory where the seasonally adjusted rate was just 3.2 percent last
summer.
But the largest single issue seemed to be the limits on democracy in
Hong Kong. “The majority comes here for democracy, but there are other
grievances against government policy,” said Sin Chung Kai, vice
chairman of the Democratic Party.
When Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, the Chinese
government initially held out the possibility of full democracy after
2007, including the concept in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s
mini-constitution, but stopped short of an unequivocal promise of how
and when to achieve universal suffrage.
A committee of 800 people, most with connections to Beijing, currently
chooses the chief executive here, who must then be appointed by the
Chinese leadership in Beijing before taking office. Half the
legislature is chosen by the general public and half by a variety of
interest groups, including banks, chambers of commerce, trade unions
and lawyers.
The police estimated that 26,000 people had assembled in Victoria Park
on Hong Kong Island as the march began. The organizers said beforehand
that they expected more to join the march along the way, and estimated
late Wednesday evening that 76,000 people had participated.
The police had estimated the crowd at the June 4 Tiananmen vigil, at
the same location in Victoria Park, at 62,800, while organizers put it
at 150,000.
The vigil did have some carryover effect on Wednesday’s march. Jupiter
Chan, a 24-year-old graduate student, said that the vigil prompted him
to come to the annual democracy march this year for the first time
since 2003.
“I was touched by the Fourth of June ceremony, and I felt that if I
didn’t come this year, I would regret it later,” he said.
The
Great Unraveling
NYTIMES
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
December 17, 2008
Hong Kong
The stranger, a Western businessman, slipped into the chair next to me
at an Asia Society lunch here in Hong Kong and asked me a question that
I can honestly say I’ve never been asked before: “So, just how corrupt
is America?”
His question was occasioned by the arrest of the Wall Street money
manager Bernard Madoff on charges of running a Ponzi scheme that bilked
investors out of billions of dollars, but it wasn’t only that. It’s the
whole bloody mess coming out of Wall Street — the financial center that
Hong Kong moneymen had always looked up to. How could it be, they
wonder, that such brand names as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and
A.I.G. could turn out to have such feet of clay? Where, they wonder,
was our Securities and Exchange Commission and the high standards that
we had preached to them all these years?
One of Hong Kong’s most-respected bankers, who asked not to be
identified, told me that the U.S.-owned investment company where he
works made a mint in the last decade cleaning up sick Asian banks. They
did so by importing the best U.S. practices, particularly the
principles of “know thy customers” and strict risk controls. But now,
he asked, who is there to look to for exemplary leadership?
“Previously, there was America,” he said. “American investors were
supposed to know better, and now America itself is in trouble. Whom do
they sell their banks to? It is hard for America to take its own
medicine that it prescribed successfully for others. There is no doctor
anymore. The doctor himself is sick.”
I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi
scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the “legal” scheme that
Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high
greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a
nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a
$750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into
bonds — which Moody’s or Standard & Poors rate AAA — and then
selling them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what
our financial industry was doing. If that isn’t a pyramid scheme, what
is?
Far from being built on best practices, this legal Ponzi scheme was
built on the mortgage brokers, bond bundlers, rating agencies, bond
sellers and homeowners all working on the I.B.G. principle: “I’ll be
gone” when the payments come due or the mortgage has to be renegotiated.
It is both eye-opening and depressing to look at our banking crisis
from China. It is eye-opening because it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that the U.S. and China are becoming two countries, one
system.
How so? Easy, in the wake of our massive bank bailout, one can now look
at China and America and say: “Well, China has a big-state-owned
banking sector, next to a private one, and America now has a big
state-owned banking sector next to a private one. China has big
state-owned industries, alongside private ones, and once Washington
bails out Detroit, America will have a big state-owned industry next to
private ones.”
Yes, an exaggeration to be sure, but the truth is the differences are
starting to blur. For two decades, a parade of U.S. officials came to
China and lectured Beijing on the necessity of privatizing its banks,
said Qu Hongbin, the chief economist for China at HSBC. “So, slowly we
did that, and now, all of a sudden, we see everybody else nationalizing
their banks.”
It’s depressing because China in many ways feels more stable than
America today, with a clearer strategy for working through this crisis.
And while the two countries are looking more alike, they appear to be
on very different historical trajectories. China went crazy in the
1970s, with its Cultural Revolution, and only after the death of Mao
and the rise of Deng Xiaoping has it managed to right itself, gradually
moving to a market economy.
But while capitalism has saved China, the end of communism seems to
have slightly unhinged America. We lost our two biggest ideological
competitors — Beijing and Moscow. Everyone needs a competitor. It keeps
you disciplined. But once American capitalism no longer had to worry
about communism, it seems to have gone crazy. Investment banks and
hedge funds were leveraging themselves at crazy levels, paying
themselves crazy salaries and, most of all, inventing financial
instruments that completely disconnected the ultimate lenders from the
original borrowers, and left no one accountable. “The collapse of
communism pushed China to the center and [America] to the extreme,”
said Ben Simpfendorfer, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Madoff affair is the cherry on top of a national breakdown in
financial propriety, regulations and common sense. Which is why we
don’t just need a financial bailout; we need an ethical bailout. We
need to re-establish the core balance between our markets, ethics and
regulations. I don’t want to kill the animal spirits that necessarily
drive capitalism — but I don’t want to be eaten by them either.
Maritime
Hijackings
Decrease in Asia
NYTIMES
By MARK McDONALD
November 19, 2008
HONG KONG — The hijacking of a Saudi supertanker has not
led to alerts and alarms in Asia, which has weathered its own previous
storms of piracy.
“It will be very difficult to copycat the Somalia situation in Asia,”
said Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the
International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “The
governments here are more committed and have more resources. In fact,
the attacks here are coming down.”
A regional piracy-monitoring agency in Singapore said maritime attacks
in Asia in the first nine months of the year dropped 11 percent
compared to 2007 and 32 percent from 2006.
Meanwhile, the hijacking of the Saudi tanker is just another red
push-pin on the 2008 master piracy map maintained by the maritime
bureau, a private group in the Malaysian capital.
The hundreds of pins denoting attacks and hijackings are heavily
clustered in three regions — the Gulf of Aden and the eastern coast of
Somalia; the coast of West Africa, particularly off Nigeria; and the
Indonesian archipelago. But the vast majority of the incidents off
Indonesia, and throughout Southeast Asia, are low-level attacks against
small vessels, the petty theft of cargo or the robbery of crew members.
Maritime experts in Southeast Asia cite naval patrols by Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore — known in the anti-piracy business as “the
littoral states” — for the significant reduction in attacks, and
particularly a decrease in hijackings. Satellite monitoring also is
used.
Stepped-up sea patrols began three years ago when pirates began to
increase their attacks in the Strait of Malacca — the long, narrow
funnel between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of
Sumatra. Even large cargo vessels and tankers became vulnerable as
pirates began to arm themselves with automatic weapons and
rocket-propelled grenades.
In 2005, the insurer Lloyds of London listed the strait as the world’s
No. 1 hot spot for seagoing piracy — in effect declaring it a war zone
— and placed an insurance premium on any ships using the passageway.
The losses from the attacks, the new vulnerability of tankers and the
extra costs for insurance led to tremendous anxiety among ship
captains, owners, insurers and governments. An estimated 40 percent of
the world’s seaborne commerce moves through the strait, including
shipments of oil from the Middle East to East Asia.
“If oil would get disrupted in the Malacca Straits, Japan would get
very concerned because that’s their oil lifeline,” said Mr. Choong. The
last major act of piracy in the Asia-Pacific region was in December
2005, Mr. Choong said, when a large chemical tanker was hijacked en
route from Indonesia to Singapore. The ship had a “tracker” on board,
the equivalent of an airplane transponder, and was quickly found in the
South China Sea.
“With the tracker, she had nowhere to run,” Mr. Choong said. “The
recovery of ships is very high in Asia.”
Piracy in the region still happens, of course. The more serious
incidents involve the seagoing theft of oil or gas from small tankers.
Typically, the ship is seized at night by lightly armed pirates in
speedboats. The crew is then set adrift in lifeboats and the cargo is
pumped into an accompanying pirate tanker. The stolen oil and gas is
then sold in small amounts in regional villages and ports.
In a transcript from the maritime bureau, this minor incident in
Kalimantan, Indonesia, was the only one reported from Asia in the last
week: “Four robbers armed with catapults, knives and hacksaws boarded a
bulk carrier at anchor. They threatened the duty crew with catapults
and stole ship’s stores from forward locker. Alarm raised and ship’s
whistle sounded. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped in a wooden fast
boat. Incident reported to coastal authorities.”
“The severity is much greater in Somalia, where the pirates are very
heavily armed, as compared to Southeast Asia, where the robbers usually
just have knives,” said Lee Yin Mui, assistant director of research at
the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed
Robbery Against Ships at Sea. The 16-nation network, known as ReCAAP,
is based in Singapore.
In the first quarter of this year, the maritime bureau recorded 83
ships being hijacked or fired upon worldwide. The Gulf of Aden had more
than half those attacks, 47 in all, while only two incidents occurred
in the Straits of Malacca.
“Hijacking incidents here involve much smaller ships, usually tugboats
which are slow-moving and easy to board,” Miss Lee said. “The pirates
escape in their own boats. The crews are often abandoned on a remote
beach. We see this as quite compassionate.”
In the most recent hijacking, Miss Lee said 15 pirates seized a
Singaporean tugboat, the Whale 7, as it was towing a barge to Thailand.
ReCAAP and the maritime bureau in Malaysia issued alerts to ship
captains and harbor masters in the region, and the boat was found three
weeks later in Thailand. The tug had been renamed the Saga 01 and
repainted — from a deep-water blue to traffic-cone orange. The Thai
police arrested the pirates, who said they had been paid $35,000 to
seize the tug.
Hijacked
Supertanker Drops Anchor
NYTIMES
By ROBERT F. WORTH and MARK McDONALD
November 19, 2008
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — A hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more
than $100 million worth of crude oil is believed to have anchored off
Somalia and its owners are working toward “the safe and speedy return”
of the 25 crew, the owners said Tuesday.
A statement from Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi
Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco, said the company was “awaiting
further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel” who seized
it some 480 miles off the coast of Somalia. Earlier reports said the
1,080-foot Sirius Star had been hijacked off the Kenyan coast.
The statement did not say specifically that negotiations with the
hijackers had started. The supertanker, about the same length as an
American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is the largest ship known to
have been seized by pirates.
The statement from Vela International, issued in Dubai, quoted the
company’s president and chief executive, Salah B. Ka’aki, as saying the
company’s “first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the
crew. We are in communication with their families and are working
toward their safe and speedy return." The crew is composed of 2
British, 2 Polish, 1 Croatian, 1 Saudi and 19 Philippines nationals.
“Vela continues to monitor the situation and coordinate with the
relevant embassies. At this time, Vela is awaiting further contact from
the pirates in control of the vessel,” the statement said.
Earlier, Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth
Fleet, stationed in Bahrain said that if the hijacking follows the
pattern of previous attacks, the ship would anchor and “negotiations
will begin between the pirates and the owners of ship.”
Although the supertanker’s exact location near the Somali coast was not
clear, in the past most pirates have brought hijacked vessels to a
stretch of coastline between Eyl in the north to the Harradera region
to the south, Commander Campbell said in a telephone interview.
The hijacking follows a string of increasingly brazen attacks by Somali
pirates in recent months, but this appeared to be the first time that
pirates have seized a loaded oil tanker.
Asked about a possible naval intervention, Commander Campbell said:
“Once the attack takes place, this is a hostage situation, and there
are 25 crew members on board that ship. As with any hostage situation,
there has to be concern for those individuals.”
Negotiations with pirates have often taken weeks or even months. A
Ukrainian vessel hijacked in September, loaded with tanks and other
heavy weapons, is still being held at Hobyo on the Somali coast, where
the ship’s crew remain captives, Commander Campbell said.
According to the International Maritime Bureau, a global clearinghouse
for piracy reporting based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, , 88 ships have
been attacked in the Gulf of Aden alone this year. And 14 hijacked
ships remain in the gulf — the heavily armed hijackers still on board,
with the crews, cargo and the vessels themselves being held for ransom.
“They’re still at sea and still negotiating,” said Noel Choong, the
head of the bureau’s piracy reporting center. As ransom payoffs have
risen, he said, pirates have increased their demands. “They know the
going rate.”
Only a few years ago, the average ransom was in the tens of thousands
to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now payments can range from
$500,000 to $2 million.
The pirates’ profits are set to reach a record $50 million in 2008,
Somali officials say. Shipping firms are usually prepared to pay,
because the sums are low compared with the value of the ships.
The attack on the Sirius Star took place despite an increased
multinational naval presence off the Somali coast, where most of the
recent hijackings have taken place. The pirates, often armed with
automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, travel in speedboats
equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment.
The location of the latest attack, far out to sea, suggested that the
pirates may be expanding their range in an effort to avoid the
multinational naval patrols now plying the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian
Sea.
“I’m stunned by the range of it,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference in Washington. The
ship’s distance from the coast was “the longest distance I’ve seen for
any of these incidents,” he said.
The vessel was headed for the United States when it was seized, Reuters
reported.
Maritime experts recently have noticed a new development in the gulf —
the pirates’ use of “mother ships,” large oceangoing trawlers carrying
fleets of speedboats which are then deployed when a new prize is
encountered.
“They launch these boats and they’re like wild dogs,” said Mr. Choong
in Kuala Lumpur. “They attack the ship from the port, from starboard,
from all points, shooting, scaring the captain, firing RPGs and forcing
the ship to stop.”
There are some countermeasures the merchant ships can use when
approaching pirates are spotted. Fire-retardant foam or huge blasts of
water can be sprayed from the ship to douse the would-be hijackers.
Once pirates get aboard, however, the ship is theirs, because crews on
commercial vessels are rarely armed, according to Mr. Choong and other
maritime experts. “They are not mentally or physically fit enough to
handle weapons,” he said.
Nor do many ship owners use armed contractors — seagoing mercenaries —
to fight or ward off approaching pirates. Experts said crew safety and
insurance liability were overriding concerns of captains and owners.
“We do not advocate this, having armed escorts on board,” said Lee Yin
Mui, assistant director of research at the Regional Cooperation
Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships at Sea.
Known as ReCAAP, the 16-nation network is based in Singapore.
“Armed escorts could only escalate the situation,” she said, “and
perhaps trigger off heavy crossfire.”
Hong Kong
Girl Treated After Drinking Tainted Milk
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Published: September 21, 2008
Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong supermarkets pulled some milk powder
products from their shelves on Sunday and a 3-year-old girl was found
to have a kidney stone after drinking tainted milk -- the territory's
first suspected victim of a health scare sweeping China.
The World Health Organization (WHO) meanwhile said it was helping China
to investigate contamination of milk products by melamine, a chemical
that can cause kidney stones and lead to renal failure among
children. China last week ordered checks on dairy products and a
nationwide recall of suspect items in a spreading scandal that has
killed four children and caused thousands more to fall ill.
Hong Kong health authorities said in a statement the girl, who had
consumed Yili brand milk daily for the past 15 months, was found to
have a kidney stone. However, she did not have any symptoms of
disease and was discharged from hospital on Saturday.
Some of Hong Kong's main supermarkets yanked Nestle milk powder from
shelves after a newspaper reported it contained melamine, a
nitrogen-rich compound that can be added to watered-down milk to help
it pass quality inspections. The move was a precautionary
measure, Wellcome spokeswoman Annie Sin said.
The Swiss food group said it was confident none of its products were
made with melamine-laced milk. Tests done by government-approved labs
showed the product in question was melamine-free, it said. But
Hong Kong's food safety centre said later tests showed that another
product, Nestle Dairy Farm Pure Milk, contained the harmful substance.
It said the product was used by caterers.
"Based on the low level detected, normal consumption will not pose
major health effects. However, it is not advisable for small children
to consume the milk product," a food safety spokesman said.
It has asked suppliers to stop selling the product and to recall it,
the spokesman said. Nestle declined to comment on the food safety
centre report.
IMPROVE CAPACITY
Yili Industrial Group Co, the Sanlu Group -- China's largest infant
milk powder maker -- and 19 other dairy producers said it would improve
the quality of its products and compensate victims, state media said.
The WHO said it was helping China resolve the problems.
"The capacity for quality control and also the surveillance, reporting
systems and laboratory testing in the area must be improved," Shigeru
Omi, WHO regional director told reporters.
Brunei's health ministry banned imports of Chinese milk products even
though the country does not directly import any dairy from China. The
ban took effect after similar moves by Singapore and Malaysia on Friday.
A government food quality watchdog in China has said nearly 10 percent
of milk and drinking yoghurt samples from three major dairy companies
contained potentially deadly melamine.
(Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson, Edwin
Chan and John Ruwitch in Hong Kong, Kirby Chien in Beijing, David
Chance in Kuala Lumpur and by Manny Mogato in Manila; Editing by Angus
MacSwan)
Macau casino IPO survives court challenge
DAY
By JEREMIA MARQUEZ
Published on 7/10/2008
Hong Kong - Billionaire casino magnate Stanley Ho plans to move ahead
with his Macau gambling company's debut on the stock exchange next week
after a court on Wednesday thwarted a legal challenge from his
estranged sister.
The Hong Kong court refused to grant Winnie Ho an injunction to stop
the listing of Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, or SJM.
In a written decision, a justice rebuffed her argument that regulators
and the exchange should never have allowed the listing because of her
pending litigation over SJM's parent company.
It was the latest turn in a bitter public feud between the two sibling
tycoons, who fell out in 2001. She has since gone out of her way to
stop his company from listing in Hong Kong, and has filed dozens of
lawsuits over the years.
Among her many accusations, Winnie Ho says she's owed dividends from
SJM. The listing has been delayed repeatedly.
On Wednesday, SJM praised the courts' decision and said its debut on
the stock exchange would go ahead on July 16. Its original debut was
scheduled for Thursday but postponed by the legal challenge.
Stanley Ho “of course welcomed the decision,” Ho said.
A spokesman for Winnie Ho's legal case, Donna Yau, said Ho's lawyers
were reviewing their options. SJM sold a 25 percent stake, about 1.25
billion shares, raising about $494 million, most of which the company
says it plans to spend on new casino projects.
Stanley Ho, worth more than $9 billion according to Forbes magazine,
lost his monopoly in Macau several years ago. Now his 18 casinos must
compete with American newcomers
