Global 2012: Miss World Pageant Winner Slammed

Miss World Zhang Zi Lin (Photo credit: Roman™ photography)This past weekend 116 contestants gathered in the remote town Odros City in China's Inner Mongolia district for the annual Miss World Pageant.

Representatives from countries around the world, including South Sudan, Guatemala, The Netherlands and the U.S., formed a kind of United Nations summit on bathing suits and ball gowns.

So it stands to reason, when China's Wenxia Yu was crowned as the winner on Saturday, not everyone was in agreement.

"I was not surprised at all to see that the winner of the pageant was Miss China given that it was held in a Chinese city with Chinese hosts and a huge group of screaming Chinese fans that erupted into applause every time she was mentioned," one commenter wrote on a Huffington Post article announcing the winner. He also added the hashtags: "#Rigged #Fake #SecondPlaceOlympicsRebound"

A Daily Mail reporter also caught the Olympic connection, cheekily congratulating China on its Miss World win over the U.S., after its London losses last month. Was this really a staged win or are we all just sore beauty pageant losers? A request for a comment from Miss World's London-based staff wasn't returned at press time.

After Wenxia's win, the Miss World Facebook page practically lit up with angry commenters accusing judges of pandering to politics.

"MWO you sold miss world for the Chinese! They poured MILLIONS into the contest, so it is not very surpris[ing] that they won," wrote one commenter among a chorus of hundreds slamming Yu as a "fake" winner.

Wenxia is the second winner from China in the contest's history, after Zhang Zilin's win in 2007. Both Yu and Zilan won their titles when their home country served as host to the awards. For that reason, critics wonder whether Miss World's judges were swayed by China's hosting duties.

Although news of the Miss World pageant may have passed many Americans by, the contest remains as popular as Donald Trump's Miss Universe across Asia.

Established in 1951 in the United Kingdom, it's the oldest major international beauty contest on the planet with Oscar winner, Halle Berry and Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, among its alumni.

To enter Miss World, contestants in the U.S. and in many other countries are selected by modeling agencies, rather than pageant judges, in order to participate. This year's representative, UCLA student and exotic bird collector Claudine Book, competed in all five categories -- talent, fitness, swimwear, evening wear and the charity-driven "beauty with a purpose" division- and won zilch.

Wales' Sophie Moulds, a Kate Middleton lookalike, took second place. If skeptics are questioning China's win, they should also consider the fact that Moulds and the contest's creators share a British commonwealth bond. The BBC broadcast the contest more prominently, than any network in the States. (It aired on E! On Sunday at 8 am.)

Before the crowning event, Miss Mexico had been the bookie's pick for winner with Miss Philippines earning her own fan base, after her beat-boxing performance during the talent competition went viral.

But it was 23-year-old Wenxia, a music student and dumpling fanatic according to her Miss World profile, who won the talent competition with her vocal performance, and ultimately the year-long Miss World tenure.

The real winner of the competition may have been the host city Ordos, a resurrected "ghost town" that fell short of being "the next Dubai" with the global financial crisis. "I had never heard of Ordos, but I've been very impressed by it so far," said Tapiwa Anna- Marie Preston, Miss Botswana in a press conference.

http://shine.yahoo.com/beauty/miss-world-pageant-winner-slammed-fake-beauty-contest-194600321.html

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Global 2012: Apple co-founder Wozniak sees trouble in the cloud

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 06: A picture in remembrance of Steve Jobs, founder and former CEO of Apple Inc is pictured at an Apple Store, on October 6, 2011 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Steve Jobs, 56, passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 and is credited, along with Steve Wozniak, with marketing the world's first personal computer in addition to the popular iPod, iPhone and iPad. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, predicted "horrible problems" in the coming years as cloud-based computing takes hold.

Wozniak, 61, was the star turn at the penultimate performance in Washington of "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labor conditions in China.

In a post-performance dialogue with Daisey and audience members, Wozniak held forth on topics as varied as public education (he once did a stint as a school teacher) and reality TV (having appeared on "Dancing with the Stars").

But the engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today's personal computer, the Apple II, was most outspoken on the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into remote servers, known as cloud computing.

"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."

He added: "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away" through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to.

"I want to feel that I own things," Wozniak said. "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

Prior to Saturday at the Woolly Mammoth theater in Washington, Daisey and Wozniak had met once before, in California after a performance of "The Agony and the Ecstasy" in its original version in February 2011.

Wozniak was moved to tears, but a year later Daisey came under fire when it emerged that sections of his one-man show dealing with the Foxconn plant in China where iPhones and iPads are assembled had been fabricated.

Public radio show "This American Life," which had broadcast portions of "The Agony and the Ecstasy," went so far as to issue a retraction. Daisey meanwhile reworked his script, albeit without toning down his powerful delivery.

On the minimalist stage Saturday, seated on plain wooden chairs, Daisey and Wozniak came across as a geek version of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their baggy black clothes and matching beer bellies.

The bearded, fast-talking Wozniak sported running shoes and a massive wrist watch. In the theater lobby, for Saturday only, one of the very first Apple I computers ever built -- assembled in Jobs' garage -- was on display.

"Everything I designed was purely out of my head, never out of a book," recalled Wozniak, who quit Apple in 1987 after 12 years, taught fifth-graders, hit the lecture circuit and gave away some of his fortune to good causes.

Many in the audience echoed Daisey's concern about Foxconn's work force, but Wozniak said he expected labor conditions in China to evolve as the nation grows richer. He also commended Apple for its oversight of its factories.

"We know we (citizens and consumers) have a voice. We can speak (about labor conditions), but we can't act like, oh, Foxconn is bad or Apple is bad," he said.

Daisey begged to differ: "I hear what you're saying about that fact that everyone goes through an evolution, but it's not as if the evolution was natural in the sense that we are the ones who brought the jobs there."

While Apple designs its products in the United States, all its manufacturing takes place in China -- a sore point in an election year in which unemployment and a long-term exodus of manufacturing jobs overseas have been campaign issues.

http://ph.she.yahoo.com/apple-co-founder-wozniak-sees-trouble-cloud-133427633.html

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Global 2011: Hottest Teacher In China?

Image via Wikipedia
Elementary school teacher called China’s sexiest female teacher

Flipping the traditional image on its head, fashionably and sexily dressed with a lithe and graceful body and sweet face, Jiangsu elementary school teacher Zhu Songhua has been named “China’s sexiest female teacher” by netizens. In early September, while appearing on Jiangsu Satellite Television’s “Happy Night” program’s “My teacher is special” segment, she caused a stir, with the male special guest immediately shouting “pretty/good-looking”, and even the male host Peng Yu unable to hide a shy expression.

Zhu Songhua is No. 1 Primary School Attached to Jiangsu Nantong’s 3rd grade language teacher and tutor. With regards to the her teaching profession, Zhu Songhua said on the show, “there are no bad students, only bad teachers, when I encounter a naughty child, I will patiently guide/teach.” With such remarks full of caring and patience, no wonder netizens have said “Encountering this kind of teacher, I hope I never graduate!”

Zhu Songhua is 30-years-old this year, unmarried, 168cm tall, weighs 50kg, and her measurements are 34, 26, 34.

http://news.indonewyork.com/index.php?mod=article&cat=Adults&article=1612

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Global 2010: 2 panda cubs born in Spanish zoo

Image by AndyLawson via Flickr

MADRID – Two newborn pandas are the latest additions to the Madrid Zoo.

The hairless, pink twins were born to a giant panda Tuesday after being conceived through artificial insemination, and each weigh 150 grams (5 ounces), the zoo said.

It will be a few days before veterinarians can determine their gender.

They are the first pandas born in the Madrid Zoo since it unveiled one named Chu-Lin in 1982 — the first panda born in captivity in Europe. That one became wildly popular and a symbol of the Spanish capital.

Spain's National Research Council, which took part in the recent insemination along with scientists from China, said pandas have been born in Europe four times — twice in Madrid and two other times in the Vienna zoo.

The council said there are only an estimated 1,600 pandas left living in the wild in China, their numbers depleted by destruction of their habitat.

The Madrid Zoo has four of the endangered animals: the newborns and their parents, mother Hua Zui Ba and father Bing Xing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/ap_on_re_eu/eu_spain_panda_cubs

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