Latest News Clips 2014.03.10

                 

1.      China's parliament

Opening day

The Economist   Mar 5th 2014

CHINA has opened the annual full session of its parliament, the National People's Congress, in Beijing. If the past is any guide, the proceedings will be tightly controlled and will not feature any dramatic legislative votes during the ten-day session. But the March 5th opening day included announcements of several important planning targets and budgeting decisions, and a promise from the prime minister, Li Keqiang, to do more to solve the nation’s pressing air pollution problems. 

In a lengthy speech at the opening session, Mr Li (pictured) said China would aim to maintain an economic growth rate of “around 7.5%” this year. Growth in the past two years was slightly higher than that, but far below the double-digit levels that China achieved so often in recent decades. This year’s target, Mr Li said, was set “on the basis of careful comparison and repeatedly weighing various factors as well as considering what is needed and what is possible.” He also said China would “keep inflation at around 3.5%”.

These unchanged targets were overshadowed by the increase in China’s planned military expenditure. The government’s proposed budget for 2014 would increase defence spending by 12.2% to 808 billion yuan ($132 billion), although the real increase will be smaller once inflation is taken into account. The state-run Xinhua news agency promptly sought to assure Japan and other countries that any concerns about this increase are “unfounded and misplaced” and that China has a “peace-oriented defence posture”.

Some of Mr Li’s strongest language came in the section of his speech about improving the dreadful air quality that so often afflicts Beijing and other Chinese cities. The smog, Mr Li said, is “nature’s red-light warning” that China’s blind rush toward development is unsustainable, and that is time to “declare war” against pollution. His challenge, of course, will be to ensure that his economic growth target is not the first casualty.

2.  Pistorius Witness Says She Heard a Fight Next Door

On Second Day of Trial, Neighbor Said Argument Occurred An Hour Before Fatal Shots

The Wall Street Journal   March 4, 2014

PRETORIA, South Africa—Shouts and screams filled a upscale neighborhood here moments before Oscar Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend, witnesses said Tuesday, marking a second day of testimony that lawyers for the South African sports star sought to discredit.

Estelle van der Merwe said she heard what sounded like an argument coming from Mr. Pistorius' home beginning an hour before the gunshots rang out that ended the life of Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day last year.

"It sounded like someone involved in a fight," Mrs. van der Merwe told the court. After she tried to block out the argument by placing a pillow over her head, she heard four bangs followed by the cries of a woman.

  

Oscar Pistorius speaks to his legal team ahead of the second day of his trial on Tuesday. Reuters

"I asked my husband who was crying like that and he said it was Oscar," said Mrs. van der Merwe, who lives across the street from Mr. Pistorius' home in a gated community on the eastern outskirts of Pretoria.

Prosecutors are attempting to show that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp had a ferocious quarrel prior to her death and that he intentionally killed the 29-year-old model and aspiring TV star.

Mr. Pistorius has admitted that he fired the shots that killed Ms. Steenkamp but has claimed through his lawyer that he mistook her for an intruder.

Barry Roux, Mr. Pistorius' counsel, later challenged Mrs. van der Merwe's testimony, suggesting that she was too far away from the athlete's house to know for certain where the words originated or even the language they were spoken in.

"All you heard was a woman's voice," Mr. Roux said.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Roux attempted to sow doubts about the testimony of another state's witness, who said Monday that she heard a woman's terrified screams coming from the former Olympian's home in the early hours of February 14, 2013.

Michelle Burger said that she was awakened by the sound of a woman shrieking from next door. "Her shouts, her screams were petrified. ... I knew something horrible was happening in that house," she told the court.

In his cross-examination, Mr. Roux suggested that the distance between Mrs. Burger and the bathroom where Ms. Steenkamp was holed up - 177 metres (580 feet) - made it impossible for her to reliably conclude that the sharp retorts she heard were those of a gun and the screams those of a woman.

He suggested that the banging of a cricket bat that Mr. Pistorius was using in an attempt to gain entry to the locked bathroom, as well as the athlete's "anxious" shouts, were responsible for what Mrs. Burger heard.

"You made up your mind that this version could not be true and interpreted the cricket bat for gunshots and his screaming to be a woman screaming," Mr. Roux told Mrs. Burger.

Mrs. Burger's husband, Charl Johnson, testified on Tuesday that like his wife, he also heard what he described as the "clearly distressed" screams of a woman that February night.

Highlighting the fear that many South Africans have of house burglaries, Mr. Johnson said that his first assumption was that his neighbor's house was being robbed.

It caused him, he said, to "lay awake thinking about how to improve our security."

On Monday, Mr. Pistorius was formally charged with the murder of the 29-year-old Ms. Steenkamp. He pleaded not guilty.

3.  Health and appiness

Those pouring money into health-related mobile gadgets and apps believe they can work the miracle of making health care both better and cheaper

The Economist   Feb 1st 2014

WHEN Kenneth Treleani was told last summer that he was suffering from high blood pressure, his doctor prescribed medicine to tackle the condition. He also made another recommendation: that Mr Treleani invest in a wireless wrist monitor that takes his blood pressure at various times during the day and sends the data wirelessly to an app on his smartphone, which dispatches the readings to his physician. Mr Treleani says the device (pictured), made by a startup called iHealth, has already saved him several visits to the doctor’s surgery.

Portable blood-pressure monitors have been around for a while. But the idea of linking a tiny, wearable one to a smartphone and a software app is an example of how entrepreneurs are harnessing wireless technology to create innovative services. By letting doctors and carers monitor patients remotely, and by making it simpler to collect vast amounts of data on the effectiveness of treatments, the mobile-health industry, or m-health as it has become known, aims to drive down costs while improving results for patients.

Many experiments are already under way in emerging markets, where new mobile devices and apps are helping relieve pressure on poorly financed and ill-equipped clinics and hospitals. But the biggest prize is America, which splashes out a breathtaking $2.8 trillion each year on a health-care system riddled with inefficiencies. The prospect of revolutionising the way care is delivered there is inspiring entrepreneurs. Mercom Capital Group, a consulting firm, reckons that of the $2.2 billion venture capitalists put into health-care startups last year, mostly in America, $564m went to m-health businesses.

The m-health market can be broken down into two broad categories. First, there are the apps and appliances used to monitor the wearer’s physical fitness. Firms such as Nike, Fitbit and Jawbone make wristbands and other wearable gadgets full of sensors that let people record their performance, and their calorie-burning, as they pound the pavement or sweat in the gym.

Second, other apps and devices link patients with a medical condition to the health-care system. Last month Google said it was working on a contact lens containing a tiny wireless chip and sensors that would measure and transmit the glucose levels in a diabetic patient’s tears. In December Apple was granted an American patent on a means to incorporate a heartbeat sensor into its devices.

4.  Supermarket sweep as 'riot' breaks out for Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel collection

The Guardian  March 04, 2014

Designer plays to fashion's consumerist heart with Paris show in which 'frowers' play shoplifting as models stroll down the aisles

Karl Lagerfeld, flanked by model Cara Delevingne, acknowledges the audience at the end of Chanel ready-to-wear collection fashion show on Tuesday.

A riot broke out in a French supermarket on Tuesday morning, as well-heeled shoplifters – including pop star Rihanna and the model Cara Delevingne – tried to pilfer household goods and own-brand consumables. Well, not quite.

The scene did take place, but the "supermarket" was a purpose built Chanel superstore within the walls of the Grand Palais in Paris, and the "riot" was unleashed by the latest catwalk show from designer Karl Lagerfeld.

 A model carries groceries down the runway during the Chanel show as part of the Paris fashion Photograph: Michel Dufour/WireImage

It was arguably his finest runway reimagining to date. For a designer who has recreated an aeroplane and an iceberg this was quite a feat.

Before the show began guests strolled up and down the aisles shrieking with delight at everyday items given the Lagerfeld treatment: CoCo Chanel Coco Pops, and Confiture de Gabrielle – both nods to the house's founder.

Fashion editors posed with shopping trolleys amid this Warholian fashion extravaganza, before models posed as shoppers, strolling around the superstore in a choreographed performance.

To a muzak-inspired version of Rihanna's Shine Bright Like A Diamond, Delevingne stomped through the supermarket selecting a Chanel-branded brandy bottle and a large feather duster. Meanwhile, fellow model Stella Tennant went about her weekly shop carrying a shopping basket made with the familiar Chanel motive chain woven into the basket wire. Another model pulled a padded shopping trolley on wheels around the aisles. Even the most impervious fashionistas were delighted at the scene.

Did the clothes get lost in all of this? For some, perhaps. But this wasn't a multimillion-euro tactic to obfuscate some below par designs. On the contrary this was one of Lagerfeld's most inspiring collections yet.

The clothes – created within the tough remit of incorporating the house codes such as the tweed suit and large pearls – felt relevant and urgent, borrowing from street culture in the savviest of ways. A tweed tracksuit was both cool and beautifully tailored, and worn with holographic trainers felt fitting with fashion's new move towards haute comfort dressing. The models all wore their hair in crimped ponytails with Chanel tweed rags and edible sweetie necklaces. It was swampy-chic on a Chanel budget.

Models in big coats over disco leggings and trainers or leather shorts over leather tracksuit bottoms suggested a cool, "just popped out for a pint of milk" silhouette that only the few can look good wearing.

Why Lagerfeld feels the need to out-do himself with such catwalk extravaganzas each season is a question often asked in the fashion world. One reason is because he can. At 80 he has a phenomenal output of more than 30 collections a year suggesting a workaholic mentality. Another reason could be that, in a season in which the accepted highlight was meant to be designer Nicolas Ghesquière's debut at Louis Vuitton on Wednesday, Lagerfeld wanted to show that Chanel can still steal the headlines. A likely reason is that the designer is thinking of his legacy.