Somebody has written the first alleged virus, a network worm, that targets mobile phones.
The Cabir worm is the first network worm for mobile phones, according to Kaspersky Labs. It was written by 29a, a group of virus writers which specialises in proof-of-concept viruses - they made the first viruses for .NET and for Win64.
The virus uses Bluetooth technology to transfer itself to other mobiles that runs the Symbian mobile OS. So far, you don't have to be too worried, as the virus is not in the wild - it was forwarded directly to anti-virus groups from the authors - and it requires the user to both have bluetooth switched on and to answer "yes" to installing the application past two warning messages. Lastly, the virus does no damage.
Well, considering how many dimwits blindly execute email attachments, such mobile viruses may still spread in real life. Sometimes I am happy I have an old fashioned mobile phone, limited to voice and sms.
I wrote earlier that the Supreme Court "chickened out" by not deciding on the essense of the "under God" pledge case, but Dahlia Lithwick has convinced me that the case the Supreme Court decided was actually very important:
Too many other things were at stake. You can call them "technicalities." I like to call them "children."
Ask a divorced or unmarried parent with primary custody of a child what was at stake in this case, and you'll get an answer that differs profoundly from the headlines: The lawyer's trick here came from Michael Newdow, who wanted to override the religious decisions made by his daughter's mother.
There is little doubt that this case will come back to the highest court one fine day. It is of course everyone's right to plead his or her case to the country's courts, but as an atheist I have to question the wisdom of constantly fighting over symbolics.
Yes, I argued earlier that by the words of the constitution, the pledge is in violation. But there should be more important questions for America's secular minority than the words of a pseudo-religious nationalistic ritual.
As an example, think about Norway. Roughly half the population, by some polls the majority, are secularists. Hardly one in twenty go to church regularly. Non-Christians are mostly opposed to the state church, but it would be an exaggaration to say it is a red hot subject. And, as you can see above right, our national flag is a cross, as is the flags of all the (very secular) Nordic countries. Yet I have never heard anyone, no matter how militantly anti-religious they are, seriously suggest that we get a new flag. It is not a topic for debate.
This is such an important statement that I can't let it pass by. Roger L. Simon quotes from New Republic editor Lawrence Kaplan (no direct link available for non-subscribers):
A recent study by Princeton's Alan Krueger and Czech scholar Jitka Maleckova analyzed data on terrorist attacks and measured it against the characteristics of the terrorists' countries of origin. The study found that "the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists."
Hardly a surprise for most of us, and a solid empirical refutation of the "blowback" argument of Chomskyites and others.
Norway's state attorney Tor-Axel Busch has decided to drop the terrorism case against Mullah Krekar, citing lack of evidence. Norwegian courts proved to be suspicious to testimonies from foreign militants, and there would be little chance to prevail.
The good thing is that this will make it easier to send Krekar out of the country. There is no doubt he violeted the terms for his visa in Norway, and the Ansar al-Islam leader also poses a security risk. The problem is that Norway can only expel someone to a safe place, and Iraq is hardly a place where Krekar can currently expect a fair trial today. Not to mention that Norway requires guarantees that the death penalty will not be applied.
How to solve the problem: I suggest Norway do with the Bouvet island what the Americans have done in Guantanamo Bay.
Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria warns that policies to tackle the most scary terrorism scenario, that groups like al-Qaeda obtains a nuclear bomb, have hardly changed since 9/11-01.
This is particularly surprising when you consider that the problem of nuclear terrorism is actually solvable. Making a nuclear bomb requires fissile materials—weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. To produce either, you need reprocessors, reactors and enrichment facilities. These are out of the reach of even a large, well-funded terrorist organization. Terrorists can get such materials only by buying them from states. So, if all fissile material around the world were locked up and monitored and no new material were made, it would eliminate the worldwide threat of nuclear terrorism.
Zakaria lists some ways this important task can be achieved.
Fictious documentarist Michael Moore has no problem getting even more free publicity for his new movie, contesting the MPAA's "R" rating of his movie. He is whining that the restrictive rating, which is due to the film's "violent and disturbing images and for language," will prevent many young people from seeing it. And of course young people are the most likely to be duped by him.
I bet Moore can somehow write the MPAA into his massive Bush-run conspiracy theory, and that this somehow ties in with a gas pipeline through Afghanistan.
US News thinks that Dick Gephardt is the chosen one.
Labor leaders believe union friend Rep. Dick Gephardt has the inside track to be Sen. John Kerry 's vice president. We hear that AFL-CIO execs say it's a done deal.
Also on the shortlist, says LA Times, is the rather unknown Iowa governor Thomas J. Vilsack, and they explain why he would be such a good choice.
The NYT, however, says Kerry's fellow senators are pressing him to chose John Edwards, who has the advantage of being a southerner and the disadvantage of making the first John look very boring by comparison.
Hey, none of us can wait for any official nomination.
Supreme Court chickens out — "under God" stays in Pledge
The US Supreme Court made the ending of this year's church-state legal battle a massive anticlimax by deciding that it could not rule on the case since atheist Michael Newdow doesn't have sufficient custody for his daughter, on whose behalf he fought the case.
The ruling means that the court has not decided the fundamentals of the case, but it overturns the controversial 9th circuit ruling that banned the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
This only lasts until somebody else challenges the pledge, and we have the whole circus going again.
Britain ran the EP election simultanously with local elections, a few days before the rest of Europe, and pundits across the board interpreted the serious trashing of Labour as the electorate's protest against the Iraq war. Maybe so, but that is certainly not the whole story. The Tories fared no better in the EU elections, losing badly to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), one of many euroskeptical parties across Europe that are now inside the EU with the aim of bringing it down.
In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats received a pounding also, despite his popular opposition to the Iraq war, and again observers tried to pin it on the chancellor's most unpopular policies, which happen to be much needed welfare reform.
However, the biggest problem was not which parties were elected, it was who didn't even turn up at the polls. In new EU member state the Czech Republic, only 29 percent participated, and the turnout was even lower in many of the other new member states.
Europeans don't feel the EU parliament means anything for them, so if they at all bother to go to the polls, they cast a protest vote against the ruling establishment. The vote is not an indictment against any individual political leaders, it is a strong protest against the whole project of a United States of Europe. The voice of the people is: "This has been going too far! We may want a free trade area, the harmonisation of some rules and laws are all fine, but we do not want overpaid, corrupt eurocrats and a distant European Parliament to rule our lives."
I hope Blair wakes up and smells the roses. He has been leading Britain to a time of presperity far beyond that of continental Europe, and the British people wonder why in the world the UK should integrate with the policies that have failed in France and Germany. Chirac and Schroeder are probably beyond redemption as they are running ahead of their own people towards a superstate, or, failing that, a Franco-German union.
Those politicians who don't listen now, will be roadkill coming the next round of elections. Forget Iraq. This is about the furure of Europe. The people have spoken, the bastards, and you better listen.
Update: George Galloway's neo-Stalinist anti-war party Respect was crushed, or more correctly ignored, by British voters and the old traitor's ambitions to go to Brussels on a fat salary failed.
Norway has not been too proud of reigning near the top of the lists of the world's most expensive countries, so it is arelief of sorts that the capital Oslo is now number 15 on the list of the world's most expensive cities, where Tokyo, London and Moscow are on the top.
Of the ranked cities, Paraguay’s capital Asunción is the cheapest.
In the United States, New York is the most expensive, but the city that never sleeps is only number 12 worldwide.
It would be interesting to see this broken down to different factors. I bet the cost of an apartment is ridiculously cheap in Oslo compared to Tokyo or London, but once you want to eat, drink or drive a car, you pay through the nose.
France: 'We Surrender Forever!' French President Jacques Chirac has announced a plan for France to surrender retroactively in all of history's previous wars, and to preemptively surrender to all potential enemies in future armed conflicts.
Members of the French legislature unanimously signed the new Declaration of Capitulation. It contains language that announces France's immediate and unconditional surrender in all past and future international disputes, regardless of the circumstances.
"This will save so much time and effort," announced Chirac at a press conference in Paris. "We as French people historically have always had the same solution when threatened -- to give up. By surrendering now, we can cut back on our unnecessary military expenditures. Because we always eventually surrender anyway, we have truly been wasting this money."
However, the decision to surrender is about much more than saving money. "It is really about who we are as a people," explains French government spokesman Guy Belacque.
At least in a metaphysical way, this report is true.
PS: And in case you wonder, Napoleon was a Corsican, not French, and Zinedine Zidane is Algerian. That's my story, and I stick with it.
Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the ICRC, told the Guardian: "The United States defines Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war. At the end of an occupation PoWs have to be released provided they have no penal charges against them."
What would a captured genocidal ex-dictator do without the kind souls of the ICRC?
Of course we should just let Saddam go. We wouldn't want to break human rights, would we? We have to leave that to the experts.
Slate's Jack Shafer writes such an unlikely thing as a defense of tabloid National Enquirer, and makes the following interesting remark:
And say whatever ugly things you will about the modern National Enquirer, it hasn't staged the filming of an exploding pickup truck like NBC News; it hasn't been taken by a serial liar, as was the New York Times; and it's avoided running preposterous stories about the U.S. government using nerve gas in Vietnam, as CNN did. Had Jack Kelley attempted to place his fictions in the Enquirer instead of USA Today, I'm sure the editors would have found him out.
Isn't that more of an indictment of the others than praise of the Enquirer?
Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols may be guilty of 161 counts of murder, but his jailhouse conversion to Christianity most likely saved him from the death penalty.
Whatever the merits of the case, it is good news if the Israeli government will not be distracted by a legal case in the crucial time when it is planning to disengage from the Palestinians and pull out of Gaza.
Of course, the case will still not really end with the charges being dropped, but it will make it easier for Sharon to get on with his job.
Winds of Change has a very interesting article on the alleged Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. Currently Arab newspapers are falling over themselves condemning Qadaffi for stabbing a "brother" in the back, so obviously there are few doubts on the Arab peninsula that this plot really existed.
It also discusses the role of Abdurahman Alamoudi, one of several American Muslim leaders President Bush appeared with immediately after 9/11-01 to avoid a backlash against Muslims, and who played a role in channeling Libyan money through Syria to al-Qaeda terrorists.
The plot thickens. There are obviously countless dubious characters and groups in this game, and which side who is on when is hard to know. But anyone arguing that al-Qaeda could not possibly have worked with a secularised regime like Saddam's should rethink!
I still can't understand why Qadaffi would want to strengthen al-Qaeda's hand in Saudi Arabia. He must know he is on their target list, too, just further down.
What would happen if the Saudi royal family should fall, and radical Islamists take over Saudi Arabia? With all the havoc these terrorists are able to create with their current level of funding, one can only imagine what would happen should they lay their hands on Saudi Arabia's massive oil wealth, and also secure even safer havens in the kingdom. The west could not possibly allow this to happen. I doubt even the French would oppose an immediate military attack on Saudi Arabia, no matter how much that would lead to the true clash of civilisations.
Bush wanted the showdown with al-Qaeda to happen in Iraq, and the invasion apparently made the terrorists focus their resources there. However, it appears that for al-Qaeda, the crucial battle stands in Saudi Arabia. And the west now is in the dubious position having to rely on, and support, the immensely corrupt, incompetent and vicious Saudi regime.
In popular lore, "may you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse. Well, we do! And it sure doesn't look like a blessing.
Ralph Nader has been running his presidential campaign from the same offices as a public charity he created, which is at best dubious under federal laws.
Tax law explicitly forbids public charities from aiding political campaigns. Violations can result in a charity losing its tax-exempt status. In addition, campaign law requires candidates to account for all contributions -- including shared office space and resources, down to the use of copying machines, receptionists and telephones.
Records show many links between Nader's campaign and the charity Citizen Works. For example, the charity's listed president, Theresa Amato, is also Nader's campaign manager. The campaign said in an e-mail to The Washington Post that Amato resigned from the charity in 2003. But in the charity's most recent corporate filing with the District, in January, Amato listed herself as the charity's president and registered agent.
Nader strongly denies any wrongdoing.
If I were cynical, I'd suggest WaPo is trying to help John Kerry with this piece.
Palestinian gunmen on Friday raided the offices of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jenin and threatened staff because they thought the new houses built for them were too small. UNRWA is rebuilding houses that were destroyed by the Israelis during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
Residents of the Jenin camp are complaining that their new houses, replacing those destroyed in Israeli incursions, are not big enough, said Sami Mshasha, a spokesman for UNRWA in Jerusalem.
Sources in the camp said they did not know to which group the gunmen belonged, although some residents identified them as members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah.
This was the third attack of its kind on UN offices and crew in the Jenin camp in the past six months. Residents had complained that the construction work was too slow and that senior Palestinian Authority officials had stolen parts of the donations from the international community to the camp.
Right. Someone gives you a house for free, and you rush in with a gun threatening the workers because you want the house to be bigger.
UNRWA has now suspeneded the construction process, as well they should. Let these thugs build their own bloody houses.
But I bet it will not take long before "the international community" is back subsidizing Arafat's terror regime.
A counter-intuitive result from a study here: there is no correlation between a person's wealth and how frequently they have sex.
Researchers at the University of Chicago surveyed 16,000 Americans between 1988 and 2002, and found that unemployed people tended to have more sexual partners than higher-income folks. In the movies, they might call it "Revenge of the Poor Schlubs."
This surprised even the researchers.
"We thought we'd see some income effects," said Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, who was a co-author of the study. But he said there was no link between money and sex.
The study no doubt has the same methodological flaw as almost all others involving sex: the researchers just ask people about their sex life, and assume they are honest.
More problematic is that the study, based on news reports about it at least, doesn't seem to distinguish between men and women.
Japanese inventor Susumu Tachi has demonstrated technology that can make it possible to create a real invisibility cloak.
In reality, the 'optical camouflage' cloak is anything but invisible. It is made up of 'retro-reflective material' coated with tiny light-reflective beads that cover its entire length. The cloak is also fitted with cameras that project what is at the back of the wearer on to the front, and vice versa. The effect, as the Japanese team demonstrated last week, is to make the wearer blend with his background.
The material was used to coat a ball, a brick and a cloak. In each case, it appeared as if the viewer could see through each item as it was moved about by a human operator to the back of the room.
To say that this opens up some interesting possibilities is an understatement.
Mailboxes around the world was recently deluged in German language spam with a political message. The spam mails was the borderline racist message so popular for right-wing/populist parties across Europe. The spam used so-called Zombies, PCs taken over by a virus to relay spam and make it almost impossible to stop.
Hardly anything new, but the idea of political spam scares most mail users. Commercial mail can usually be traced to somebody who are trying to sell you something. But there may be no return address for political spam.
The hope is that serious candidates will not be associated with this scourge. Hardly a comfort, of course, as there are enough extremists who don't care who they offend.
Danish ex-UN worker Michael Soussan has testified about the moral relativism of his former collegues, their acceptance of Saddam's cruelty, and how they turned a blind eye to the corruption in the oil for food palaces programme.
The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.
The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.
A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.
It did not help that, inside the Security Council, France, Russia and China openly opposed sanctions, threatening doom for any UN official tempted to blow the whistle on Saddam's cheating.
"Most high level UN employees need to be on good terms with key countries in the Security Council if they want to have a career."
Now top UN officials are under investigation. Mr Soussan hopes the shock will force a major debate on how to deal with rogue regimes.
"The oil-for-food programme was a deal with the devil. The problem is, that we didn't act as if this was the devil, we acted as if this was a legitimate regime," he said.
If such major questions have to wait, a little more transparency would help, for starters.
"If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused."
The environment that created UNSCAM.
PS: I am totally unsurprised that Roger L. Simon also found this article.
If you only read one more article about Ronald Reagan in your life, and at this time you may feel like even that is too much, I suggest it be Lech Walesa's words remembering Reagan.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.
While many debate the issue, Lech Walesa is not in doubt that Reagan was the man who won the cold war, along with "John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev."
It is interesting to note this story about how Solidarity used a poster for an American western movie, Gary Cooper's legendary High Noon, against the communists in the 1989 elections in Poland:
It was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.
But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland.
In Europe, the word "cowboy" is frequently used about Americans generally and presidents like Reagan and Bush specifically, and it is always intended as an insult. Obviously today's leftist-dominated Europe sympathises more closely with Poland's old communists than with the democratic movement Solidarity.
Extremist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has made a conciliatory sermon in Kufa, urging his followers to stop attacking Iraqi security forces.
In a sermon read out by his spokesman, Mr Sadr called upon the interim government to work to end the occupation according to a timetable set by Iraqi officials, reported a correspondent for Voice of Mujahidin radio present at the sermon.
Mr Sadr added that the formation of the government was a good opportunity to bury past differences and "forge ahead toward the building of a unified Iraq".
The sermon in general was conciliatory, the BBC's David Bamford says.
At the same time, however, his followers clashed with hundeds of supporters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), described as a "pro-US" fraction, where fists and missiles caused some injuries.
I suspect the serious beating given to Sadr's militia by coalition forces has been a more important reason for his reconciliatory tone than the forming of the interim government. But the latter provides him a good excuse.
Citizen Smash visits an anti-war rally with moch banners, and pokes fun at them.
He also gives a bit of background information about International A.N.S.W.E.R., the organising left-wing extremists:
The man who started it all was Ramsey Clark. Clark served as the US Attorney General under Lyndon B. Johnson, but has more recently made a name for himself by representing such upstanding world citizens as Liberia's Charles Taylor, Serbia's Radovan Karadzic, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
You read that correctly: the founder and driving force behind International A.N.S.W.E.R. is Saddam's lawyer.
There is of course much more.
If this information was more widely available, would a man like Danny Glover support them? I hope not.
US personell at the Abu Ghraib prison were ordered to use unmuzzled dogs to "frighten and intimidate" prisoners during interrogations. According to the dog handlers, this was authorised by the top intelligence officer at the prison-
This is hardly going to go down in history as the worst example of prisoner abuse. Sorry, this is not good, but I have problems working up the big moral outrage. The media doesn't have similar problems.
The reporter had asked Putin to respond to U.S. press articles questioning Russia's place at the G8 feast of leading industrial countries.
Putin brushed these off, saying such articles were part of an internal U.S. political debate.
He went on: "I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.
"It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq."
Indeed, Russia was opposed to both conflicts, and can at least say they are consistent. France does not have that luxury. And neither does the democrats who supported Clinton's "unilateralism" in Kosovo.
At least we know Putin was not among the "foreign leaders" who would prefer John Kerry as president.
You can hardly open a political blog or a newspaper these days without seeing some pundit give his take on the big question of the day: Can Ronald Reagan be credited with ending the cold war? Not surprisingly, people tend to fall down along the political lines. Leftists tend to discredit the idea, either saying it was a coincidence that the Soviet Union fell after Reagan's military buildup or that it had been counterproductive. Those on the right tend to argue that Reagan's renewed arms race pushed the Soviets over the edge into bankrupcy, forcing the end of the cold war.
Fred Kaplan suggests a compromise: the end of the cold war was made possible by a unique combination of at least three factors: Reagan the hawk, Reagan the dove, and Mikhail Gorbachev, a man sane enough to see which way the wind blew, if not where that would end.
Ultimately, the question can not be definately resolved, as we cannot possibly know how the world would have looked like if Reagan or Gorbachev had not existed. But that never prevented us from speculating.
PS: Bjørn Stærk has a thread going with lots of speculation about precisely this question.
According to IAEA officials, Iran told a European black market supplier it was interested in obtaining "tens of thousands" of magnets used in in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. That means that Iran is interested in creating equipment for creating highly enriched, or weapons grade, uranium for nuclear weapons. Iran tries to pretend its enrichment programme is only for civilian purposes, and only an experimental project.
The earlier "smoking gun" showing that Iran has a clandestine nuclear project was traces of weapons-grade uranium earlier found on Iranian centrifuges. The excuse used was that the equipment, purchased on the black market (read: Pakistan), must have been contaminated earlier. To verify this possibility, Pakistan must give the IAEA access to its nuclear material, but Pakistan has refused (shouldn't it be possible for the US to push harder here?).
The US is pushing for some harsh censure of Iran, and now France, Germany and Britain are writing a draft resolution filled with negative language, but so far without a firm deadline and threats.
The world watches as a crazy mullahcracy, a major source of decades of international terrorism, goes nuclear.
It is a mystery why people who have been sympathetic to nazism were subject to harsh censure after World War II (as they should!), while the millions who followed communism has been able to hold on to their privilegued positions in society after the gulags, the killing fields and other atrocities were exposed.
A nazi past will make any political leader unacceptable in most of Europe, but on the left, outspoken Stalinists still hold positions of power. Indeed, many of them are totally unapologetic about their support of mass murderers, and it has absolutely no social consequences.
Here is an article reminding us about the horrors of Stalin's own holocaust. Since the fall of the Soviet union, a huge archive of ghastly details has become available to historians. The press has been largly uninterested.
People who make apologies for, and sometimes even support, this monster is still highly respected in some quarters. Quite a few of them are journalists and editors in the newspapers and TV stations across Europe, for one.
Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, is on vacation in a place where they use jungle drums and smoke signals to send Internet messages, but he still couldn't really let go of keeping us updated.
Major John Tammes emails from Bagram, Afghanistan:
Please take your vacation. I mean TAKE YOUR VACATION. Stop posting - I thought Lileks had set you straight, Mr. Not A Public Utility. I want you to come back rested and refreshed. See you in a week...
When people are emailing you from a war zone to tell you to take it easy, well, it can't be good. . . .
Hong Kong's celebrity crocodile, that evaded expert crodocile hunters and became a major attraction has finally been caught.
Fishermen found Gucci the saltwater croc — first spotted in a swampy creek in November — trapped in a steel noose, said Cheung Chi-sun, a wildlife protection officer from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.
A live broadcast on Cable TV showed agriculture department officials in a small boat moving the 5-foot-long reptile from the creek. It didn't seem to put up much of a struggle.
The 4 year old croc, somewhat omniously named Gucci, had earlier humiliated famous Australian croc hunter John Lever and other experts. It will not, as the name indicates, become a ladies' handbag but will be retired to a wetland park.
Not long after the reptile was first sighted in November, radio callers elected it "Personality of the Year."
Which probably says a lot about the other celebrities there.
Maybe the croc has the qualities the political masters in Beijing are searching for in a ruler of Hong Kong?