handbag blogs,handbag weblog,handbag news

For many of us, dragging ourselves to a noisy wet market for fresh food on the way home from a hectic day at work is a chore we could do without. Now we can.

A group of college graduates in Shanghai has launched a website where, with one quick click, shoppers can get timely deliveries of vegetables, meat, fruits and flavorings - everything needed to put together a meal.

“We’ve made shopping for food a breeze,” said Yang Hua, one of the founders of gv123.com, a new online food store in Shanghai. “It’s more than a simple convenience - it’s a way of life. E-groceries are becoming part of consumers’ lives.”

Yang and his co-workers are betting on that trend continuing. For a 5-yuan delivery fee, buyers can wait at home for a wide variety of fresh and clean foods at discount prices compared with the wet market.

Business has proven brisk as the store now receives more than 100 orders a day, only five months after its launch. “The fast growth rate is beyond our expectation,” Yang said with a big grin. “We are even running short on staff to do deliveries.”

A college graduate and e-commerce lover, 28-year-old Yang started the business with his friends in November last year.

“We tried to solve real problems,” said Yang. “Wet markets usually close early. So those who like cooking for themselves but get off work late find our service helpful. Supermarkets, on the other hand, may not be able to offer vegetables as fresh as ours, which are purchased from the market on the day of delivery.”

He also thinks the online shop can help elders who can’t get to wet markets or supermarkets. Now they can phone in their orders.

Five months into the business, Yang is devising new plans to make further inroads into the online food market.

Given that customers today have increasingly higher demands for food quality, Yang said he is considering offering branded healthy products in collaboration with reputed suppliers.

“Eco-friendly vegetables, for example, would be a great hit with the consumers, and will bring bigger profit margins to us as well.”

He also has ambitions to expand the shop’s portfolio to processed foods.

“It would not only cater to the needs of consumers, but also create more jobs for those in need if we want to launch such a manufacturing division,” said Yang, adding that he welcomes other college graduates to join him in a business that is highly promising.

“Being a greengrocer may sound embarrassing for a college graduate, but I don’t think so. It’s about e-commerce, about making people’s lives easier. And we could have greater opportunities ahead as long as we have new ideas to improve people’s lives.”

Having declined for the past decade, bank robberies in the Los Angeles area increased last year to 171, a newspaper report said on Saturday.

In January alone, 42 bank robberies occurred, according to the Los Angeles Times.

While well below the peak levels of the 1990s, the uptick was the first since 2000, the paper noted.

In Orange County neighboring Los Angeles, last year’s bank robberies totaled 145, the highest this decade. The previous high was 139 in 2000, the paper said.

FBI Special Agent Steve May, who runs the bank robbery detail in Los Angeles, said the trend would likely be short-lived.

May expects about 425 bank robberies in Southern California this year, give or take a dozen, said the paper.

Whatever the final tally, it will be a far cry from the 1992 peak of 2,600 bank holdups in Los Angeles County, May said in remarks published by the paper.

Gangs, which were predominantly behind the rise in bank robberies in the late 1980s and 1990s, have not been as active over the last five years, according to May.

Instead, the FBI is seeing the single male takeover robber whose crimes are fueled by some kind of dependency, such as addiction to gambling or drugs, May said.

Authorities are also seeing women more involved in robberies. Previously, only about three or four percent of female robbers would go into a bank, but the figure has risen to nearly seven percent in the Los Angeles area, May said.

A new type of flu virus has been confirmed in two hog farm workers in western Canada’s Saskatchewan province, health officials said Tuesday.

The virus was found when the workers was undergoing tests for A/H1N1 flu virus after they showed mild flu-like symptoms about two weeks ago, according to Moira McKinnon, the province’s chief medical health officer.

Lab results revealed something different and unusual. Further examination determined that a new strain of flu had emerged, he said.

McKinnon stressed that the virus was considered not pandemic and has been named “non-pandemic influenza A virus.” The virus may have been a “one-off” event, he said, noting that laboratories have not come across any other examples of the strain detected.

“These events do happen, and they do happen occasionally,” McKinnon told reporters at a news conference in provincial capital Regina. “In the current heightened scenario, we’ve picked this one up. It will probably not transmit. It will probably go no further than it’s gone already.”

The two workers have totally recovered. A third worker may have also contracted the same new strain and is under test.

It is not clear how the workers came to contract the new virus, but they had not been outside of the country.

McKinnon said that workers associated with the barns, which are located in eastern Saskatchewan, will be administered general flu shots. It was believed that the current seasonal influenza immunization would be effective against the new strain.

Saskatchewan’s chief veterinarian Dr. Greg Douglas said there is no sign that pigs have been infected by the new flu. But bio-security measures include requiring workers to shower before entering barns, and monitoring the health of all workers have been put in place.

The country’s fiscal revenue went up by a large margin in June, marking a record high year-on-year monthly growth this year and the second positive growth since May.

However, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) warned the engine to fuel such fiscal revenue growth was not solid enough.

China’s June fiscal revenue rose 19.6 percent from a year earlier at 686.7 billion yuan ($100.54 billion), while spending climbed 21.5 percent, the MOF said yesterday. Fiscal revenue has improved since May along with the economy, the ministry said on its website. The figures indicated a surplus for June of 46.2 billion yuan.

Revenue in May rose 4.8 percent from a year earlier, reversing the downward trend of the past few months.

The fiscal revenue growth to some extent reflected positive changes in the economy, as shown in a growth in business tax collections, the MOF said.

“The growth in business taxes was mainly fueled by the vibrant construction sector, the biggest beneficiary of the 4-trillion-yuan government stimulus,” said Wang Yuanhong, economist and head of the Economic Forecasting Department of the State Information Center.

In addition, the revenue growth was also a result of the booming property market and financial services industry as well as the fuel tax reform, he explained. A rising consumption tax also indicated Chinese consumers’ strong ability to spend.

However, the 13.8-percent decline in corporate tax reflected that Chinese companies still needed more time to recover, Wang said, dismissing some views regarding absolute confidence in China’s recovery.

Combined central and local government revenues in the first half totaled 3.4 trillion yuan, a fall of 2.4 percent from the same period last year.

The country needs to achieve more than 8 percent revenue growth in the second half of the year to realize a full year target of 8 percent growth.

The Chinese government expects revenue to grow 8 percent in 2009, much slower than previous years. Its revenue climbed 18.8 percent in 2008 and 32.4 percent in 2007.

“I believe that as the stimulus package would continue to contribute to growth in investment and domestic demand in the second half of the year, China could achieve the 8 percent growth target,” said Jia Kang, president of Institute of Fiscal Science, the Ministry of Finance.

From the war against the Iranian-and Syrian-backed Hezbollah three years ago, to the recent reports of a plan to recruit “Internet warfare” team, Israel has been seemingly attached growing importance to cyber-tactics in its warfare.

Reports from Jerusalem suggest the country’s Foreign Ministry has unveiled plans for an “Internet warfare” team. The program recruits members from the public to write on websites in defense of Israel.

The successful candidates need to be students of law or politics who speak foreign languages. Others will have a military background. Much of what they will do is to write talkbacks on news sites — the area usually beneath a news story that allows for public comments.

Back to 2006, the Israeli war with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah could form the basis of a cyber-warfare ABC textbook. Israel adopted a series of low-key methods for trying to win the war physically and psychologically.

Israel created numerous fake sites in Arabic that spoke to average Lebanese citizens. It tried offering rewards for the hand-over of Hezbollah fighters and, in perhaps the most James Bond-like operations, it took control of people’s mobile phones.

In September 2007, Israeli jets blew up a remote facility in Syria, which was believed to be a nuclear facility under construction. From what journalists have been able to learn of that operation, Israel managed to jam Syrian radar and other devices to allow its air force time to launch the strike undetected.

Israel is not alone in doing this — experts say Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and many more are also developing techniques that use modern technologies to infiltrate the enemy.

“Everybody in the region is doing it,” said Mike Dahan, a political science expert in the Communications Department of Sapir College in Israel’s Negev Desert.

In the Middle East, spies, intelligence agencies and sundry official eavesdroppers are increasingly using the Internet and beyond to target enemy states. It is rumored that several countries in the Middle East use Russian hackers and scientists to operate on their behalf.

However, it is Israel that is seemingly at the cutting edge — listed alongside the United States, France and a couple of others as a top cyber-war nation.

Israel’s high-tech industry is a world leader, particularly in the fields of security and communications. Israeli companies such as Comverse, Checkpoint and AMDOCS are world leaders, while many other top international high-tech firms choose to locate their research and development arms in Israel.

All that Israeli technical know-how comes from one place: the army. There is one unit within the army’s intelligence arm that seems to specialize in producing the most talented CEOs and programming whiz kids. And it is the army that takes the lead in Israel’s cyber campaigns.

The other intelligence branches, including the famed Mossad, are very dependent on the military, although it is understood that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) is now developing its own mechanism.

The Shin Bet has a similar mandate to the FBI, with its main focuses being the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

Gadi Evron, a private consultant formerly responsible for security in Israeli government’s non-military computer system, does not deny that his country has a large-scale activity using the Internet to disrupt enemy activities. He just tends to err when it comes to talk of the more grandiose plots.

While it is clear Israel has successfully used cyber-tactics against its enemies, it is harder to know to what extent Israel has been hit, according to Dahan.

“If you are attacked or hacked and no one knows about it, you are not going to run to the press and tell people,” he said.

Israel talks little about its cyber operations, but occasional leaks to the media, along with insider knowledge amassed by analysts, certainly pointing to a trend of active involvement of computer experts in Israel’s covert and sometimes overt operations.

Part of the problem in discussing “cyber warfare” is the terminology, according to Evron.

“Information warfare or cyber warfare is the most widely used buzzword right now. It’s something that people listen to, so experts go out there and have a lot of fun using the term, trying to get into the press,” said Evron.

Hacking into websites and flooding computer systems are commonplace these days, the question is to what extent governments participate in these types of activities and the more sinister planting of Trojan Horses on enemy computers in order to gain control of information and to potentially disinform.

The truth is these are unknown quantities and governments are spending huge sums both trying to protect themselves from these attacks and trying to learn how they can be used to their own advantage.

The Organization of American States (OAS) on Tuesday denied Honduran ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to seek reelection with a constitutional reform.

“There is an important trend to modify the constitution in its own benefit, but in the case of Honduras, it could not happen because the constitution does not allow it,” OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza told Chile national television in Santiago.

“Zelaya could not be a candidate in the coming elections. What he wanted was a consultation to see if there was a disposition to reform the Honduran constitution,” Insulza said.

Zelaya, who was forced into exile after the military coup in June, on Monday gave a one-week ultimatum to the interim government to restore his presidential power.

Luxury apartment sales in China’s big cities saw significant growth in the second quarter, mainly due to increased purchases by overseas residents.

Statistics put out by the Beijing Real Estate Transaction website showed that among the capital’s top 30 most expensive residential projects, 993 units were sold in the second quarter, up 100 percent year-on-year and more than 50 percent quarter-on-quarter.

“The loosening up of the policy canceling limitations on home purchases by foreigners and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macao in Beijing contributed largely to rising sales in the high-end residential sector,” said Will Chen, deputy-managing director of CBRE.

In 2005, overseas residents’ home purchases accounted for 27 percent of total sales, said Chen. But the figure dropped to 3-4 percent in the past two years after the government restrictions took effect in 2006.

A Hong Kong resident, who just bought a 6.8-million-yuan ($995,100) apartment in the capital’s CBD area, told China Daily that he wanted to take advantage of low rates before inflationary trends started gaining ground.

“You have to find a place to invest your money, and high-end property is the best investment choice to maintain the value of assets,” said the buyer, who declined to be named.

“Compared to Hong Kong, property prices in Beijing are comparatively lower. And, given China’s fast-growing economy, the current prices still have appreciation potential,” he added.

Sales of luxury apartments in Shanghai were heating up as well.

The UWIN property transaction system showed that the sales of apartments with unit price higher than 30,000 yuan per sq m in Shanghai touched a three-year record. Around 546,476 sq m of floor space area were sold in the first half, compared to 438,532 sq m for the whole of 2008.

Among buyers of Yanlord Town, a project with a sale price of 37,000 yuan per sq m, 38 percent were Shanghai residents, 42 percent buyers from other provinces and the rest overseas buyers, said Yao Wei, vice-general manager of Singapore-based Yanlord Land Group Ltd.

“Compared to last year, the proportion of home purchases by Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents saw an obvious increase in the past few months,” Yao was quoted by China Business News as saying.

A survey by Centaline China’s research center showed that residents from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were turning into increasingly important players in Shanghai’s high-end residential market.

Since March, the number of buyers from these three regions saw an increase of 25 percent, 40 percent and 43 percent month-on-month, approaching the record highs of 2007.

The trend was similar in Guangzhou, a city neighboring Hong Kong.

The marketing chief of Summer Palace Golf Chateau, a project with a price tag of 40,000 yuan per sq m, said sales had jumped by more than 200 percent in the first six months of this year, and around 40 percent of the buyers were Hong Kong and Macao residents, with purchases for investment and self-use being roughly equal.

A U.S. infectious disease expert said Monday that she was not sure when the A/H1N1 flu outbreak sweeping across the United States would come to an end.

“The current virus is transmitted easily from person to person. We are seeing a rise in the number of cases in the United States,” Joan E. Nichols, director of the Infectious Diseases Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), told Xinhua in an interview.

“Only time will tell how far, wide the virus will spread or how long it will spread in the United States,” she said.

Nichols is one of a few global researchers who are engaged in research to determine the genetic makeup of the H1N1 virus and the biological response to it. Her research mixes aspects of both virology and immunology in order to assess the impact of the virus and/or host factors on the development of clinical disease, generation of immune response and development of immune memory.

“We are nearing the end of our flu season here, but we are seeing spread of the H1N1 virus due to the lack of immunity to this virus in our population,” she said.

“At this point you cannot stop the virus from spreading but you can work to limit transmission and exposure of those people most at risk.”

The federal government in the form of the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) has urged people to maintain such good hygienic practices as washing hand frequently, covering mouth and nose when coughing and staying home when sick.

“Current measures are to limit but not control spread,” Nichols said, adding that there are two ways the virus spreads — aerosol transmission and small droplets.

As a member of the UTMB Sealy Center for Vaccine Development and a member of UTMB Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Nichols is currently developing human respiratory and immune system models using tissue engineering practices to study pathogens such as human, avian and A/H1N1 flu virus, HIV, SARS and others.

On how the virus would spread in the U.S. in the future, Nichols said:” We are going to see the spread of the virus but in smaller groups and spread out over time.”

“We will see the infections spread but slower and in a more controlled fashion so that there is not such a simultaneous worldwide outbreak,” she added.

Nichols said she could not tell whether the situation could be turning worse, but added that the deaths associated with A/H1N1 in the United States have been like seasonal flu related deaths due to infection and other underlying health problems in the person that died.

To limit the spread of the virus, the expert called on people to follow the CDC guidelines to limit the spread of the virus and control the speed at which it spreads.

“We cannot stop the spread at this point and it is possible that this virus was in our population as a silent infection for a while before we were able to identify it,” she said.

So far, there have been 5,123 confirmed and probable cases of A/H1N1 influenza in 47 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The current death count is five.

In the acclaimed 1956 film “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” director Robert Wise traces the real-life ascent of Rocky Graziano from New York street kid to world boxing champion. In one scene early in the story, Sal Mineo says to Paul Newman (as Graziano), “Guys like us, we ain’t got no chance, have we?”

Graziano did indeed get his chance, and it’s that opportunity to overcome sociological barriers and achieve success that has made boxing and its gladiators rich material for some of Hollywood’s most celebrated storytelling.

Fresh off “Million Dollar Baby’s” knockout performance at the Academy Awards, reality TV guru Mark Burnett aims to bring the tried-and-true elements of the fight game to success on the small screen with his series “The Contender,” which debuts Monday night (March 7) on NBC.

UP FROM THE STREETS

Burnett acknowledges that a big part of the show’s appeal is the theme of upward social mobility that has been the backdrop of many a Hollywood boxing film.

“The hard-luck story, coming from a disadvantaged background — Americans like that story,” says Burnett, a British native who boxed in the army and is now a licensed fight promoter in California and Nevada.

The format of “The Contender” incorporates elements of some of Burnett’s current reality show successes such as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” Sixteen boxers live and train together while vying for a $1 million purse. Each episode ends with a five-round fight, with the loser eliminated.

“Last time I checked, there were no applicants from Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side,” Burnett says. “They come from underprivileged backgrounds, and that is what boxing has always stood for.”

Since their earliest pairings in the 1890s, boxing and film have been a good match. The first cameras might have been cumbersome, but a boxing ring fit the frame perfectly. Soon films of major prizefights were screened throughout America’s theaters, becoming a phenomenon and catching the attention of Hollywood filmmakers, who began to bring elements of the popular sport to their dramatic storytelling.

From the 1920s and ’30s, with “Battling Butler” and “The Champ,” through the golden era of boxing movies in the ’40s and ’50s, with John Garfield in “Body and Soul” and director Wise’s “The Set-Up” — a rare film that was shot in real time — Hollywood has demonstrated a healthy respect for the sport.

And with former boxer John Huston directing Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges in “Fat City,” the immense popularity of Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” franchise and the undisputed artistry of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” the sweet science has long enjoyed sweet success on the silver screen. That was reinforced Feb. 27 when Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” won Oscars for best picture, director, actress (Hilary Swank) and supporting actor (Morgan Freeman).

LIFE MIRRORED

“The canvas is a canvas to take it anywhere you want,” boxing historian Bert Sugar says. “There’s two participants, and you can see everything and mirror everything through them.” (Sugar, former editor and publisher of the Ring magazine, is working with filmmaker Spike Lee and writer Budd Schulberg on a movie project about legendary boxing champion Joe Louis.)

Noted documentarian Ken Burns, who recently directed and produced the PBS miniseries “Unforgivable Blackness,” about the life and times of controversial heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (news), notes that the core of drama is conflict.

“The essence of boxing is the reducing of conflict to its elemental components,” he says. “You’ve got two essentially naked people in a ring fighting it out, using not only their physical strength but their psychological strength to try and defeat the other. Nothing could be more interesting and compelling on a dramatic level than that.”

Jim Lampley, the HBO fight announcer whose production company is developing boxing-themed projects for TV and film, points to the sport’s aspect of “psychological confrontation” as being a huge part of its allure.

“Boxing is the most intensely confrontational sport and therefore to me has the most powerful psychological elements,” Lampley says.

The sport has drama-ready elements inside the ring, but what makes the sport attractive to Hollywood is that it allows for great storytelling outside the ring. From “The Champ,” with its father-son love tale, to the upcoming “Cinderella Man,” featuring Russell Crowe as beloved Depression-era boxer Jim Braddock, a struggling family man who serves as inspiration to a downtrodden country, the sport appeals to filmmakers and moviegoers because it presents such universal themes as hope and upward social mobility.

“Because the sport is fundamentally simple but the circumstances that surround it are inevitably and chronically complicated, it’s perfect movie fodder,” Lampley says.

Of all the storylines dominating the build-up to this week’s U.S. Masters, the most compelling is the remarkable and triumphant comeback from injury of Tiger Woods.

Eight days ago, in only his third tournament since returning from reconstructive knee surgery, the world number one clinched his 66th PGA Tour title at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Although not at his best for all four days at Bay Hill, the relentless Woods overhauled a five-stroke deficit in the final round by closing with a three-under-par 67.

In vintage Tiger fashion, he sealed victory with a dramatic 16-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole and will launch his bid this week for a fifth Masters title as the overwhelming favorite.

“It’s always nice to win a tournament pre-Augusta and I was able to do that again this year,” Woods said in the build-up to the first major of the season.

“It’s a validation of what I’ve been working on from the physical standpoint … but also the work I’ve been doing with (swing coach) Hank (Haney). This win definitely validates all the things I’ve been trying to do.

“As I look back at my three tournaments, I’ve gotten better at each one and that was the whole idea was to keep progressing to Augusta,” the 14-times major winner added.

“I was hoping I could get my game where I could feel hitting shots again because I’d been only on the range and putting at home.”

Woods is ideally suited to the par-72 Augusta National layout, which was stretched to a formidable 7,445 yards for the 2006 Masters, making it the second-longest course in major championship golf at the time.

He is among golf’s biggest hitters, has a superbly creative short game and is arguably the best putter of all time from inside 15 feet.

The biggest challenge at Augusta comes on the slick, severely sloping greens and Woods has become well acquainted with their nuances since making his Masters debut as an amateur in 1995.

FEELING GOOD

“I feel pretty good at Augusta,” Woods said. “I know how to prepare the way I like to play the tournament and it helps that I have gained a lot of knowledge from members and former champions I have played practice rounds with.”

Anticipation of the almost inevitable title challenge by Woods this week is one of several intriguing storylines ahead of the April 9-12 Masters.

Padraig Harrington will be bidding for a third consecutive major victory, Greg Norman returns to Augusta for the first time since 2002 and young guns such as American Anthony Kim and Rory McIlroy are set to make their debuts at the Masters.

Irishman Harrington took the greatest advantage of Woods’s injury absence for the last six months of 2008, winning the British Open at Royal Birkdale and the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills.

However the 37-year-old Dubliner is doing his best to play down the hype of whether he can follow in the footsteps of Woods (2000), Jack Nicklaus (1971-2) and Ben Hogan (1953).

“Golf is all about performing in the majors but I’m not going to this major and thinking it has to happen,” Harrington said of his bid for a rare third major win in a row.

“If you said to me I was going to miss the cut at this Masters and win the Masters next year, I’d be very happy with that, I’d take that.

“While it is nice to be going for three and if it happens it will be a bonus, I’m not going to put my pressure on my ability to win this one. I’m going to try and play down that pressure and distraction.”

Experience is always a prized commodity at Augusta and twice champion Phil Mickelson and 2000 winner Vijay Singh are likely to be leading contenders this week.

South African Trevor Immelman defends the title he won by three shots in tricky, swirling winds last year when his three-over-par 75 matched the highest closing score by a winner set by Arnold Palmer in 1962.

The Masters starts on Thursday.