Georgia Asian Times Dec 15-31, 2014

Covering The Multicultural Asian American Community in Georgia www.gasiantimes.com December 1-15, 2014

Season’s Greetings

Page 2 December 15-31, 2014 Georgia Asian Times

Georgia Asian Times December 15-31, 2014 Page 3

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Publisher: Li WongAccount Manager: Adrian WestContributors: Andrian Putra, May Lee, Mark Ho

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Census Bureau presentation on Vietnamese American population in Georgia and the Deep Southby (Luke) Anh Nguyen, Data Dissemi-nation Specialist, U.S. Census Bureau/Atlanta regionDate: Thursday, Dec 18, 2014Time: 6:00 pm - 6:45 pmVenue: Boat People SOS, 6107 Oak-brook Parkway, NorcrossFor more info: 770.458.6700

Indian Professional Netowrk - Monthly Networking SeminarDate: Thursday, Dec 18, 2014Time: 6:30 PM to 9:15 PMVenue: Ashiana Indian Restaurant, Global Mall, NorcrossAdmission $10 includes Indian buffet dinnerRSVP: Mustafa Ajmeri - [email protected] - 678-463-6613

Chinese New Year BanquetOrganized by National Association of Chinese Americans (NACA)Date: Saturday, Feb 21, 2015Time: 6:00 pm

Venue: Canton House, Buford HwyAdmission: Members $38; Non-mem-bers $80; Corporate table $1800For more info: www.naca-atlanta.org

Greater Gwinnett Championship- Golf Champions TourDate: April 13-19, 2015Venue: TPC SugarloafFor more info: www.greatergwin-nettchampionship.com

2015 Symposium on Asia-USA Partnership Opportunities (SAUPO) Largest Asin business conference in the SouthDate: Friday, April 17, 2015Time: 7:00 am - 6:00 pmVenue: St. Regis Hotel, Atlanta, GAFor more info: www.kennesaw.edu/saupo/home.php



METRO ASIAN NEWS

Norcross, December 6, 2014 — Coa-lition to Abolish Modern Day Slavery (CAMSA) is a coalition organization established to raise awareness and to fight modern day slavery in Asian countries.

BPSOS Atlanta along with its local partners organize a fund raising dinner and to bring awareness of the issues to the Asian community in Atlanta.

According to the figures by United Nations, there are over 23 million sex and labor trafficking victims in the world.

“Over 5,000 slavery victims have been rescued from Russia alone in the past year. The victims originates from over 20 different countries,” said Nguyen Dinh Thang, PhD, CEO & Pres-ident of BPSOS, a national non-profit refugee assistance organization based in Virginia.

CAMSA was founded in February 2008 to eradicate human trafficking down to the roots.

CAMSA adopts a three-pronged strategies: rescue and protect victims; punish traffickers through economic and legal protections; to pressure gov-ernments of the source and destination countries to enact and enforce an-ti-trafficking laws and policies, accord-ing to Dr. Thang.

CAMSA plans an advocacy and schol-arship program at local college campus to encourage young students to join the movement.

Jed Meshew, a law student from Georgia State University Law School delivered an emotional presentation of his experience as an intern at a CAMSA operation in Bangkok, Thailand.

For more information on CAMSA, visit www.camsa-coalition.org

CAMSA raise awareness of modern day slavery in Asia

Japan Consulate General celebrates Emperor Akihito’s 81st Birthday

Atlanta, December 4, 2014 — The Consulate General of Japan celebrated the 81st birthday of His Majesty Em-peror Akihito at the residence of Hon-orable Kazuo Sunaga, Consul General of Japan in Atlanta.

Senior members of Georgia leg-islatures, business, and community leaders of Georgia were invited to the celebration. Guests from neighbor-ing South Carolina and Alabama also attended the event.

“Relations between people in Georgia and Japan is strengthened by decades of friendship and mutual understand-ing,” said Consul General Sunaga in his remark at the celebration.

Several members of Georgia legisla-tures including Rep. Tom Taylor, Rep. Lynn Riley, and State Rep. BJ Pak also attended.

Official trade ties between Japan and the state of Georgia started in 1973with the opening of a Georgia State Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism office in Tokyo.

Since then, Georgia has often been regarded as the center of Japanese in-dustry in the U.S. southeast. Japanese affiliated companies have invested over $10.4 Billion in Georgia, where 547 Japanese affiliated companies current-ly operate.

These companies employ nearly 37,000 Georgian workers and amongthe major Japanese firms operating in Georgia includes Kubota, Murata,TOTO, Yamaha, and YKK. Georgia’s export to Japan amounted to $1.4 Bil-lionand ranking Japan its 4th largest export market.

Invited guests were treated to a toast to the Emperor on his 81st birthday.

Dr. Nguyen DinhThang of BPSOS delivers the keynote speech at the CAMSA Fundraising dinner.

Kazuo Sunaga, Consul General of Japan in Atlanta, welcomes invited guests to his residence in Buckhead.


BUSINESS

Norcross, December 5, 2014 - Chi-nese cabinet manufacturer, LifeArt Cabinetry, celebrated the expansion of its U.S. headquarters in, Gwinnett county. The 95,920 square foot facility provides showroom and distribution space for the growing company.

“Due to the upswing in the build-ing market, the demand for quality cabinets at the wholesale level has increased,” stated Cecil Zhang, Vice President of LifeArt Cabinetry.

“We are excited to better serve our customers in this new facility, as well as establish our commitment to the community by making this location the

site of our U.S. headquarters. As we continue to grow and expand, we are confident that this location will sup-port our growth and allow us to enjoy sustained success in the future.”

Located at 6700 Best Friend Rd., LifeArt Cabinetry will continue to own and operate a manufacturing plant in China.

“Gwinnett County is committed to creating an economic environment that encourages its businesses to grow,” Gwinnett County Board of Commis-sioners Chairman Charlotte Nash stated.

Chinese cabinet manufacturer opens 100,000 sf showroom and distribution

center in Gwinnett

“LifeArt Cabinetry’s strong interna-tional presence and continued growth make Gwinnett the ideal location for its U.S. headquarters.”

Craig Viergever, Executive Vice President and Principal with Lee & Associates, who represented the seller, is credited with assisting the company in acquiring their new headquarters.

“LifeArt Cabinetry’s new space provides an excellent opportunity for continued expansion in the Metro Atlanta market and the United States,” stated Viergever.

“The property at 6700 Best Friend is uniquely suited for LifeArt in that it provides exceptional access for their customers and is logistically advanta-geous for receiving and distribution of cabinets and related goods.”

“This new showroom is in the heart of Gwinnett’s commercial district and a short distance from Atlanta, which is a valuable resource for bringing and growing new business in the County,” stated Chuck Warbington, Executive Director, Gwinnett Village CID.

“The future is bright for LifeArt Cabinetry and we are excited to have them as a part of our thriving business community.

LifeArt Cabinetry represents the ninth global announcement this year for Gwinnett County, which is home to more than 600 internationally based businesses and more than a dozen China-based companies.

“Our team works to retain and expand global headquarters in Gwin-nett and we are confident that LifeArt Cabinetry’s expansion will be advanta-geous to the future of the company and our community,” said Nick Masino, Senior Vice President of Economic De-velopment for Gwinnett Chamber and Partnership Gwinnett.

“We applaud LifeArt Cabinetry on their continued growth, which high-lights the resources available to com-panies in Gwinnett and speaks to the economic vitality of the metro Atlanta region.”

LifeArt started as a retail cabinet center in 2011 and had become a lead-ing maker of ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinet lines, in both framed and frameless styles.

For more information on LifeArt Cabinetry, please visit http://www.lifeartcabinetry.com


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BUSINESS

Jakarta, Dec 8, 2014 — Indonesia is set to lead a boom in online shopping across Southeast Asia as Internet access explodes and investors pour money into a rapidly growing host of retail start-ups, analysts say.

Much like China several years ago, the region is enjoying a rapid increase in web access that observers say is starting to drive a fundamental shift in shopping habits among the emerg-ing middle class.

According to a recent report by in-vestment bank UBS, business-to-con-sumer e-commerce in Southeast Asia will increase at least five-fold by 2020, and could reach as much as US$35 billion a year.

It cited strong growth in Thailand and the Philippines but said Indone-sia, the region’s biggest economy, was the most promising market despite currently having modest online sales and low Internet penetration.

This hope is based on an expected rapid increase in web users, with con-sultancy Redwing saying that 125 mil-lion people are expected to be online by the end of 2015, from 55 million in 2012, coupled with an increasingly affluent middle class.

“There is huge opportunity,” Dan-iel Tumiwa, head of the Indonesian e-commerce association, told a recent startup conference in Jakarta. “The middle class is a major, major, major driving force.”

E-commerce growth across South-east Asia has been given a kickstart by

an explosion in the availability of cheap smartphones, ana-lysts say, with many getting their first taste of the Internet on handsets that come loaded with social media and popular retail sites.

The past two years has seen a noticeable shift in Indonesia with many starting to shop online, for everything from fashion to electronics, and consumers putting aside initial worries about fraud to opt for the convenience of “e-tail”, Tumiwa said.

Biggest start-up investment

The current star of Indonesia’s nascent e-commerce scene is Tokope-dia, a marketplace that allows users to set up online shops and handles transactions. In October, the site won a US$100 million investment from Japan’s SoftBank and US firm Se-quoia Capital.

It was the biggest startup investment in Indonesia to date and the first in the country by Sequoia, a Silicon Val-ley venture capital firm that has been an early backer of success stories such as WhatsApp and Apple.

Numerous online shopping websites have also proven popular, from those that host classifieds, such as Kaskus and OLX, to retail sites including the Indonesian branch of Lazada, which bills itself as Southeast Asia’s answer to Amazon.

Lazada, founded in 2012 and with

Indonesia leading online shopping boom with better internet access

operations in six Southeast Asian countries, has also attracted investor interest. At the weekend it secured US$250 million in a fresh round of funding led by Singapore state invest-ment giant Temasek.

The new government of President Joko Widodo is taking an interest, with Information Technology Minister Rudiantara, who goes by one name, saying that they are looking at ways of supporting the sector.

But while there is much optimism, the e-commerce sector in Southeast Asia — home to 10 countries and a population of about 600 million peo-ple — still has long way to go, accord-ing to analysts.

E-commerce currently accounts for just 0.2 per cent of retail sales in the region, compared with 8.0 per cent in China and 8.7 per cent in the United States, according to the UBS report.

And huge challenges remain in the most promising market, Indonesia, not least due to the government’s decision earlier this year to block for-eigners from investing in e-commerce, critics say.

However, Kuo-Yi Lim, from venture capital firm Monk’s Hill Ventures, said the Chinese government had taken a similar approach, adding: “People figure out ways to work with it, or work around it.”

Tokopedia managed to secure its recent investment despite the govern-ment ban, as the site does not make any direct sales.

Even the firm’s CEO, William Ta-nuwijaya, admits he faced problems getting initial funding, highlighting the challenge for newcomers trying to enter an still underdeveloped market.

“People didn’t even call it a ‘start-up’, people called it ‘I want to build a website’,” he said.

“Indonesia is not Silicon Valley.”


ART

Legendary virtuoso violinist Kyung Wha Chung celebrates a triumphant return to performing after recovering from a finger injury that almost ended her career.

Losing the use of her left index finger in 2005 pretty much put an end to the high-flying, globe-trotting career of South Korean violin virtuoso Kyung Wha Chung. “During a rehearsal, my finger just collapsed and I couldn’t play anymore,” says Chung, who will be playing her first London recital next week in more than 10 years, during an interview at a posh London hotel.

The injury, due to weakening she at-tributes to a cortisone overdose, might have thrown a lesser spirit than Chung, 66, into a spiral of despair. Instead, she is full of enthusiasm for making a limited comeback, and can also see a macabre upside to her injury.

“Why do you think you are having an interview with me?” quips the dimin-utive Chung. “Because you are curious what a violinist like me goes through when I have a hand injury. There are a gazillion people who have hand injuries.”

Chung may scoff it off, but for vio-linists, losing the use of the left index finger makes it impossible to press down on the strings to produce the

right notes, rendering them a bit like a one-handed pianist. It wasn’t anything she would have wished to happen to anyone, especially herself, but Chung says she took the opportunity to re-ex-amine her life, which had up until then had been driven mostly by the pressure of the concert circuit.

“My personal life was something I could spend more time on, and so I’m forever grateful that I went through that period,” says the mother of two sons. “I’m relieved of a lot of excess luggage. I’m freer, lighter. I came to terms with all the things that I didn’t have time to question because my im-mediate challenge was to go on stage.”

Also, as her finger slowly healed with years of therapy, she learned how to do something only a virtuoso prevent-ed from playing her instrument could do: play the violin in her head. “For instance, after coming out of five years of not playing, and then to do the six unaccompanied Bach (sonatas and partitas), after not having played. I worked it out all in my head with every possibility of bowing and so on,” she says.

Meteoric rise

Born in 1948 in Seoul, Chung and her siblings – her younger brother, Myung-Whun Chung, is a conductor

‘With one note’: Korean violin legend returns to the stage

and pianist, while her older sister, Myung-Wha Chung, plays cello – had already made a name for themselves as musical prodigies in South Korea by the time they were entering their teens, often playing as a trio.

But realising that her children needed more training and exposure, Chung’s mother relocated the family to New York, where older sister Myung-Soh Chung was studying the flute at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music.

Impressed by Chung’s audition, Juilliard accepted the 13-year-old, awarding her with full scholarship. But it wasn’t always an easy ride. Chung struggled with the language, gender and etnic barriers in 1960s America, but persevered under the strict instruc-tions of her violin teacher Ivan Gala-mian.

She first attracted notice in 1967 when she tied for first prize with fellow Galamian student Pinchas Zukerman in the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Competition in New York. It was the only time the judges awarded a joint victory in the history of the now dis-continued competition.

Even though she had won the com-petition, most people still regarded her as a fluke. It wasn’t until she stepped in for Itzhak Perlman in London to nail a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin

Concerto in 1970 that the classical mu-sic world realized Chung was no flash in the pan.

Legacy

From then on, Chung traced a three-decade long career performing and recording music all across the world, and has since been acknowl-edged as one of the best virtuoso violinist of her time.

A new Decca box set of her collected recordings shows her proficiency on a wide range of music, from Bartok to Mendelssohn to Brahms – whom she especially adores – to chamber per-formances with the likes of renowned pianists Krystian Zimerman and Radu Lupu.

But Chung, who gave up playing the piano when she was a child to begin what would become a lifelong romance with the violin, attributes the founda-tion of her success to just one note.

“For a string player, there is the challenge of finding that one touch of sound that can go immediately into somebody’s soul,” she says, adding that she figures she tied with Zukerman for the Leventritt award because of the way she played the first note, a B flat, on Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. “So you can do it with one note,” she laughs.


EVENTS Consulate General of Japan celebrates His Majesty Emperor Akihito 81st Birthday

Hon. Kazuo Sunaga, Consul General of Japan in Atlanta, delivers a remark on the celebration of His Majesty Emperor Akihito’s 81st birthday.

House Rep. Lynn Riley delivers a message from the Georgia Governor.

Coalition to Abolish Modern Day Slavery in Asia - Fundraising Dinner, Dec 6, 2014


EAT OUT

Atlanta Chinatown Mall’s food court gets new facelift

Chamblee, Dec 11, 2014 — The food court of Atlanta Chinatown Mall has recently undergoes a physical and cos-metic transformation — and the end result has been a delight to regular and first time visitors.

Renovation work started in the past summer after several months of re-search and planning.

“We have to work with several con-straints of our vendors and they have to remain open for business during the renovation period,” said Peter Chang, CEO, Atlanta Chinatown Mall in an interview with Georgia Asian Times.

Concept for the final design was inspired by contemporary feel with Chinese characteristics. After sever-al rounds of interview with several project construction firms, Celadon Construction LLC was picked to lead the renovation project.

“It has been an interesting challenge to be part of this project. We have to source quality hardware and materials from overseas to make it happen,” said John Mello, General Manager of Celadon Construction LLC.

“Having a bright and airy feel to the food court are important require-ment,” adds Chang.

Columns are fitted with new bright box lights with accents such as bam-boo motifs. Floors are being updated with light colored and slip resistant tiles.

All six food vendors at the food court also received new standardized elec-tronic signs.

A major accomplishment of the project is to transform the former lavatories to a contemporary one with modern amenities.

“We also wanted the floors to be easi-ly kept dry and the room has a bright clean feeling,” said Rochelle Anthony, Property Manager of Atlanta China-town Mall.

“We are proud to say that we have the best looking and clean lavatories around here in Chamblee,” adds An-thony with a chuckle.

The recently completed renovation is already bearing positive results — yielding an increased of mainstream visitors to the food court.

“Our food vendors are happy and satisfied with the new look — it also brings more business to them,” said Chang.

The food court is anticipating greater food traffic in the coming seasons such as Christmas and Chinese Lunar New Year. It also plans to host visit-ing groups from various schools and organizations.

Atlanta Chinatown Mall - Food Court5383 New Peachtree Road, Chamblee, GA 30341Tel: 770.458.6660www.atlantachinatown.com

Business Hours: Sunday-Thursday 10:00 am - 9:00 pmFriday-Saturday 10:00 am - 9:30 pm


LIFESTYLE

Mix of Japanese water and Spanish cask produces world’s top whisky

Yamazaki, Dec 4, 2014 — Nestled at the foot of wooded hills near the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, the Yamazaki whisky distillery feels a long way from the northerly glens of Scotch’s spiritual home.

Despite its unlikely birthplace, last month Yamazaki’s Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 trumped more than 1,000 challengers to be named the world’s best whisky by prominent critic Jim Murray in his Whisky Bible 2015.

The first Japanese whisky to claim the crown owes its success to adroit exploitation of climate and water, spe-cial casks and a keen awareness of the Japanese palate, the company says.

In Yamazaki’s cavernous cellar, 2,000 barrels emit a heady scent as the whiskies mature, the casks breathing as the seasons change to produce a flavour praised as “near indescribable genius” by Murray.

“Hot summers make for a complex, deep aroma,” said Shinji Fukuyo, chief blender at Beam Suntory, which owns Yamazaki.

Taken from the wells of a nearby town, the distillery’s water is prized for its mineral content and softness, while maturation occurs in hard-to-come-by sherry casks, specially crafted from oak in northern Spain.

The popularity of whisky in Japan has ebbed and flowed since Masataka Taketsuru, the son of a sake brewer, returned from Scotland in 1918, estab-lishing the country’s first distillery at Yamazaki five years later.

As the good times rolled in Japan’s 1980s bubble-era, Scotch mixed with water became an indispensable part of business culture.

But sales slumped as the economy flopped in the 1990s, with drinkers opting for beer and clear spirits. Since the turn of the century, demand has recovered on the back of a newfound taste for highballs and growing inter-national praise for Japanese whisky.

Highlighting whisky’s increased pro-file in Japan, public broadcaster NHK is showing a television drama inspired by Taketsuru and his Scottish wife.

At a dimly lit bar in Tokyo’s upmar-ket Ginza district, drinkers, tippling as jazz tinkles in the background, are proud of Japan’s moment in the world whisky spotlight.

“There are so many famous whiskies, so for a Japanese one to become well-known, I’m very happy,” said nutri-tionist Miki Asakawa


SPORTS

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone says Vettel “acting like a defeated guy”

London, Dec 8, 2014 — Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has criticized four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel for the way he react-ed to failure this year.

The German, who has now left Red Bull for Ferrari, ended the season without a win after dominating the previous four championships.

Red Bull started the season on the back foot with an uncompetitive and unreliable Renault V6 turbo hybrid engine but Vettel’s new Australian team mate Daniel Ricciardo still won three races.

“I’m a super supporter of Sebas-tian, but I’m a little bit disappointed with his attitude, which I think has changed,” Ecclestone wrote in the foreword to the official Formula One season review.

“He’s acting like a defeated guy, and he isn’t — that’s not his mentality,” added the 84-year-old.

Ecclestone and Vettel, who won the last nine races of 2013, are close and the Briton will be happy at least to see the 27-year-old move to Maranello after achieving all his success with Red Bull.

Ferrari are going through consider-able change and, now on their third team principal of the year, are under pressure to perform after a dismal season in which they too failed to win a race for the first time since 1993.

“Ferrari was very disappointing, get-ting lost somewhere,” said Ecclestone.

“Fernando (Alonso) got a little bit like Sebastian halfway through, so I’m a little disappointed in him, too.”

Spaniard Alonso has made way for Vettel and is now expected to join McLaren, who have not won a race since 2012.

Mercedes won both titles this year, with Lewis Hamilton taking his second driver’s championship, but Ecclestone said the sport had been lucky the Briton and his German team mate Nico Rosberg were allowed to race each other.

“It’s good that Mercedes allowed them to do that,” he said. “If not, we would have had a really lousy champi-onship.”

Rio de Janeiro, Dec 9, 2014 — Brazil-ian football legend Pele has recovered well from his kidney ailment and can leave the hospital today, the Sao Paulo clinic that has been treating him for two weeks said yesterday.

“He is doing well clinically and does not have any signs of infection. Considering his good recovery, his medical team has scheduled his leav-ing hospital tomorrow,” a statement from the Albert Einstein clinic read, adding Pele would speak to reporters at 12.30pm.

The announcement comes three days after the 74-year-old Pele publicly thanked well wishers for their sup-port in a video posted to Facebook that also featured him strumming a few tunes on his guitar during a visit from members of his family and a girlfriend.

Pele was hospitalized on November 24 with a suspected urinary tract infection requiring antibiotics.

Three days later, the hospital placed the man nicknamed “O Rei” (the king) in intensive care after his condition became “clinically unstable,” briefly alarming fans.

Some Brazilian media reported Pele had septicaemia, a blood infection, after he initially failed to respond to treatment.

But the clinic stopped renal assis-tance three days later and then moved

Pele to semi-intensive care after extensive tests as his health began steadily to improve.

Pele has only one kidney after the other was removed following a rib in-jury he suffered while playing for the New York Cosmos in the 1970s, said his agent Jose “Pepito” Fornos.

Pele underwent kidney stone surgery in the same clinic on November 13 and was discharged two days later before returning complaining of ab-dominal pain.

A posse of journalists have spent days camped outside the hospital to report on the health of the man named athlete of the 20th century by the International Olympic Commit-tee in 1999 and who helped Brazil to world titles in 1958, 1962 and 1970.

Widely regarded as the best foot-baller ever, Pele made his name with Brazil team Santos and won his first World Cup at just 17, scoring twice in the final win over hosts Sweden.

He was injured early on in 1962, when Brazil retained the trophy, but scored in Brazil’s 1970 final win over Italy.

Pele, who ended his career with a spell in the then-embryonic US league with the New York Cosmos, scored 77 goals in 91 games for Brazil and 1,281 in his career.

Brazilian football legend Pele leave hospital after kidney treatment


SPORTS

Monaco, Dec 8, 2014 — The Interna-tional Olympic Committee today voted to allow Olympic Games to be hosted by two countries and to add new sports as part of sweeping changes to the world’s biggest sporting event.

The measures are part of a campaign by IOC president Thomas Bach to make the Summer and Winter Olym-pics cheaper to stage and more attrac-tive to the public as it battles increased competition for audiences.

Bach has proposed 40 reforms, known as Agenda 2020, to be voted to-day and tomorrow at a special session of the 104 member IOC in Monaco.

The first measures were unanimously passed and Bach called them “a major step forward in the organization of the Olympic Games”.

The votes allowed for future Games to be hosted by two cities, or two coun-tries for “sustainability” and “geogra-phy” reasons.

Bidding for the Games should be cheaper as the number of presenta-tions will be cut and the IOC will pay more of the costs.

In a new bid to increase the attrac-tion of the Games, host cities will be al-lowed to suggest a one-off extra sport, which would have to be approved by the IOC.

But the number of athletes will be capped at 10,500 for the Summer Olympics and 2,900 for the Winter Games, which means that if new sports are added, other sports will have to cut the number of medal events.

Baseball boost

Organizers of the Tokyo 2020 Games may be among the first to profit from the change. They are pressing for the inclusion of baseball and softball.

There were 26 sports at the London Olympics in 2012, but Franco Carraro, who led the working group on sports, said there could be up to 30 sports at future Games.

Bach warned that the IOC had to bolster its credibility and transform the Olympics with “important and far-reaching changes” because of a ma-jor shift in attitudes toward the Games.

IOC votes to allow Olympics hosting by two countries “If we do not address these challeng-

es here and now we will be hit by them very soon,” Bach said at the official opening of the session last night.

The decision to allow joint hosting is a major revolution.

While sports such as football have traditionally been spread across several venues, these have been exceptional cases. Bach sought the change to the Olympic charter to reduce the cost of the Games and to allow smaller coun-tries to bid.

The IOC says it wants more talks with candidate cities on how the event can be made more sustainable. There will be a new emphasis on using exist-ing and temporary facilities.

It calls on candidate cities “to pres-ent a project that fits their sporting, economic, social and environmental long-term planning needs”.

Bach will also announce the launch of an Olympic television channel today.

Bach, an Olympic fencing gold med-allist, has pursued a reform agenda since becoming president in September 2013.

All 40 proposals are expected to be passed, though questions were asked in the debate about how the Olympic leadership would preserve the Games’ “atmosphere” if events are split.

Bach has said that once the votes are over, the IOC will immediately start talks with organizers of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeonchang, South Korea, and the Tokyo 2020 Games to see if savings can be made.

The 2012 London Olympics was widely hailed as a success and the Summer Games remains a huge mon-ey-earner with US channel NBC paying US$7.75 billion for the broadcasting rights to the next six Games.

Bach said the IOC had signed spon-sorship and television deals worth US$10 billion in 10 months this year.

But the Winter Olympics is slumber-ing.

Russia spent more than US$50 bil-lion on the Sochi Games this year and there are only two candidates — Beijing and the Kazakh city of Almaty — for the 2022 Games.

HEALTH

Washington DC, December 12, 2014 - Medical robots help surgeons perform delicate operations more safely and with greater dexterity than with instruments manipulated by hand. Such sophisticated tools also help doctors work more quickly. One machine reduces the time it takes to manufacture dental crowns to just a couple of hours.

Computer-aided medical instru-ments are increasingly making life easier for doctors and their patients.

It used to be that the common but complicated procedure to get a tooth crown required several visits to the dentist’s office. While a dental tech-nician was preparing the permanent replacement for a damaged tooth, the patient had to wear a temporary crown.

Since the mid-1980s, this proce-dure has gradually been taken over by robotic machines that reduce the job to just over two hours. Sitting in the dentist’s chair takes even less time.

“It’s about 12 minutes worth of chair time for the patient and the rest of the time it’s work that’s taking place outside the patient’s mouth,” said dentist Michael Silveus.

At his office in Northern Virginia, close to Washington, Silveus and his assistant prepare a patient’s tooth for a new crown.

The actual drilling takes about five minutes.

Instead of making the impression of the damaged tooth in a plastic mate-rial, Silveus uses a wand with a video camera to scan the tooth and the surrounding area.

At this point the computer takes over, designing the new crown and creating instructions for a robotic milling machine.

A porcelain cube, no larger than the tooth, is inserted between two precise drills, similar to the dentist’s drill, that grind away excess material, turn-ing the cube into a perfectly matching tooth crown.

To harden, the crown must be baked at high temperature for about ten minutes. During that process, it also gets tinted to match the color of the neighboring teeth, so it is ready to be cemented in the patient’s mouth.

Patients are pleased with the result.

“It feels amazing. The tooth feels like my tooth,” said one patient.

Silveus said even this technology may someday become obsolete.

“The other thing we look forward to is genetic engineering and even-tually cloning, so you can make the crown out of actually enamel, just like the patient’s natural teeth are,” said Silveus.

But for now, he said, his patients are happy to be able to get a new crown in just one visit.


UK scientists develop food additives to prevent weight gain

London, December 12, 2014 - Re-searchers at Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow have successfully developed and tested in humans an ingredient that can be add-ed to foods to make people feel full and also prevent weight gain.

According to their study, published in the journal Gut, the additive, inu-lin-propionate ester (IPE) could help overweight people prevent additional weight gain and, in an unanticipat-ed finding, also lose heart-damaging abdominal fat.

The additive is made from propio-nate, a natural byproduct of the stom-ach’s fermentation of dietary fiber. It is this chemical reaction that stimulates release of satiety hormones -- meaning hormones that signal to the brain that the body is full.

It is well-established that a high-fiber diet contributes to weight maintenance and feelings of fullness. We typically generate propionate from a diet con-taining fiber, but IPE delivers more of the molecule by several magnitudes.

“Molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that con-trol appetite, but you need to eat huge amounts of fiber to achieve a strong effect,” said the study’s leader, Gary Frost, a professor in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, in a statement.

“We wanted to find a more efficient way to deliver propionate to the gut.”In the study, 20 volunteers were given either IPE or inulin, a dietary fibre, and were allowed to eat as much as they liked from a buffet.

Those given IPE ate 14 percent less on average, and had higher concentra-tions of appetite-reducing hormones in their blood.

Next, 60 overweight volunteers took part in a 24-week study in which half were given IPE as a powder to add to their food and half given inulin.

One out of 25 volunteers given IPE who completed the study gained more than three percent of their body weight, compared with six out of 24 given inulin.

While the goal of the study was to prove that IPE prevented weight gain, the researchers found that the IPE group also lost a statistically significant amount of subcutaneous and visceral fat around the abdomen, meaning belly fat and fatty deposits around organs like the liver.

Both types of abdominal fat are im-plicated as risk factors for heart disease and even some cancers.

“We know that adults gain between 0.3 and 0.8 kilos a year on average, and there’s a real need for new strate-gies that can prevent this,” said Profes-sor Frost.

“Molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that con-trol appetite, but you need to eat huge amounts of fibre to achieve a strong ef-fect. We wanted to find a more efficient way to deliver propionate to the gut.

“This small, proof-of-principle study shows encouraging signs that supple-menting one’s diet with the ingredient we’ve developed prevents weight gain in overweight people. You need to eat it regularly to have an effect.

“We’re exploring what kinds of foods it could be added to, but something like bread or fruit smoothies might work well,” Frost said.

Dr Douglas Morrison, from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, said: “There is significant interest in how food components like dietary fibre interact with gut microbes to influence health, but much of the evidence we rely upon comes from laboratory and animal studies.

“It is often difficult to translate these findings directly into successful human interventions.”

Technology reduces time in dentists’s chair


Misc Asia

Seoul, December 9, 2014 - Heather Cho, the vice-president of Korean Air who caused a flight to be delayed in order to expel a flight attendant for unsatisfactory service, has resigned.

“I feel so sorry for our customers and South Koreans for causing such trouble... and seek forgiveness from the people who might have been hurt by me,” Cho said in a statement released by Korean Air on Tuesday.

“I will resign from all my posts at Ko-rean Air to take responsibility for the incident,” Cho, who was responsible for supervising in-flight service, was quoted as saying.

The 40-year-old is the oldest of three children of Cho Yang Ho, the chairman of Korean Air’s parent company Hanjin Group and Korea Air’s CEO. She was in a first class seat on a flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for Incheon on Friday when she took issue with a flight attendant

who handed her macadamia nuts in a bag and not on a dish, earlier reports and an industry source said according to Reuters.

The flight arrived 11 minutes later than scheduled as a result.

The incident caused an uproar in South Korea. Industry watchers pointed out that it is rare for a flight to return to the boarding gate unless there were technical snags or other problems threatening passenger safety, the Korea Herald reported.

Cho’s father immediately accept-ed her resignation, according to the statement released by the company on Tuesday.

Korean Air’s spokesman said that Cho would retain the title of vice pres-ident even though she no longer had any official role in the company, adding it was not clear whether she would hold any responsibilities in the future.

Korean VP resigns over macadamia nuts fiasco

A transport ministry official had said before Cho’s resignation that the ministry was investigating the incident “as (Cho) has not shown conduct ex-pected of all passengers on commercial flights”.

Cho previously faced public criticism in South Korea after briefly leaving the country to give birth to twins in Hawaii last year so that they would be eligible

for US citizenship, the Korea Herald said.

She joined Korean Air in 1999 and was promoted to vice-president this year.

Tokyo restaurant promoted

to 3-star club

Tokyo, Dec 2, 2014 - Tokyo now boasts one more restaurant with three Michelin stars, expanding the exclusive club to 12 dining establishments.

Inspectors have promoted Japanese restaurant Makimura from two to three stars in the latest edition of the Miche-lin guide for Tokyo 2015.

A three-star rating denotes a restau-rant worth the journey.

Five more restaurants were also pro-moted to the two-star category, while 19 restaurants received their first star.

This year, the guide’s Bib Gourmand section - good value eats for ¥5,000 or less - is heavily represented by traditional Japanese cuisine known as washoku, which was inscribed in UNE-SCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013.

In this year’s edition, 20 washoku restaurants have been added to the Bib Gourmand section.

The traditional dietary custom of washoku is typically carried out for New Year’s celebrations to welcome deities for the coming year, reads a UNESCO description.

The pounding of rice cakes and art-fully decorated dishes which favor nat-ural, locally-sourced ingredients like rice, fish, vegetables and wild plants, have symbolic meaning and are shared among family members and friends.

The 8th edition of the Michelin guide Tokyo hits bookstores in Japan De-cember 5 and will become available in English in digital format December 2, ahead of the print launch.

Misc AsiaGeorgia Asian Times December 15-31, 2014 Page 17

Hostages held in Sydney cafe sparks Islamist-linked attack

Sydney, December 15, 2014 - Austra-lian police locked down the centre of the country’s biggest city on Monday after an armed man walked into a busy downtown Sydney cafe, took hostages and forced them to display an Islamic flag, igniting fears of a jihadist attack.

Police said they knew of one armed assailant involved in the incident at the Lindt chocolate cafe in the heart of Sydney’s financial district, but there could be more.

Police, including paramilitary officers, cordoned off several blocks around the cafe as negotiators tried to defuse one of the biggest security scares in Australia for decades. Snipers and a SWAT team took up positions around the cafe and police helicopters flew overhead. At least five hostages have been released or escaped since the mid-morning siege began, with terri-fied cafe workers and customers seen running into the arms of paramilitary police.

About 15 hostages could still be seen inside the cafe, said Chris Reason, a re-porter at Channel Seven, whose office is opposite the cafe.

“From inside Martin Place newsroom we can see gunman is rotating hostag-es, forcing them to stand against win-dows, sometimes 2 hours at a time,” Reason said on Twitter.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has warned of militant plans to strike Australian targets, said there were

indications the hostage-taking was politically motivated.

“This is a very disturbing incident. I can understand the concerns and anx-ieties of the Australian people,” Abbott told reporters in Canberra.

Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its escalating action against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, is on high alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East.

“We have moved to a footing that would be consistent with a terror-ist event,” Andrew Scipione, police commissioner for the state of New South Wales, told reporters, declining to comment on a possible motive, the number of assailants or hostages.

News footage showed hostages hold-ing up a black and white flag displaying the Shahada - a testament to the faith of Muslims. The flag has been popular among Sunni Islamist militant groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda.

The incident forced the evacuation of nearby buildings and sent shock-waves around a country where many people were turning their attention to the Christmas holiday following earlier security scares.

In September, anti-terrorism police said they had thwarted an imminent threat to behead a random member of the public and days later, a teenager in the city of Melbourne was shot dead

after attacking two anti-terrorism offi-cers with a knife.

The siege cafe is in Martin Place, a pedestrian strip popular with workers on a lunch break, which was revealed as a potential location for the thwarted beheading.

“We’re possibly looking at a lone wolf who has sympathies to global jihad or someone with mental health issues in search of a cause,” said Adam Dolnik, a professor at the University of Wollon-gong who has trained Sydney police in hostage negotiations. “This is all about attention.”

PRETTY WEIRD

Scores of armed police surrounded the cafe after the siege began around 9:45 a.m. The area is home to the Reserve Bank of Australia, commer-cial banks and close to the New South Wales state parliament.

“I walked up to the door and then everyone was sitting down and the door’s locked which is pretty weird because it’s never locked and there was one guy walking around with a hat and a beard,” a man who identified himself as Bruno, a worker at the cafe, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp, refer-ring to the suspected assailant. He said he then turned away.

Grainy images of the suspected assailant showed what appeared to be a middle-aged man wearing a headband and a white shirt.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said staff had been locked down inside the building and were all safe.

The nearby U.S. consulate was also evacuated, according to an embassy spokeswoman, along with the Sydney Opera House. Tourists were being let back into the world-famous venue by early afternoon but performances on Monday and Tuesday were cancelled.

India’s parliamentary affairs minis-ter said an Indian IT professional may be among the hostages.

“Whatever steps need to be taken, are being taken. We don’t want to dis-cuss it because there is some informa-tion that one of our Indian IT profes-sionals also is there,” Venkaiah Naidu told reporters.

BANKS AND SHOPS CLOSE

In the biggest security operation in Sydney since a bombing at the Hilton Hotel killed two people in 1978, major banks closed their offices in the central business district and people were told to avoid the area. As night fell, large parts of the central city were all but deserted.

Muslim leaders urged calm, with the Australian National Imams Coun-cil condemning “this criminal act unequivocally” in a joint statement with the Grand Mufti of Australia. An inter-faith prayer meeting at one of Sydney’s grand mosques passed off peacefully despite threats of protests from far-right groups.

Currency market traders said the hostage news may have contributed to a dip in the Australian dollar, which was already under pressure from global risk aversion as oil prices fell anew.

Several media outlets reported they had been contacted by hostages passing on claims and demands from the gunman, including the possible presence of explosives in the building and elsewhere in the city.

Police said they were aware of media reports but said the “situation is con-tained in one area”.

Concerns about an attack in Aus-tralia by Islamists have been growing for more than a year, with the security agency raising its national terrorism public alert to “high” in September.

That month, a spokesman for the Islamic State urged supporters in Western nations, including Australia, to attack civilians or military personnel at home.


TRAVEL

Changi, Dec 11, 2014 — An indoor living forest of trees, plants, ferns and shrubs that spans five levels. The world’s tallest indoor waterfall. Walking trails and gardens. These are among some of the features planned for the Jewel Changi Airport, steel and glass bio dome structure that will grace the Singapore skyline and raise the bar in luxury airports.

Last week, crews broke ground on the Jewel Changi Airport outside Ter-minal 1, a project that will turn what used to be an open-air parking lot into a sprawling, 134,000sqm (1.4 million square feet) retail, travel and leisure complex spanning 10 floors — five un-derground floors and five levels above ground.

The addition would widen the gap between the Changi Airport and its international rivals, already held at arm’s length by the Singapore facility’s variety of innovative features and ame-nities. Think movie theatre, butterfly and orchid gardens, four-storey indoor slide and gaming entertainment deck.

Changi Airport owns bragging rights to having been named world’s best airport nine times at the World Travel Awards and two years running at the Skytrax World Airport Awards.

The specs for the Jewel, meanwhile, are impressive and ambitious.

The ‘lifestyle’ complex is not only meant to turn the airport into a Sin-gaporean destination in and of itself, but it’s also meant to help increase the airport’s passenger handling capacity to 24 million passengers a year.

The Forest Valley and Gateway Gardens, for instance, will house an indoor collection of plants and trees across 22,000 square meters (236,806 square feet), with landscaping features that will include waterfalls and walking trails.

The centrepiece of the airport, meanwhile, will be the Rain Vortex, a 40-meter tall waterfall that will cas-cade through the core of the complex. Come nightfall, the water feature will illuminate in a light and sound show. The Rain Vortex is set to become the largest indoor waterfall in the world.

Other features will include walking trails, playgrounds, conservatories, dining outlets, and retail options that include high-end luxury brand names and homegrown brands.

In a bid to strengthen the region as a cruise hub, the Jewel Changi Airport will house a lounge for fly-cruise and fly-coach passengers, offering services like ticketing, boarding passes and baggage transfer.

The terminal will also feature early check-in services, allowing passengers to check-in and deposit their bags hours before their flight so that they can take advantage of the facilities and amenities.

Jewel will also be home to a 130-room YOTEL hotel.

The Jewel Changi Airport is sched-uled for completion in 2018.

Changi airport set to wow with rainforest and world’s tallest indoor

waterfall

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