Hong Kong: Developer profits off ‘lucky’ 88th floor apartment
By Peter Ford | 11.19.09
• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
HONG KONG – You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if you bought an apartment on the 88th floor you would have a pretty spectacular view, even in Hong Kong’s notoriously crowded skyline.
In Hong Kong, though, you can buy a pied-à-terre on the 88th floor but find yourself only 46 stories above ground level – practically a bungalow by local standards.
That’s because local developers, cashing in on Cantonese Chinese numerology, have taken to skipping dozens of floors so as to be able to sell property on “lucky” floor numbers such as 66, 68, and 88.
Hong Kong lawmakers have taken the issue up, with one party proposing capping the number of floors that can be skipped.
The row broke out recently when a prominent Hong Kong developer, Henderson Land, built a 46-story apartment block, but after completing the 43rd floor, numbered the top three 66, 68, and 88.
They know what they are doing. Henderson set a world record with one property in the building, selling it for $9,200 a square foot. Part of the reason it was so expensive (apart from the gym) was that it was on the 68th floor.
Except that it wasn’t. In the real world it was on the 45th floor. But 68 is a much better number.
Better still, though, is 88 (a homonym for “fortune fortune”). Henderson’s general manager says he is hoping to sell an apartment on that floor (physically the 46th), for more than $11,000 a square foot, which would be a new world record.
I hope the buyer will be able to see Victoria Harbour from the saddle of his exercise bike.
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Afghanistan President Karzai inaugural speech: top four points
By Ben Arnoldy | 11.19.09
NEW DELHI – Hamid Karzai took the oath of office Thursday for his second term as president of Afghanistan. With US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in attendance, President Karzai delivered an inaugural address that focused on cleaning up corruption, talking with the Taliban, and setting a five-year goal for Afghans to take over their own security.
Here are his top cuts:
On security:
“Within the next three years, Afghanistan, with continued international support and in line with the growth of its defense capacity, wants to lead and conduct military operations in the many insecure areas of the country. We are determined that by the next five years, the Afghan forces are capable of taking the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country.”
On the Taliban:
“We welcome and will provide necessary help to all disenchanted compatriots who are willing to return to their homes, live peacefully and accept the Constitution. We invite dissatisfied compatriots, who are not directly linked to international terrorism, to return to their homeland. We will call Afghanistan’s traditional Loya Jirga [grand council] and make every effort to ensure peace in our country.”
On corruption:
“Security and the rule of law can only be effectively ensured when both the government and the citizens are equal before the law.”
“To conduct research on this problem [of corruption], we will soon organize a conference in Kabul so that we can find new and effective ways to combat this problem.”
“To prevent corruption, we will adopt a law in consultation with the National Assembly for making it obligatory for senior government officials to identify the sources of their assets.”
“The Government of Afghanistan considers it to be its responsibility to dismiss all government employees who are connected to the cultivation and trafficking of illicit drugs, and to deliver them to the hands of the law.”
On the US relationship:
“The people of Afghanistan will never forget the sacrifices made by American soldiers to bring peace to Afghanistan. Afghanistan hopes to acquire the status of a major non-NATO ally of the United States.”
Read the full speech here (pdf).
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Would Peru lawmaker Keiko Fujimori free her jailed dad?
By Matthew Clark | 11.19.09
LIMA, PERU – Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, came within an inch of admitting Wednesday that she would pardon her jailed father if she is elected president in 2011.
Prodded repeatedly during a meeting with group of American journalists visiting Peru, she said she did not want to comment until her father’s bid to appeal his 25-year sentence for ordering kidnappings and killings during his tenure in the 1990s is finished. But she added twice that she hopes Mr. Fujimori “will not need to be pardoned.”
“I believe my father was innocent,” said the 34-year-old congresswoman and mother of two, exuding a calm confidence and quiet warmth. “The majority of Peruvians think my father was the best president.”
Then she reminded the group of editors that Peru’s president has the power to pardon anyone.
Although she dismissed any suggestion that her father would exert undue influence during a Keiko presidency – “I will run the country, not my father” – she made no effort to deviate from any of his policies.
Instead she doubled down on the Fujimori brand name, banking on the fact that her father’s conservative approach was – and still is – widely popular in the business community and among significant portions of Peru’s poorest people.
‘Fujimorismo’
Bandying about the phrase “Fujimorismo,” which she defined as “free-market with a strong emphasis on social programs,” Keiko insisted that she understands the needs of poor people better than the rest of the crop of likely candidates, including the Hugo Chavez-linked populist Ollanta Humala.
Why is that?
“It’s because I travel a lot. I get to know people,” she said. “It’s because we solved their problems. They know we keep our promises.”
So, what do poor Peruvians want? Roads and schools, she said, adding that her father paved more than 5,000 km (3,000 miles) of road and built more than 3,000 schools.
22 percent support for Fujimori
Perhaps echoing her father’s penchant for a tightly controlled government, she questioned President Alan Garcia’s moves to decentralize Peru’s government.
“In terms of investment, the decentralization process was not the best way to improve our government,” she said, adding that Peru’s regional governments are “not capable of spending it correctly.”
In what would have been considered a gaffe in US politics, she at one point said: “In Peru, people sometimes vote with their hearts, not their heads.”
If voting with one’s head means electing her in 2011, she betrayed no signs of apprehension that Peruvians would vote with their hearts.
As she pointed out: “Although they’ve said horrible things against my father, we still have 22 percent support.”
Matthew Clark traveled to Peru on an IRP Gatekeepers trip organized by the International Reporting Project.
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Obama interview in China paper partly cut – censorship?
By Peter Ford | 11.19.09
BEIJING – A funny thing happened on the way from the printers.
Before US President Barack Obama left China on Wednesday, he gave a brief exclusive interview to “Southern Weekend,” one of the bolder voices on the Chinese press scene. But when the paper arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes in Beijing on Thursday, it was missing the front and back pages.
That meant that the interview, printed on the inside front page of copies freely available on newsstands, was missing too.
Since Mr. Obama had made a point earlier in the week – at a meeting with students in Shanghai – of attacking censorship, “it would be ironic if his own interview was being censored,” US Embassy press secretary Susan Stevenson pointed out.
It would also add fuel to the fire of criticism from some quarters that the Chinese authorities had done their best to keep Obama from public view during his three-day trip, wary of his populist appeal and of what he might say. (Obama charisma? China keeps it in tight check.)
Equally mysteriously, the full text of the interview – an anodyne and unobjectionable series of answers about basketball and China’s status as a market economy – was easy to find on the “Southern Weekend” stand-alone website. But it had been excised from the version of the site reachable through the homepage of the paper’s parent company.
We called the Post Office, which handles most periodical subscriptions in China, and were told that the front and back pages had been missing when the papers arrived at their distribution offices in the early hours of Thursday morning. The clerk could not tell us where they might have gone.
They would be delivered later on Thursday afternoon, we were assured.
By nightfall, some subscribers had indeed received the not-so-offending pages. Others hadn’t.
Was this a simple distribution snafu? It is not impossible, though it does seem odd to send out a paper without its front page, even if you are running over deadline, especially when that page carries an exclusive interview with the president of the United States.
But this being China – where government propaganda officials lay a heavy hand on the press – coincidences tend to make people suspicious. And this being China, we likely will never know.
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World Cup qualifier: France gets a hand in win over Ireland
By Matthew Clark | 11.18.09
Quelle scandale!
It’s not easy to get an Irishman to sympathize with the collective pain of the British, but French soccer star Thierry Henry may have done just that.
In a move reminiscent of Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona’s infamous “Hand of God,” in which he helped his team beat England in the 1986 World Cup by punching the ball over the English goalkeeper and into the net, Mr. Henry has edged his country into this June’s World Cup finals.
Henry’s hand ball, deep into overtime, allowed him to tap the ball to teammate William Gallas, who headed it in for a goal, dashing the Green Army’s hopes of a trip to South Africa.
The referee missed the clear penalty and the goal stood despite Irish protests. The second-leg playoff ended a few short minutes later 1-1, which was enough to squeak France through to the finals, since it won the first leg in Ireland earlier this week.
Although Henry’s moment of weakness will instantly be placed among the top moments of trickery in international soccer history, it will not be enough to challenge Mr. Maradona’s as the gold standard of soccer cheating. (When Maradona was questioned about his hand ball back in 1986, he said it was “el mano de Dios” – “the hand of God” – and the phrase is still enough to turn reserved English cheeks red with rage.)
But now Irish fans have a taste of how their historical enemies across the Irish Sea feel after having a high-stakes game on the world’s biggest stage come down to one indisputable moment of deceit.
As the tricoleurs fluttered in packed seats of the Stade de France in Paris and cameras settled on a banner that read “Mandela, here we come,” Irish fans everywhere must have found it hard to swallow.
And as the sports shows repeat the clip of Henry handling the ball over and over in the coming hours and days, the Frenchman will surely be climbing the charts of Ireland’s least favorite people.
Will the golden boy’s image takes a hit in the rest of the soccer world? We’ll have to wait and see.
