week 5-光棍節

China's Alibaba breaks Singles Day record as sales surge

E-commerce giant Alibaba has broken its own record for sales on China's Singles Day, the world's biggest online shopping event.

By the close of trade, the site had seen sales worth 91.2bn yuan ($14.3bn; £9.4bn), a 60% increase from last year.

In comparison, sales on Cyber Monday, which is the biggest online shopping day in the US, hit $1.35bn, according to data analytics firm ComScore.

Singles Day is held every year on 11 November.

The day is also referred to as Double Eleven because of its date.

The reaction to China's Singles Day shopping bonanza reflects the drama and excitement of China's capitalist holiday.

"I wanted two different coats, but they both sold out in the first three minutes of the sale!", complained one young woman online.

"I spent 2,000RMB last night ($315; £207)" exclaimed another. "Now I'm going to have to eat dirt if I'm hungry because I'm broke!"

But don't mistake the rush to spend as a sign the Chinese economy is turning around.

Many shoppers are well aware the economy is slowing. It is common for people to wait to spend on Singles Day to save money.

New data supports nagging concerns about the economy. Inflation is down: non-food prices dropped 0.3% in October, indicating that consumption continues to fall in China - a long-term trend that Singles Day won't fix.

'Power of Chinese consumption'

Singles Day has grown tremendously since Alibaba began promoting it as a shopping day in 2009, and now includes many retailers such as rivals JD.com that stage sales promotions.

This year, Alibaba said there would be more than 40,000 merchants and 30,000 brands from 25 countries selling goods on its platforms.

More than 130 million users have already visited its marketplace app, Taobao, which exceeds the peak from last year.

In the lead up to the event, the firm hosted a four-hour TV variety show featuring Chinese celebrities and Western entertainers such as British actor Daniel Craig of James Bond fame.

American actor Kevin Spacey appeared as his character President Frank Underwood from the Netflix series House of Cards to wish shoppers a "happy Singles' Day" in a two minute video.

Alibaba chief Executive Daniel Zhang had said in a statement that the event would mean "the whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption".

He promised consumers "a new surprise every hour" over the 24-hour marathon, especially mobile users.

The firm said more than 27 million purchases came via mobile devices in the first hour.

Although its competitors offered attractive discounts, Fangting Sun, China-based analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International said that consumers' attention was still focused on Alibaba's online marketplace Tmall.com.

"[It's] not only due to the wide choices and competitive prices, but also the heavy marketing campaigns especially the successful gala evening which invited lots of famous entertainment stars," she said.

Kitty Fok, China manager for market research firm IDC said online shopping had become a comfortable channel for most consumers.

"China is a big market with close to one billion smart connected device users - it is a good news for both Alibaba and their competitors," she said.

Massive scale

Alibaba accounts for more than 80% of China's internet sales market.It predicts that 1.7 million couriers, 400,000 vehicles and 200 planes will be making deliveries of products that range from electronics goods to cosmetics despite slowing growth in China.

Economists will be looking for clues about domestic consumption in Wednesday's sales as the world's second-biggest economy heads for its slowest growth in nearly a quarter of a century.

Ms Sun of Euromonitor said the shopping event would not only stimulate domestic demand but also trade.

"Alibaba aims to both attract more international players selling products to China and the domestic players to expand to the overseas markets," she added.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34773940

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-Alibaba
      WHEN-every year on 11 November
      WHAT-shopping
      WHY-not given
      WHERE-not given
      HOW-shopping online

Keywords：

   1. analytics：分析

   2.exclaimed：驚呼

   3. nagging：嘮叨

   4. capitalist：資本家

   5.  tremendously：異常

   6. retailers：零售商
   7.exceeds：超過
   8.consumption：消費

   9.via：通過

 10. Inflation：通貨膨脹

week 4-登革熱

Dengue fever under control in Tainan: CDC

Taipei, Oct. 31 (CNA) The dengue fever outbreak has come under control in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, where the disease has been concentrated since the start of May, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Saturday.
As of Friday, Tainan had reported 81 new cases for this week, but that was 21 fewer than the figure it reported on the same day last week, the CDC said.
The number of accumulated confirmed cases there now stands at 21,688, out of a total of 29,052 cases nationwide, CDC data showed.
However, the endemic continues unabated in neighboring Kaohsiung city, where 227 new cases were reported as of Friday this week, an increase of 77 cases from the same day last week, according to the agency.
The CDC added that while 129 patients had died from the mosquito-borne disease in Taiwan, 28 remain under intensive care units and 26,693 have recovered. 
http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201510310006.aspx

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-not given

      WHEN-Oct. 31

      WHAT- dengue fever outbreak has come under control

      WHY-not given

      WHERE- Tainan

      HOW-not given

Keywords：

1.concentrated：集中

2.cases：病例

3.accumulated：積累

4. confirmed：確定

5.nationwide：全國

6.endemic：流行

7.unabated：不減

8.mosquito-borne ：蚊子傳播

9. intensive：集約

10.units：單位

week 3-八仙塵爆

Taiwan Formosa Water Park explosion injures hundreds

Saturday's incident at the Formosa Water Park is believed to have happened when a colored powder ignited after being  onto the crowd.

Footage showed people panicking and screaming. Inflatable water toys were shown being used as stretchers.

Some 190 people are seriously hurt - 182 are in intensive care.

Some of them breathed in the powder, causing respiratory problems.

Local media said organiser of the Color Play Asia event had been taken in for questioning by prosecutors.

Skin 'gone'

Footage of the incident shows a party in full swing when suddenly fire erupts.

It was "hell", a male student who sustained minor injuries said, according to AFP news agency.

"There was blood everywhere, including in the pool where lots of the injured were soaking themselves for relief from the pain."

His girlfriend added: "I saw lots of people whose skin was gone."The fire was quickly brought under control, but the cause of the incident is still under investigation.

The authorities believe something that caught fire caused the coloured powder spray or dust - used to create a party atmosphere - to explode.

The substance is also used in other countries. It is made of dried corn and can be highly flammable, our correspondent says.

The 519 victims were sent to 41 hospitals, and 413 are still in hospital, say municipal authorities.

The incident occurred about 20:30 (12:30 GMT). More than 1,000 people were near the stage at the time.

The fire department said: "Our initial understanding is this explosion and fire... was caused by the powder spray. It could have been due to the heat of the lights on the stage".

Soaring temperatures

Many people flocked to water parks on Saturday as temperatures reached 36.6C (98F) in Taipei and as high as 38C in other parts of Taiwan, says the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei.

New Taipei City's mayor, Eric Chu, ordered an immediate shutdown of the water park pending an investigation.

Taiwan has suffered a series of deadly fires in the past couple of years due partly to poor enforcement of building and fire safety codes and illegal construction, our correspondent adds.

A fire earlier this year killed six firefighters, prompting orders to rectify illegally constructed buildings and upgrade firefighters' equipment and training.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33300970

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-crowd

      WHEN-Saturday

      WHAT-explosion

      WHY-colored powder ignited

      WHERE-Formosa Water Park

      HOW-being discharged onto the crowd


Keywords：
1. organiser ：組織者
2.ignited：點燃
3.discharge：放
4.Inflatable：充氣
5.stretchers：擔架
6.respiratory：呼吸
7. AFP：新法社
8.flammable：易燃的
9.substance：物質
10.pending：待定

week2-割喉案

Man slices 8-year-old schoolgirl's throat

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- An 8-year-old school girl surnamed Liu yesterday sustained a severe injury to her neck when a 29 year-old man named Kung Chung-an assaulted her with a knife within the premises of the victim's school, yesterday.

The assault took place at around 4:30 p.m. after classes ended at Taipei Municipal Beitou District Wenhua Elementary School , yesterday.

Reportedly, Liu had stayed after school hours to participate in extracurricular music activities.

According to the victim's club instructor, Liu had left practice to go to the bathroom without notifying instructors.

After leaving the classroom, Liu was targeted by Kung, who had entered school grounds without authorization. Kung then allegedly tailed the victim to a restroom located on the fourth floor of the school, where he slashed the victim's throat twice with a fruit knife he had brought from his home.

The victim was reportedly found by chance when girls from the school reported the incident to school officials after seeing blood coming from under the bathroom door.

The victim was rushed to the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, though at 5:05 p.m. she showed no signs of life.

Doctors, however, were able to get her heart started again, though the victim remains in a comatose state, with possible brain damage.

Doctors who worked to save Liu told local press that the victim sustained at least one 10-centimeter cut to her throat. Liu's doctors also said that her trachea, neck artery and neck muscles were severed due to the savage nature of the attack.


Reconstructive surgery to treat Liu's heavy wounds were completed after three hours, and her vital signs showed signs of stabilizing. However, doctors said that Liu is not yet out of danger, with the severity of her coma unknown due to the large amount of anesthetics being administered.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/local/taipei/2015/05/30/437219/Man-slices.htm

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-8-year-old school girl

      WHEN-5/29

      WHAT-throat cut

      WHY-not giving

      WHERE-Taipei Municipal Beitou District Wenhua Elementary School

      HOW-not giving

Keywords：

1.premise：前提

2.extracurricular：課外

3.notifying：通知

4.authorization：授權

5.slashed：砍
6.comatose：昏睡的
7.sustained：持續
8.trachea：氣管
9.stabilizing：穩定

10.anesthetics：麻醉藥

week 1-緬甸難民

Rohingya refugee in Cambodia wants to go home

One of four refugees resettled in Cambodia under a multimillion-dollar deal that saw them sent from an Australian-run prison on the Pacific island nation of Nauru has reportedly decided he wants to go home.

Cambodian interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said on Sunday that the man, an ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar, had contacted Myanmar's embassy in Cambodia to get permission to return home, the AP news agency reported.

Sopheak said that the Rohingya man, who was born in 1990, did not explain why he wanted to return to Myanmar, but that his father had visited him recently in Cambodia and may have sought to reunite his son with their family.

He said he was unaware of the embassy's response but that the Cambodian government respected the man's decision.

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two Iranian men, an Iranian woman and the Rohingya man arrived in Cambodia under a $55m Australian dollar ($38m) four-year agreement aimed at resettling hundreds of asylum seekers who have been living for years in Nauru.

Rohingyas are members of the mostly stateless Muslim minority from Myanmar.

They were the only four of 677 refugees who signed up for the deal, and arrived in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in early June. Only asylum seekers granted refugee status by the UN's refugee agency were eligible for the move.

'No prospects'

Ian Rintoul, Sydney-based director of the Australian advocacy group Refugee Action Coalition, told the AP that none of the four resettled people wanted to stay in Cambodia. He said they expected to get a lump sum of at least $10,000, but that was not what happened.

"They all went with the idea that they would get the money that they were being told they would get and be able to go somewhere else," Rintoul said.

"The government has dribbled the money to them. They've been kept in a very isolated arrangement and there's been no prospects for them."

Rights groups have condemned Australia for trying to resettle refugees in poorer countries like Cambodia, which is frequently in the spotlight for human rights abuses and with an economy less than one percent the size of Australia's.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Cambodia could use the skills of foreign workers and help boost the poor country's GDP.

A week ago her government was forced to deny suggestions that Phnom Penh was backing out of the multimillion-dollar deal after Sopheak told news outlets that Cambodia "had no plans to receive more refugees from Nauru".

A spokesman for Australia's opposition, Richard Marles, described the Cambodia deal as "an expensive joke".

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/rohingya-refugee-cambodia-home-150906113212848.html

Structure of the Lead：

      WHO-one of four refugees resettled in Cambodia 

      WHEN-Sunday

      WHAT-wants to go home

      WHY- reunite with their family

      WHERE-Cambodia

      HOW-not given

Keywords：

  1.multimillion-dollar：百萬美元

   2. interior：國內的

   3. ethnic：民族

   4. embassy：大使館

   5. asylum：避難所
   6.eligible：合格
   7.advocacy：擁護
   8.dribbled：運球
   9.GDP：國內生產總值
   10.granted：發放