Asia's biggest film festival, The 14th Pusan International Film Festival kicks off today, with the screening of director Jang Jin's latest political comedy "Good Morning President" starring Jang Dong-gun as Korea's youngest president-elect.
As children received swine flu vaccine for the first time on Tuesday, federal health officials attacked popular myths about the pandemic and the vaccine designed to stop it.
North Korea's leader gave an unusually exuberant welcome this week to the prime minister of China, whose trip was intensely monitored by the rest of the world for progress on efforts to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Sony's Walkman digital music player outsold Apple's iPod in Japan last week
for the first time in more than four years, according to electronics research
firm BCN.
Sony, whose Walkman cassette players pioneered the portable-music industry in
the late 1970s, gained market share after introducing models including the W
series of cordless players that sell for under $US108.
Sony has gained customers seeking less expensive products and those seeking
high quality by broadening its lineup,” Kazuharu Miura, an analyst with Daiwa
Institute of Research, said by telephone.
“But you can't really say Sony regained its competitiveness against Apple
unless it improves its market share in the U.S. and Europe.”
Correct me if I am wrong, but I have always found Japanese citizens very nationalistic and Sony is a Japanese company. Could that have an impact on the consumer's choice?
Password security was thrown into the spotlight this week after it was revealed
that 10,000 Hotmail user names and passwords had been leaked online. A day
later, a separate list of 20,000 addresses and passwords for Gmail, Yahoo and
AOL were found on the web.
Using mobiles for just calls and texting is a thing of the past, as a third
of Australians now check emails on their handsets and more than 70 per cent
access mobile entertainment and information services.
In spite of the global financial crisis, the use of mobile phone services has
continued to grow in the past year as more Australians buy internet-enabled
smartphones, the 2009 Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index reveals.
In last year's survey, just 7 per cent of respondents accessed social
networking sites from their handsets, but this figure has jumped this year to 32
per cent, with half of those accessing the sites daily.
General web browsing is also on the rise, with 21 per cent of respondents
visiting websites on their mobile phones at least once a day.
Half of Australians used or bought entertainment services on their mobiles at
least once a month, with games, ringtones and music downloads the three most
popular categories.
Accessing the web, video, music and information on mobile phones was now well
and truly mainstream.
The survey showed mobile phone service use was now "a commodity as opposed to
a luxury for many Australians".
WHEN Sarah Morgan, a slenderly framed 10-year-old, came home from
primary school with a McDonald's food voucher and a size 16 T-shirt that she had
won in a basketball competition, her mother, a health campaigner, was livid.
As a three-year-old, Sarah had already associated purple with chocolate.
Martin says the standards released by the Australian Communications and Media
Authority fail to regulate junk-food promotions on TV or thwart the
sophisticated techniques employed by advertisers to create ''pester power'' -
when children continually ask their parents for something. By restricting
advertising only during low-rating children's programs, Martin says, the
authority has ignored evidence that justifies action which could prevent up to
one in three children from becoming obese.
ABOUT 2 million people are considering ditching their fixed-line home phones, as
Australians move closer to becoming one of the world's first wireless economies.
There are 105 mobiles for every 100 people, making Australia one of the most
saturated markets in the world behind South Korea, with 114 mobile phones for
every 100 people.
An ACMA study last year found the decline of fixed lines has been led by
younger consumers. About 91 per cent of retirees said their main form of
communication was the fixed-line phone, while 70 per cent of 18-to-31 year-olds
consider mobile phones as their main form of communication.
This year Telstra reported its fixed-line subscribers fell by four per cent
to 9.2 million, while its mobile-phone subscribers increased four per cent to
9.7 million subscribers.
An ACMA spokesman said Australians owned a total of 21.2 million mobile
phones.
Last year a city-wide inspection by Shanghai's Language Affairs Commission found that more than one in 10 signs had incorrect translations
Beijing ran a similar campaign in preparation for last year's Olympics.
The Shanghai government, along with neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, published a 20-page guide book this week to standardise signs and eliminate notoriously bad, and sometimes amusing, English translations.
The official campaign prompted local media to share favourite mistranslations.
At Shanghai's iconic Oriental Pearl Tower, visitors are warned "Ragamuffin, drunken people and psychotics are forbidden to enter", according to the Shanghaiist city blog.
Last year a city-wide inspection by Shanghai's Language Affairs Commission found that more than one in 10 signs had incorrect translations, the China Daily reported.
The city is preparing to hold the biggest-ever World Expo from May 1 to October 31. The city expects 70 million people, the vast majority of them Chinese, to attend the event, featuring pavilions from nearly 190 countries.
The Bureau of Statistics says
Australia's annual net migration soared in the first three months of this year
to 278,000 - up from just 100,000 five years ago.
MELBOURNE'S population has reached 4 million and Australia's is surging
towards 22 million, according to new figures that have sparked fresh debate
about the impact of record migration.
Victoria's population jumped 112,000 in the year to March. Assuming Melbourne
has kept its share, the city is expanding by an unprecedented 90,000 people a
year, or more than 1700 a week.
While population growth has kept the economy growing and house prices rising
this year, it has also put pressure on public transport and other services -
especially as the growth is being driven by international students.
Government figures at the end of July showed that in five years, total
international student numbers have almost doubled from 288,400 to 547,663.
