Beware & Protect Yourself 03 (Sep 10 - Dec 14)

[winston]

Fake gold scam hits HK goldsmiths: report

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's myriad jewellers and pawn shops have been hammered by a gold scam after unwittingly buying hundreds of ounces of bogus bullion, a report said on Thursday.

The Financial Times described the swindle as 'one of the most sophisticated scams to hit the Chinese territory's gold market in decades', and comes as the price of gold sits around record highs around US$1,400 an ounce.

'It's a very good fake,' Haywood Cheung, president of the Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society, Hong Kong's gold exchange, told the newspaper.

Mr Cheung told the FT that jewellers and pawn shops in the gold-mad city have discovered at least 200 ounces of fake bullion - worth about US$280,000 - so far this year.

But he estimated that 10 times that figure could be making its way through the city's retail market, the paper said.

Among the fakes was a specimen with pure gold coating that masked a complex alloy with similar properties to the precious metal, suggesting fraudsters used sophisticated techniques and equipment, according to the report.

The fakes are difficult to detect by sight or touch, and are usually revealed by high-tech tests involving high temperatures and chemicals, the report said.

The Luk Fook Group, one of the city's biggest jewellers, was also tricked into buying almost US$12,000-worth of fake gold until it discovered the scam and alerted its retail stores, the paper said.

'This was the biggest hit ever,' Paul Law, the company's executive director, told the FT.

The scam targeted the sale of scrap gold to jewellers, not the bigger market for gold bars which is more rigorously controlled, the paper said. -- AFP

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/lat ... 68,00.html?

[winston]

Rice noodles prompt latest China food scare (AFP)

BEIJING — Large amounts of rice noodles made with rotten grain and potentially carcinogenic additives are being sold in south China, state press said Friday, in the country's latest food safety scare.

Up to 50 factories in south China's Dongguan city near Hong Kong are producing about 500,000 kilogrammes (1.1 million pounds) of tainted rice noodles a day using stale and mouldy grain, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

The cost-conscious producers were bleaching the rotting rice and using additives including sulphur dioxide and other substances that could cause cancer to stretch one pound (half a kilogramme) of grain into three pounds of noodles, it said.

The poor-quality rice had often been reserved for animal feed before food prices began rising dramatically in China in the latter half of 2010, the paper said, citing wholesalers.

Rice noodles, often fried and served with bits of meat and vegetables, are a favorite in south China.

In recent weeks, a series of tainted food incidents have been reported in the state media as China gears up for New Year and Lunar New Year celebrations -- a time when food and alcohol purchases traditionally increase.

Tainted red wine, bleached mushrooms, fake tofu and dyed oranges have all surfaced on store shelves -- spooking consumers still wary about food quality after a deadly scandal erupted two years ago over contaminated milk powder.

In Dongguan, a random inspection of 35 rice noodle factories in early December revealed that only five of them were making products that were up to standard, the report said.

The paper did not say what action the government would take against the manufacturers. But the food processing methods used to make the tainted noodles were spreading to other regions as an accepted way to cut costs, it said.

Most of the rice noodles were sold to canteens in thousands of factories in Dongguan, located in China's export-oriented industrial heartland, while about 10 percent were on sale in city markets, it said.

The Chinese government has come under increasing pressure from its citizens as well as foreign countries to improve the standard of its food and medicines.

In 2008, at least six children died and around 300,000 fell sick after consuming powdered milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which was added to make products appear higher in protein.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... a6df08.851

[winston]

Six choke to death on New Year rice cakes in Tokyo

TOKYO (AFP) - – Six people choked to death and five others were in a serious condition after eating traditional glutinous "mochi" rice cakes to celebrate the New Year in Tokyo, fire department officials said Monday.

The victims, in their 70s or older, died of suffocation over the weekend after eating the New Year delicacy, the fire department said.

During the New Year period, one of Japan's biggest holidays, families traditionally cook "ozouni" soup and put the sticky rice cakes in the vegetable broth.

"Please be aware that mochi, which is so sticky, may cause suffocation if you swallow mochi without chewing it well," the fire department said in a statement.

The fire department is advising people, especially the elderly and infants, to cut mochi into small pieces before eating it.

Every year, several Japanese, mostly older people or infants, die after choking on rice cakes.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110103/t ... 078a1.html

[winston]

China rice laced with heavy metals: report

Up to 10 percent of rice grown in China is contaminated with harmful heavy metals stemming from pollution linked to the nation's rapid industrialisation, a report said.

This week's edition of the New Century magazine cited studies showing that large amounts of Chinese rice have been tainted with heavy metals like cadmium for years but that little has been done to highlight the dangers.

"During China's fast-paced industrialisation, activities such as mining have sprung up everywhere, releasing into the environment chemical elements like cadmium, arsenic, mercury and other harmful heavy metals," the report said.

"These harmful heavy metals have spread through the air and water, polluting a rather large area of China's land ... a complete chain of food contamination has existed for years."

The report cited academic studies since 2007 focussing on several rural villages in southern China near mines and industrial areas where health problems such as bone diseases have emerged, mostly among the elderly.

Of the major grains, rice has the strongest tendency to absorb cadmium, which often seeps into water used for irrigation near mines, especially lead, tin and copper mines, the report said.

"No matter if the tests were taken by agricultural ministry departments or by academics, research all shows that about 10 percent of Chinese rice has levels of cadmium that surpass standards," the report said.

It added that no major studies have been done on the toxicity and potential health hazards of eating the tainted rice.

Rice, which is largely grown in south China, is the nation's staple grain with about 200 million tonnes produced annually, the report said.

Food safety is a major problem in China, where quality scares regularly emerge.

Recent scandals have involved contaminated red wine, bleached mushrooms, fake tofu and recycled cooking oil.

In 2008, at least six children died and around 300,000 fell sick after consuming powdered milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, which was added to make products appear higher in protein.

Rapid industrialisation over the past 30 years helped China become the world's second-largest economy last year.

But the focus on growth, combined with lax environmental protections, have saddled the country with some of the world's worst water and air pollution.

Source: AFP Asian Edition

[winston]

Prescription Mix-Ups

When you get a prescription filled, remember Mr. Gower.

Heartbroken over the death of his son, pharmacist Gower consoles himself with alcohol while on the job. His assistant, young George Bailey, spots a mistake in a prescription and avoids poisoning a customer.

This scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" is a highly dramatized version of what goes on in pharmacies every day.

My friend Chris sent me a shocking news item about a pregnant woman who received another customer's prescription--a cancer drug with a known side effect of potential pregnancy termination. She had the same last name and a similar first name as the person who should have received the prescription.

Fortunately, her pregnancy wasn't terminated, but she did take one of the pills and the experience (which required an ER visit) was traumatizing.

To me, what's most remarkable about this article is the comments section where readers share details about their own experiences. It's scary to see how many people have had similar mix-ups at pharmacies.

That's why you have to take the responsibility on yourself--before you swallow a single pill. Always read the label and prescribing information that comes with any prescription-- and compare it to what your doctor prescribed.

If there's a shadow of a doubt, get those pills straight back to the pharmacy.


Source: HSI

[winston]

The Soft Touch

If you're talking to a female salesperson and she reaches out and briefly puts her hand on your bicep, or your forearm, or she simply shakes your hand, just go ahead and sign on the dotted line because it's over, you're cooked, the deal is done.

That's the conclusion of two different marketing studies from Columbia University.

When subjects were asked to choose between a safe investment and a risky investment, those who were made to feel comfortable were much more likely to go with the risky choice--especially if they were touched by a woman who explained the choices.

And yes, these same results occurred with subjects of both sexes, not just men.


Source: HSI

[winston]

Publisher Conde Nast falls into $8 million email trap

NEW YORK (Reuters) - All it took was one e-mail to swindle $8 million from publishing company Conde Nast.

Papers filed by U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan said the publisher of magazines Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, was tricked into thinking it was paying its regular printing company but was in fact being billed by a man identified as Andy Surface in Texas.

A company spokeswoman said Conde Nast does not comment on active legal proceedings.

The six-week scheme started in early November when Conde Nast received an e-mail purporting to be from Quad/Graphics, the company's usual magazine printers, asking for payment to a different account, the court papers said.

Conde Nast, the papers said, simply filled out the form in the e-mail, faxed it over, and began sending payments to the new account.

By late December, Conde Nast's real printer outfit contacted the publisher to say it had not received any payments, raising the New York-based media company's suspicions.

Commercial printing company Quad/Graphics was not immediately available for comment.

The forfeiture allegation, filed in Manhattan federal court on March 30, was signed by a U.S. Secret Service agent. The Secret Service often investigates financial crimes.


Source: Reuters US Online Report Domestic News

[iam802]

Fake hard-drive has short-term memory not 500GB

http://www.slashgear.com/fake-hard-driv ... ashGear%29

Whenever there’s a deal that seems too good to be true, there’s always the risk that you’re getting ripped off. Still, if you’re going to lose your money on a dud, it may as well be a surprisingly well-planned dud. As the story goes, a Russian repair center was asked to look at an “insanely low price” external hard-drive a customer had bought in a Chinese store, but which kept losing data. When they opened it up, everything became clear…

....




...
Inside were two heavy nuts to make the drive feel suitably weighty, along with a mere 128MB flash drive rather than the few hundred gigabytes expected. That was apparently set into a clever “looped” mode which, when it runs out of space, starts to over-write the oldest data. Despite that, it still claimed to be the size it had been sold as in the system settings.

The end result is an external drive that will only play back, say, the last few minutes of a movie, despite having claimed that the whole thing was stored. Moral of the story is that if something seems too cheap to be real, it very well may be. Backup safe, humans.

..

[winston]

Ha Ha .... Bait & Switch , it's the easiest way to con you.

Reminds me of some wooden statues that we bought in Bali. When we reached home, we found that they have changed the statues. Always watch what they pack for you.

Another incident, the real estate agent took our lease to be photocopied. He then changed the dates on the lease without our knowledge.

[LenaHuat]

Shanghai Pork that glows blue :-
http://www.soshiok.com/article/15230