🌊Butter is fatty (that's a health warning)

Tourism revives by 1%

Good morning,

I don’t know who needs to see this, but I’ve had this on repeat for a while and I think it’s great.

— Cyril

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On Today’s Tide

• Culture & Society |

  • HK Actor publicly apologises for praising the Queen

  • Tourism revives by 1%

• COVID | “It’s not the flu”: Lo Chung-Mau

• Health | Butter is fatty: Consumer Council

• Events

Behind the paywall:

• Politics | Pastor Gary Pang pleades not guilty to sedition

• Diplomat | New head of British Chamber of Commerce

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God save the….uh

Local veteran actor and Cantonese Opera performer Law Kar-Ying issued a public apology on his Weibo account after nationalistic backlash for an Instagram post where he wrote “Hong Kong was a blessed land during her reign” along with a selfie of himself in the insanely long queue to pay respects to the late monarch at the British consulate.

His Weibo apology, completely done in Mandarin, said

“My original intention was to express condolences for a late elderly woman and I would like to appeal to everyone not to overly interpret what I said […] I can’t possibly forget my origin and ancestry. That I have been keeping a Chinese passport says it all, I am Chinese and I love my motherland forever. I am sorry”

He later deleted his Instagram post.

Please don’t send me nationalistic hate if I do the same, I’m just putting memes at the memorial.

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Tourism revives by …1%

New data from the Tourism Board said that around 60,000 non-residents visited Hong Kong in August, with an average of 1500 a day. In the second half of the month - after the 3+4 quarantine regine was implemented - the daily numbers improved to around 2100 per day, but this accounted for only a 1% improvement towards pre-COVID numbers.

Around 80% of all visitors were from the Mainland. Visitors mainly came to Hong Kong for visiting family and friends, transit, business trips and other neccesary travel.

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COVID in Hong Kong

Hong Kong SAR Government News @newsgovhk

The Centre for Health Protection says it is looking into 8,023 additional locally acquired #COVID19 cases, of which 2,323 were identified through nucleic acid tests and 5,700 via rapid antigen tests

news.gov.hk8k local COVID-19 cases loggedThe Centre for Health Protection says it is looking into 8,023 additional locally acquired COVID-19 cases, of which 2,323 were identified through nucleic acid tests and 5,700 via rapid antigen tests.

COVID-19 in Hong Kong

• New cases: 8187 (167 imported)

• Total cases: 451,367

• New deaths: 6

• Total deaths: 9,836

• Compulsory Testing locations: 60

Stop saying COVID is the flu! - Lo Chung-Mau

Health Sec Lo Chung-Mau hit back at medical experts who say COVID is the same as the flu. He said that such remarks could downplay the intensity of the pandemic and give people a false sense of security.

Doctors such as Ho Pak-Leung and Leung Pak-Yin said recently that the death rate in HK of both COVID and the flu are at 0.1% - this is true if you take HK’s death rate from May onwards (which some are calling the 6th wave).

Professor Lo said in an official CHP blogpost that this analysis is “blind” as we need to take into consideration the entire pandemic, and not cherry pick recent data. If all cases are taken into account, then the death rate is 0.6%.

He also noted that Omicron is highly transmissible and able to mutate quicker, meaning that a more dangerous variant could appear very soon.

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Butter is fatty - who knew?

I’d like to start with a poem.

Cyril Ma @Cyrildoesthings

Margarine can cause cancer, Butter is fatty, I eat them regardless Mom's spaghetti

The consumer council has warned that margerine has carcinogens and that butter contains, like, a lot of fat.

Out of 16 samples of maragine and spreads with vegetable oils, 15 had the carcinogen glycidol with one – Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread – exceeding the EU's maximum level. 80% of samples also included the compound 3-MCPD which could cause kidney damage in high amounts.

Butter meanwhile was not carcinogenic at all, but included a lot of fat. Crisco’s shortening included 99.9% fat.

While I was not at all surprised butter is fat, the fact that the consumer council included shortening as butter raised my eyebrows.

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Events and deals

Support Harbour Times, our friends and partners by attending these events! Let everyone know who sent you by tagging @harbourtimes

• Official media partner: ReThink HK returns 5-6 Oct

HT is proud to once again be a media partner for ReThink - HK’s biggest and most exciting sustainability conference. This year’s conference invites more than 300 expert speakers to share their visions and insights, covering important topics like economic progression while coexisting with nature harmoniously, efficient use of resources, transformation to a low-carbon society, and circular economy for future generations.

• Ukrainian Cinema: Contemporary filmmaking @ The Goethe Institut

“Fear sows political bigotry, rumours turn into conspiracy theories, cultural fronts harden” – for these reasons The Goethe Institut is hosting a series of films by Ukrainian filmmakers to support local cultural creators and explore Ukrainian culture together.

Five films will be shown over the course of September including The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy), Atlantis (Valentyn Vasyanovych) and The Rain Will Never Stop (Alina Gorlova)

Find all times and dates here.
And book your tickets directly from Broadway Cinematheque here.
Look under the ‘bc Sunday’ special programme when booking!

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