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Announces the decision of Hong Kong, China to issue new bank notes.

Discusses Britain's Cable and Wireless (C&W) February 29, 2000 sale of a stake in Hong Kong telecommunications carrier C&W HKT to Richard Li. Li's stake in Internet company PCCW and plan to provide broadband Internet access by cable or satellite in Asia; Singapore Telecom's negotiations with C&W.

Abstract: It is generally agreed that respiratory disease is closely related to ambient air quality and weather conditions. Besides, hygiene related factors such as the public health measures by the government and possible personal awareness in the community can also affect the spread of infectious respiratory diseases. However, there is no quantitative support for this conclusion, because of lack of quality data. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (or SARS) outbreak in 2003 triggered strict public health measures and personal awareness in the prevention of infectious respiratory diseases, providing us an opportunity to quantify the impact of hygiene related factors in the spread of the disease. In this paper, we model the number of the respiratory illnesses by a semiparametric model which models the environmental and weather impacts using a multiple index model and the impact of other public health measures and possible personal awareness using a growth curve with jump. Using data from Hong Kong, we found that public health measures contributed to about 39% of reduction in the number of respiratory illnesses during the SARS period. However, the impact of hygienically related factors eventually fades as time passes. The results provide indirect quantitative support to the usefulness of governmental campaigns to arouse the awareness of the public in staying away from transmission of respiratory diseases during the full outbreak of the disease. The results also show the fast fading of alertness of Hong Kong people towards the epidemic. Furthermore, our model also offers a way to model the impacts of environmental factors on respiratory diseases, when the data contains the effect of human intervention, by introducing the change point and growth curve to remove such an effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we derive a new class of flexible threshold asymmetric Generalized Autoregression Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models. We use this tool for analysis and modeling of the properties that are apparent in many financial time series. In general, the transmission of volatility in the stock market is time-varying, nonlinear, and asymmetric with respect to both positive and negative results. Given this fact, we adopt the method of fuzzy logic systems to modify the threshold values for an asymmetric GARCH model. Our simulations use stock market data from the Taiwan weighted index (Taiwan), the Nikkei 225 index (Japan), and the Hang Seng index (Hong Kong) to illustrate the performance of our proposed method. From the simulation results, we have determined that the forecasting of volatility performance is significantly improved if the leverage effect of clustering is considered along with the use of expert knowledge enabled by the GARCH model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents several photographs of the fire rituals by Daoists and Buddhists in Hong Kong, China. Information on the religious aspects of fire and smoke; Materials used in fire rituals; Purpose of burning a paper house.

Profiles Jimmy Lai of Hong Kong, who will launch a major newspaper, `Apple Daily,' in June 1995 with $100 million of his own money. His goal to keep reporting on evil, gossip and uncensored news and still survive under Hong Kong's new Communist rulers when China takes back Hong Kong on July 1, 1997; The paper's political philosophy; Lai's newsweekly `Next Magazine.'

Reports on the circulation of a consultation paper, which is the process of enacting a controversial set of laws against subversion, sedition, and treason, as required by Article 23 of the Basic Law in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. Background on Basic Law and the return of Hong Kong to China; Idea that Falun Gong is a potential target of the laws; Fear that the laws are part of a pattern that erodes Hong Kong's autonomy and freedom.

Examines the February launch of the English-language daily `Eastern Express,' a paper of the Oriental Press Group which also publishes the leading Chinese-language paper, `Oriental Daily News.' Oriental Group hopes the `Express' will do for the Hong Kong English-language market what the `Daily News' has done for the Chinese one; The `South China Morning Post'; Advertising; Sale of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to Robert Kuok; Differences in the language markets.

Discusses the sentiments from an article in this week's Hong Kong papers by Xu Jiatun, once a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee. Intent to subvert communism by infecting China with the ideas of western democracy; Economic future of Hong Kong; Reforms in China; Predictions.

Information about several papers discussed during the autumn series lecture held in Hong Kong, China on September 22, 2008 is presented. During the event, Simon Winchester tackled on the contribution of Chinese science and civilization to the Western understanding of Chinese scientific history. Moreover, Niall Ferguson discussed on the history and geography of money.

The article focuses on a research paper by Alwyn Young, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which looks at how Hong Kong, China and Singapore became such economics giants. Hong Kong and Singapore started on a similar footing in 1945. Both were city states, British colonies making their living as trading ports. Both climbed the same industrial ladder, moving up from textiles to plastics to consumer electronics to financial services. The sources of growth in the two territories turned out to be startlingly different. In the two decades after 1970, Hong Kong's output per worker went up more than 2.5 times, Singapore's a little more than twofold. By the mid-1980s Singapore's incremental capital-output ratio was twice Hong Kong's. Hong Kong seemed to benefit so much from the better education of its people.