HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 24 November 2022 – The 15th Social Enterprise Summit (SES 2022) International Symposium kicks off today at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Held in a hybrid format under the theme “Bounce Forward Together”, the SES 2022 invites more than 70 speakers from various countries and regions, including famous social entrepreneurs, leaders from the business, non-profit organisations, government bodies as well as academic sectors, to explore different dimensions in rebuilding the society in the post-pandemic era, and to promote collaboration between different sectors in order to build a restorable and renewable society and economy.
(From left to right) Mr Francis Ngai, Deputy Chair of Organising Committee, SES, Mrs Cheung Chiu Hoi Yue, JP, Director of Home Affairs, Home Affairs Department, Mr Alan Cheung, MH, Chair of Hong Kong Social Entrepreneurship Forum, Mr KK Chan, GBS, IDSM, JP, Chief Secretary for Administration, HKSAR Government, Mrs Rebecca Choy Yung, Chair of Organising Committee, SES, Mr Leung Wang Ching, BBS, JP, Under Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs and Ms Ada Wong, JP, Deputy Chair of Organising Committee, SES attend SES 2022 Kick-off Ceremony.
Mrs Rebecca CHOY YUNG, Chair of Social Enterprise Summit Organising Committee, said: “Since its inception, SES has made a significant impact in driving social innovation. I am very proud to see how SES grew from a local conference to a prominent movement and platform over the last 15 years. It has fostered cross-sectoral collaborations with over 100 organisations in Hong Kong and beyond. It has also engaged over 1,200 thought leaders from different sectors as speakers and developed a community of 70,000 participants around the world. We have also identified how important social innovation is in rebuilding our world after COVID-19.”
Cliff PRIOR, Chief Executive Officer, Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), UK was the Keynote Speaker of topic “Journey of Impact 3.0″and Ar Donald CHOI Wun Hing, JP, Executive Director and Group CEO, Chinachem Group, HK, and Belinda HSIEH, Executive Director, Head of Treasures Investment Product & Advisory, Consumer Banking Group & Wealth Management, DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited were the respondents of his speech.
The Grand Opening was followed by Keynote Speaker Ms Peggy LIU, Chairperson, Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (JUCCCE), shared her dedicated journey to accelerate the greening of China and the Asian region for a liveable world; while respondents, Ms Vanessa CHEUNG, Group Managing Director of Nan Fung Development Ltd., and Mr Raymond MAK, Co-founder, and CEO of Farmacy Hong Kong, shared their insights on the role of enterprises in promoting sustainable transformation. Another Keynote Speaker, Mr Cliff PRIOR, Chief Executive Officer, Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG), UK, expounded the impact journey of bringing together private and public sectors to shift economies towards positive outcomes for people and the planet. Ms Belinda HSIEH, Executive Director, Head of Treasures Investment Product & Advisory, Consumer Banking Group & Wealth Management, DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited, and Ar Donald CHOI, Executive Director and Group CEO, Chinachem Group, HK, responded on how corporations have played a key role in accelerating socio-economic impact.
Hashtag: #SocialEnterpriseSummit
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 24 November 2022 –Christmas will be here before we know it so it’s time to start thinking about gifts for friends and family to put a smile on their faces at everyone’s favourite time of the year! So that’s why 7-Eleven has teamed up with the Moomin – the iconic magical characters from Finland – to create a series of eight bags full of festive spirit for its final collectible programme of the year.For the first time ever, the bags are made with greener and more sustainable materials. The eight Go Green Bags feature eight popular Moomin characters including Moomin, Snorkmaiden, Little My, Snufkin, Moominpapa, Moominmamma, the Hattifatteners and Stinky. They not only come in different sizes and styles but also a stunning spectrum of colours incorporating forest-inspired patterns – they’re the perfect Christmas accessory or gift idea for loved ones! Whether for work, school, days out or outdoor activities, there’s a bag in the collection for everyone! Mix and match them to your outfit or occasion!
For the first time, this stylish collection is made with sustainable materials and compliant with EU SVHC standards
7-Eleven is committed to helping protect the planet and for the first time, this collection has been successfully certified by two internationally recognised standards to verify its green credentials – the Global Recycle Standard and Intertek’s Green Leaf Mark (GLF-07-APAC-22-1557). Each bag is made with recycled materials and manufactured in a greener and more sustainable way resulting in lower carbon emissions and less pollution. The Go Green Bags are not only high quality but also versatile and practical making them the perfect presents for friends (or a treat for yourself!) this Christmas. This series of bags will drop at 7-Eleven on 23 November at 7am so spread some festive cheer and redeem the complete collection!
Limited-Edition Go Green Bag Product Details
1. Moomin Add a pop of colour to your day with this bright yellow bag featuring Moomin picking wildflowers. This large yet lightweight shopping tote can be worn over the shoulder so is ideal for carrying your daily shopping. Perfectly portable, it can also be folded and rolled up for quick and easy storage.
Size: Approx. 45cm (width) x 38cm (height)
2. Little My This sturdy and durable Scandinavian style tote is made with recycled materials and decorated with an eye-catching floral pattern and Little My. Its long strap means it can be conveniently worn over the shoulder. It’s big enough to carry notebooks, laptops, A4 folders and more, so ideal for work or school.
Size: Approx. 32cm (width) x 38cm (height)
3. The Moomin Family This cute yet practical lunch bag features Moomin, Snorkmaiden, Moominpapa and Moominmamma. The bag’s wide mouth design with dual zipper closure makes it easy to store and take out your lunchbox. With its wide rectangular base, it can hold two regular-sized lunchboxes so perfect for office workers and students alike!
Size: Approx. 23cm (width) x 15cm (height)
4. Snufkin The simple design of this practical crossbody pouch featuring Snufkin in classic forest green makes it suitable for everyone! With its climbing rope shoulder strap, it can hold A5 sized items so is great for keeping your passport and wallet safe when travelling or on days out.
Size: Approx. 22.5cm (width) x 17cm (height)
5. Moominvalley This bright orange multi-purpose zipper pouch is made with recycled materials and features the Moomins and Hattifatteners enjoying drinks and treats at a party! Approximately A5 sized, it’s big enough to carry a mini tablet or be used as a make-up bag to organise all your essentials!
Size: Approx. 22cm (width) x 16cm (height)
6. Hattifatteners This stylish black and white crossbody pouch with dual compartments is decorated with the magical Hattifatteners in a fashionable monochromatic design. The front flap has two snap buttons and doubles as a convenient pocket to store small items such as receipts, tissues, hand sanitiser, lipstick or your Octopus card. You can use the main compartment to carry your phone and purse. This pouch might be compact but it’s spacious!
Size: Approx. 10cm (width) x 18cm (height)
7. Stinky The loveable rogue Stinky is one of the rarer Moomin characters!
His stylish grey and black waist pouch can be worn and carried in three different ways – around the waist, across the body or over the shoulder. Simply adjust the strap as you like. It’s very versatile and a great bag for hiking, travelling or exercise. With its dual compartment design, use it to carry your water bottle, anorak and wallet! Perfect for days out!
Size: Approx. 31cm (width) x 16cm (height)
8. Moomin in Nature This bright blue Scandi style bag brings together the main Moomin characters – Moomin, Little My and Snufkin. It has a long shoulder strap and a handle so you can wear it cross-body or carry it with your hand as you wish! Made from a thicker more durable material, it’s spacious and strong enough to fit a 14-inch laptop so is super practical!
Size: Approx. 30cm (width) x 35cm (height)
PRODUCT INFORMATION:
We are not responsible for any damage to this product caused from misusage.
This is not a toy. Not suitable for children under 4 years old.
This product contains cord which presents a potential strangulation hazard. Adult supervision required.
Do not place near heat sources such as gas stove, ovens and heaters to avoid fire or damage.
Do not use dryer or hot air blower to avoid damage.
Wipe clean only. Only use water with mild soap. Remove the soap residue by using damp cloth.
Ensure it has been completely dried before storage. Keep in cool and dry place.
The slight color variance on decoration is an acceptable phenomenon.
Limited-Edition Go Green Bag Redemption Details:
From 23 November 2022 (7am) to 3 January 2023, customers will receive one stamp upon a $20* purchase and one more stamp for every additional $10 purchase at a 7-Eleven store*. From 23 November 2022 (7am) to 6 January 2023 (6 weeks and 3 days in total), customers can redeem 2 Go Green Bags randomly with 12 stamps plus $78 or 1 Go Green Bag randomly with 8 stamps plus $45.
From 23 November 2022 (7am) to 3 January 2023, yuu Members can redeem 1 Go Green Bag randomly with 8,800 yuu Points plus $8. Item redemption period in store: 23 November 2022 (7am) to 6 January 2023 (6 weeks and 3 days in total).
# Excluding the purchase of 7-Eleven pre-order items, yuu Member pre-order/reserve items, cigarettes, milk powder, online game cards, collectible programme redemption items, mobile prepaid sim/mobile sim cards/value-added coupons, Octopus cards/products, Macau Pass cards/products, gift cards, prepaid cards, admission tickets/tickets/stamps, and plastic shopping bag charges. Also excluding payment for the following services including but not limited to: Octopus last 10 transactions printout, prepayment, Pin-On-Receipt, bill payment, donation, top up (including but not limited to Octopus, Alipay, WeChat, Tap & Go, TNG, Macau Pass, May and other e-wallets), fax & photocopying, mobile phone charging services, parcel pick-up and return, locker services, parking fee payment, Inspiration Lake activities, self-service laundry etc.
* Transactions at Inspiration Lake Recreation Centre, Team Disney, Hong Kong Disney Resort stores and Hong Kong Disney Resort Food Kiosk are excluded.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About the Global Recycling Standard (GRS)
The GRS is an international, voluntary, full product standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of recycled content, chain of custody, social and environmental practices and chemical restrictions. For a product to qualify for this certificate it must contain at least 20% recycled materials with each stage of production required to be certified. Chemicals that potentially could harm are banned from GRS products.
About Intertek’s Green Leaf Mark
Intertek’s Green Leaf Mark verifies that products have been manufactured in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. All products certified by this certification have passed the EU Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) test to ensure that they do not contain substances that pose serious risks to human health or the environment, including carcinogens, mutagens or other harmful chemicals.
Last week’s arrest of two young people in Houaphanh Province for selling kratom tea gained the attention of social media users, who called for legalization of the drug.
Malaysia’s King has named reformist leader Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister, ending uncertainty in the country after recent elections caused a hung parliament.
StraitsX account holders will now be able to send and receive USD in their accounts and make USDC transfers
SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 24 November 2022 – StraitsX, a part of Southeast Asia digital financial services group, Fazz, a Major Payment Institution in Singapore announced today that it has partnered with Circle Internet Financial, a global financial technology firm and the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC), to promote greater access and adoption for USDC by enabling its personal and business account users to deposit and receive USD/USDC via the StraitsX platform.
StraitsX account holders will now be able to mint USDC by depositing USD into their StraitsX accounts, and redeem USDC to receive USD in their StraitsX accounts.
With USDC being one of the fastest-growing stablecoins in the world and a widely requested asset from partners on StraitsX, the integration aims to better serve its business, corporate, institutional, and retail users. As of 23 November 2022, over 20 million USDC has been traded since the launch of the StraitsX OTC desk, and in 2022, demand on the platform for the digital asset continues outpacing 2021 growth with three times as many trades year on year.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Circle to start offering USDC to StraitsX account holders. This partnership marks the first time we are directly partnering with another stablecoin issuer and we look forward to more collaborations with like-minded partners such as Circle,” said Aymeric Salley, Head of StraitsX.
“We are excited to partner with StraitsX and we look forward to them offering the stability of USDC to their customers in the Asia Pacific region and beyond,” said Raagulan Pathy, Vice President of Asia Pacific for Circle.Hashtag: #StraitsX
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About StraitsX
StraitsX is the pioneering payments infrastructure for the digital assets space in Southeast Asia. StraitsX is a Major Payment Institution licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and is part of Fazz’s ecosystem of financial services which powers business banking in Southeast Asia. StraitsX offers personal and business account holders to mint and redeem StraitsX stablecoins, manage payments as well as connect their accounts to digital asset platforms. Business accounts can also access B2B API-enabled payment rails for digital asset platforms.
About Circle
Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of digital currencies and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is powering always-on internet-native commerce and payments and is the issuer of USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC). Today, Circle’s transactional services, business accounts, and platform APIs are giving rise to a new generation of financial services and commerce applications that hold the promise of raising global economic prosperity for all through the frictionless exchange of value. Circle does not directly service retail customers.
The World Cup shown on a public television in Laos.
An image of football fans in Laos cheering their favorite World Cup teams in front of a television screen has put Thai broadcasting rights in jeopardy.
Integrated with the HKSTP IDEATION Programme to accelerate growth for early-stage startups
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 24 November 2022 – Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) today jointly launched the “Idea Launcher” co-ideation initiative to foster and accelerate innovation and technology (I&T) development in Hong Kong through extensive support, mentoring and coaching to help early-stage startups nurture innovative ideas and research projects.
This is another strategic addition to HKTSP’s co-incubation mission with sector leaders, with the HKSTP-AWS Idea Launcher being the first partnership with a corporate leader under HKSTP’s IDEATION Programme. AWS will work hand-in-hand with HKSTP to specifically support the development of early-stage ideas from emerging startups and next-generation entrepreneurs.
This latest initiative continues the strategic collaboration that AWS and HKSTP began earlier this year, covering the four key pillars of: Research & Development, Technology Simulation, Co-incubation, and Talent and Culture Cultivation. The Idea Launcher is a six-month co-ideation initiative that provides early-stage startups and entrepreneurs with technical training, business consulting, capabilities’ assessment as well as project feasibility in order to optimise startup solutions and concepts.
HKSTP will offer HK$100,000 in seed funding and incubation training to selected startups, while AWS will provide tailor-made AWS innovation culture workshops to help startups build up their innovation capacity. Programme participants will also receive up to US$25,000 in AWS cloud resources, as well as technical support and training through the “AWS Activate” Program, set up especially to help startups optimise their business models and fuel future development.
“Hong Kong’s thriving startup ecosystem is emerging as a driving force for the city’s economy,” said Chris So, Head of Business Development, Hong Kong and Macau, AWS. “Building upon Amazon’s and AWS’ experience and years of serving startup companies, we hope to provide the critical support and resources requited by startup ventures across all stages of growth. With our established startup ecosystems and investment development teams in Hong Kong and beyond, we gather talent with investment institution backgrounds and entrepreneurial experience that is geared to supporting startups throughout their growth cycle. We look forward to deepening our partnership with HKSTP to advance local startups and propel Hong Kong on its journey to international I&T hub status.”
Eugene Hsia, Chief Corporate Development Officer, HKSTP, said: “Hong Kong is a land of opportunities. The seeds of entrepreneurship have always been deeply rooted in the minds of its people. We are thrilled to see the city’s appetite for entrepreneurship reach a record level and our vibrant I&T ecosystem growing at full speed. New ideas shoot up every day at our Park, and we are humbled to drive Hong Kong’s transformation by building its largest innovation ecosystem. By partnering with AWS, one of the world’s largest and most iconic startups, we are ready to elevate Hong Kong’s talented entrepreneurs onto the global stage.”
HKSTP launched the IDEATION programme in 2019, furthering its support for early-stage research and development projects and innovative ideas. Well received in the startup community, the number of participating members and teams in the programme has more than tripled from 60 to over 230.
For further information on Idea Launcher, please visit here.
Hashtag: #AWS
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation
Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) has for 20 years committed to building up Hong Kong as an international innovation and technology hub to propel success for local and global pioneers today and tomorrow. HKSTP has established a thriving I&T ecosystem that is home to three unicorns and Hong Kong’s leading R&D hub with over 12,000 research professionals and over 1,100 technology companies focused on healthtech, AI and robotics, fintech and smart city technologies.
Established in 2001, we attract and nurture talent, accelerate and commercialise innovation and technology for entrepreneurs on their journey of growth in Hong Kong, to the Greater Bay Area, Asia and beyond. Our growing innovation ecosystem is built around our key locations of Hong Kong Science Park in Shatin, InnoCentre in Kowloon Tong and three modern INNOPARKs in Tai Po, Tseung Kwan O and Yuen Long. The three INNOPARKs are realising a vision of re-industrialisation for Hong Kong. The goal is sectors like advanced manufacturing, electronics and biotechnology are being reimagined for a new generation of industry.
Through our infrastructure, services, expertise and network of partnerships, HKSTP will help establish innovation and technology as a pillar of growth for Hong Kong, while reinforcing Hong Kong’s international I&T hub status as a launchpad for global growth at the heart of the GBA innovation powerhouse.
More information about HKSTP is available at www.hkstp.org.
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 96 Availability Zones within 30 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
www.hkstp.org
