Latest news with #ND
South China Morning Post
22-05-2025
- South China Morning Post
Trial begins for men accused of abusing young Hong Kong girl
A Hong Kong child was repeatedly abused by her mother's two middle-aged boyfriends, with one groping her on eight occasions, while the other had sex with her four times, prosecutors have told a court. Prosecutors on Thursday opened their case in the High Court against Quan Zhiming, 53, and security guard Li Kam-fai, 71, accusing them of preying on the girl when they separately had a relationship with her mother in 2019 and 2017 respectively. Quan, from mainland China, denied four counts of unlawful sex with a girl under 13. He had earlier pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault against the same complainant. Li entered a not guilty plea to eight counts of indecent assault. The 49-year-old mother, only identified in court by her initials ND, also stood accused of perverting the course of justice by trying to impede a police investigation after the crimes came to light in April 2023. On-fiat prosecutor Adonis Cheung Kam-wing said in his opening statement that Li first assaulted the girl when she was aged eight and studying Primary Two in 2017.
Auto Car
19-05-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Car
Mazda MX-5 review: the bestselling
The ND MX-5 is positively geriatric in the context of model cycles. Nevertheless, the no-nonsense interior still feels fresh. It was a huge leap compared with the NC generation, but if you're unaccustomed to MX-5s, it's likely that the cabin's incredibly compact dimensions will need to sink in before you can meaningfully survey the details. The MX-5 has always been resolutely bijou, and the ND is no different. Broader adults will find themselves in frequent contact with the centre console, door trim and the sides of the skinny footwell, while taller drivers will want for a few centimetres more leg room. Despite a 20mm lower hip point compared with the NC, you sit a little higher than would seem optimal and head room with the top up is relatively limited. Moreover, there is a bulge in the floorpan that denies you the option of folding your clutch leg away on motorways (a malaise of right-hand-drive cars only). Reach adjustment for the steering wheel was added in 2018. If you plan to do long distances in your MX-5, seek out a version with the Recaro seats, because they are significantly more comfortable than the standard items, and offer more lateral support too. These factors can combine to make it tricky to get comfortable – tricky enough, in fact, for some people to be put off the prospect entirely, although others will proclaim this the most comfortable MX-5 yet. More fool the critics, though, because in an age that tends towards profligacy, the MX-5's cockpit-sized simplicity – once reconciled with – makes for a charming environment. The dashboard architecture is similar to that of the Mazda 2, which is a good thing because the same natty design features and chunky, tactile switchgear work equally well here in the roadster. You'll have to look hard to find soft-touch materials, but that somehow feels appropriate for a no-nonsense sports car. Nowhere is the MX-5's simplicity better encapsulated than in the manually operated roof. Made 3kg lighter than in the NC and requiring 30lb ft less effort to close, the hood can be operated easily with one hand, even when moving. There's one spring-loaded clip to unfasten on the header rail, then a click somewhere in the housing behind you to confirm that it's safely stowed. It takes four or five seconds and, like pretty much everything else about the MX-5, puts everything larger, heavier and motor-driven to shame. The roof's tiny size means that the car continues to offer a modest-sized but usable boot. It's too small for golf clubs but is just big enough for two weekend-away bags. Which seems to us exactly as it should be. Multimedia system Over its many years on sale, the MX-5 has gone through a number of infotainment iterations, but the good news is that all of them are quite pleasant to use because they were clearly modelled on the classic BMW iDrive. Cars up to 2023 used an older interface, but one which still had logical menus and could be navigated using both the touchscreen and the rotary controller in the centre console. Entry-level models used to miss out on the centre screen, but from 2023, all MX-5s have the 7.0in touchscreen. In 2018, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were added, the former with wireless functionality. They do come with a Mazda-typical quirk. The touchscreen stops working on the move and you have to use the rotary controller. The latter works great for the native interface, but using it to navigate CarPlay is rather awkward, as that was clearly designed for a touchscreen In 2024, the screen was upgraded to a 8.8in screen with much more modern-looking graphics. Thankfully, that didn't come at a cost of usability – all the menus remain very logical, and the built-in navigation is actually quite good. The standard stereo isn't anything special, but it's just about brawny enough to be heard over the road and wind noise. The Bose system that used to be available on certain trims put up a better fight, but as this is quite a noisy car on the motorway, it's always a bit of a losing battle. Page 2 The cabin space of the new 2 is unlikely to make a dent on your first impression, especially now that rivals have grown wider and thus become more practical. Instead, how the interior looks is of far more interest than its basic proportions. Here is a supermini cabin that avoids the pitfalls of tacky styling or unnecessary clutter, delivering in their place a real sense of imagination and savvy attention to detail. This emanates most obviously from the dashboard, a slab of space-conscious architecture. None of its hallmarks – unbroken horizontal lines, nicely corralled switchgear, periscoped instrument cluster – are novel, but their integration is rarely so well handled. It comes as no surprise to learn that the car's designer, the same man who penned the exterior, originally trained in interior design. The input device for the multimedia system could do with being a little further forward for optimum usability, but that's about the limit of our ergonomic complaints. You sit marginally too high, although well within the segment's norm, and 20mm of additional elbow room helps to prevent the front of the cabin from feeling full to the brim when two adults are on board. In the back, the 2 isn't the most spacious supermini: taller passengers will certainly feel uncomfortable after a while. It's no Fiat 500, you understand, but it's in a different league from the Seat Ibiza, for instance. The boot is decent, with a capacity of 280 litres, if hindered a little by its miserly aperture width. Multimedia system The infotainment touchscreen looks neat where it's perched on the dashboard and, better still, you won't have to actually touch it once you're driving thanks to a rotary input device and a selection of physical shortcut buttons. It has a touchscreen, but it deactivates on the move. Some testers found this worked well for them, while others found navigating Apple CarPlay with the rotary controller rather cumbersome. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto didn't exist yet when the Mazda 2 was first launched, but both were added after a few years. The former works wirelessly, the latter requires a cable. Mazda's default interface feels a little dated in 2023, but is easy enough to understand. Page 3
Auto Car
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Car
Track nights, drifting and lots of screenwash: 2000 miles in an MX-5
Close Culmination is one of those words that can be used in subtly different ways. We will ignore its archaic use (the reaching of the meridian by a celestial body) and delve straight into its two most popular meanings today. One definition is the highest point of something, especially as attained after a long time. The other is the point at which something ends, having developed until it reaches this point. Subtle differences, then. It can mean best, it can mean last and it can mean a mixture of the two, as in the example we're considering here. Next year, this version of the Mazda MX-5 (the 'ND' for Mazda aficionados) will have been on sale for a decade. Ten whole years for one model. During its lifetime, it has gone through subtle changes and upgrades before culminating in this Homura-spec car. It's basically all the bells and whistles, and what I think on paper is the best model. Up front, it gets the 181bhp 2.0-litre engine. Round the back is the simple, lightweight canvas roof – not the heavy and complex metal one you get on the MX-5 RF. It also has 17in BBS wheels, Recaro seats, a Bose sound system (with speakers in the headrests), Bilstein dampers, a limited-slip differential, Brembo brake calipers and a track mode. That's the first meaning of culmination well and truly done. The second alludes to it being the last. Which looks like the case, at least in the pure form we know and love the MX-5. Mazda's next sports car is set to be a 370bhp hybrid, equipped with a rotary engine that generates power for the electric motors driving the wheels. Back in 2023, Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro said: 'We love the MX-5 and the world loves the MX-5. We are determined in the age of electrification to keep the joy of driving which the MX-5 represents alive.' 'Represents' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Mazda's next sports car will not be awfully like an MX-5 to me. And it will most likely not wear the MX-5 badge. Anyway, enough semantics. The reason I have this MX-5 is to see if I can conceivably run one through winter as my only car. The hardier among you might consider me to be a soft southerner after reading that sentence. But a few colleagues (admittedly soft southerners themselves) have told me they wouldn't fancy running something so small, impractical and rear-wheel drive during the winter months. What do I have planned? On these pages, you will read tales of track driving at night, a few comparison tests with pretty abstract rivals and, importantly, the rather less glamorous nitty-gritty of daily use. Initial thoughts? I'm not a fan of the optional matt grey paint. When Audi started doing matte paint way back in 2013, it was clever in a kind of ironic way. 'Look at me, spending all this money to make it look like I've got primer.' But since then the concept has grown tired. Winter is doing the car a huge favour so far. It 's constantly caked in mud, which hides the paint well. I love filthy cars and will fill these pages in the coming months with the dirtiest MX-5 you may ever see. Other notes? This car is small. Really small. Shorter than the Mk1 MX-5 even. The first few times I parallel-parked it on my street, I actually had to try again, such was my brain's inability to measure quite how petite it was. The boot is pretty deep and useful for a car of this size, but the interior space is virtually non-existent. I recently took it to see my parents and my wife had to stash a lot of our cargo (presents, bags etc) in the front with her. I think she took it remarkably well. So far I've been on only a few other trips in the MX-5, most of them on the motorway. And I've been truly dumbfounded by how at home it has felt there. An easy 40-plus MPG in the fast lane for one thing. Sixth gear is pretty long and it 's only really pulling around 3000rpm. This is especially important to me, as my last long-termer, an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, averaged 23.5mpg. It's the comfort that has surprised me most, though. It really is a pleasant place to be. When you read Bilstein dampers on the spec sheet, you think lowered and racy. But there's a proper amount of squidge I wasn't expecting, especially on such thin rubber. It's not a quiet car at speed, mind you. With the Bose stereo cranked up to a volume where you can actually hear it, your passenger is fully drowned out. Is this the culmination of 36 years of MX-5 production? If it comes anywhere close, I'm in for a treat – even during the depths of winter. Update 2 I was invited along by Mazda to the world's first 'night-time track day' in Anglesey. Yep, North Wales, in the winter. At night. The drop-top Mazda was perfect for the task; I couldn't think of anything better to do it in. It waltzed me effortlessly from London to Wales in comfort and with surprisingly good 40mpg-plus fuel economy. And then on track it was an absolute peach, flattering my driving and generally just being extremely good fun, communicative and everything you'd want in a track-day car that you also intend to drive home. Read the full feature here Update 3 Before I knew it, another invite arrived. This time it was from the electro-modders at Electrogenic, wanting to know if I'd like to drive their new battery-powered Electrogenic Mk1 MX-5. Yes, please. And it was great: proper fun, with big, laugh-inducing skids, and all wrapped up in the unmistakable first-gen shell. Read the full feature here Update 4 In the office I tend to sit next to our staff writer Charlie Martin and behind Classic & Sports Car's associate editor, Lizzie Pope. Since getting my long-term MX-5 they have both bought NDs. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I should be on commission. In this line of work we're blessed with driving some of the best cars around. This section of the mag is full of interesting metal week in, week out – and the MX-5 is no exception. I've had a great selection of long-termers in this job. But the MX-5's mixture of low-speed fun and dependable reliability has made it my favourite. It's a car that makes the everyday more enjoyable. Some things about my MX-5 I loved immediately. The seating position and the weighting of the manual gearbox and pedals, for me, are the best in the business. There were other aspects that I grew to love. I thought the steering was a touch light at first, but after a few weeks, and with the benefit of driving a couple of palate cleanser regular cars in between, I realised that light doesn't have to mean uncommunicative. It just means easy. Cons are harder to find. I'm not nitpicking here when I write that the infotainment short-circuits my millennial brain: it doesn't allow me to use the touchscreen while the car is moving (there's a rotary controller for that). By the time the neurons in my brain (eventually) engage and the neurotransmitters trigger thoughts about not touching the screen, my greasy little digits are already prodding away. I have been conditioned by 20 years of touchscreen phones, and I suspect many others have. Admittedly I probably am nitpicking, though, when I complain that the windscreen washer bottle is a touch small at 1.2 litres. Not ideal for hacking around in winter. Finally, we'll get round to the question we posed at the start: how easy is it to run a convertible as your only car in the depths of a British winter? Easy. For me. And I'd go as far as saying it would be easy for most childless readers who don't regularly need to transport anything particularly large. Bonus question: is this the spec to go for? At the office, we regularly talk specs. And, as you might imagine, we often disagree. A few of us think all electric cars should basically be the least powerful spec possible; others say we're missing out on all the huge torque. Some of us insist there's still room for diesel; others remind us that modern petrol hybrids can offer basically the same economy. But for the MX-5 top-rung Homura spec just makes sense. Recaro seats? Spot on. Even comfy on long journeys. Track mode? Simple, easy to use, flatters your driving and you can make use of it all the time. BBS wheels? Amazing – nothing else to note. Yes, it's £35k – which sounds a lot for an MX-5. But a Mini Cooper convertible is £28,000, or £30k-plus if you actually want anything inside it. A Honda Civic Type R is £50k. At the beginning of this test, I posited that the latest ND was the culmination of 36 years of MX-5 expertise. And it is. The next generation of Mazda sports car is promised to keep the atmospheric engine/rear-drive formula. But even so, I don't envy the engineers tasked with besting this ND. Mazda MX-5 Homura specification Mileage: At start 6086 At end 8028 Prices: List price new £34,835 Price as tested £35,435 Options: Aero grey paint £600 Fuel consumption and range: Claimed economy 41.5mpg Fuel tank 45 litres Test average 39.1mpg Test best 42.5mpg Test worst 25.8mpg Real-world range 387 miles Tech highlights: 0-62mph 6.5sec Top speed 136mph Engine 4 cyls in line, 1998cc, petrol Max power 181bhp Max torque 151lb ft Transmission 6-spd manual, RWD Boot capacity 130 litres Service and running costs: Service costs None Other costs None Fuel costs £306.63 Running costs inc fuel £318.61 Cost per mile 16 pence Faults None
The Sun
08-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
Dead pigeons: No new infectious diseases, deaths reported
PUTRAJAYA: The Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) has confirmed that no new infectious diseases have been detected and no deaths reported following the discovery of a large number of pigeon carcasses around a water fountain in Padang Ipoh, Perak recently. It said that the results of the post-mortem on the three pigeon carcasses found that they all had full stomach contents, with several significant findings, including the discolouration of the liver, the presence of blood clots in the thoracic cavity and bleeding in the trachea and lungs. 'Samples of internal organs, such as the liver, heart, kidneys, spleen, lungs, intestines and trachea have been sent for laboratory analysis. 'Preliminary test results for Avian Influenza (AI), Newcastle Disease (ND) and Adenovirus returned negative. Tests for poisoning are being carried out by the Chemistry Department to identify the actual cause of death,' it said in a statement today. The DVS said that based on the current findings, it found that infectious diseases like AI, ND and Adenovirus were not factors that caused the death of the pigeons and that a conclusion could only be made after it received the results of the poisoning tests from the Chemistry Department. 'As a precautionary measure and to protect public safety as well as the country's livestock sector from the risk of animal-borne diseases, the DVS will continue to monitor the situation at Padang Ipoh,' it added. The DVS also urged the public to immediately inform the nearest DVS or call 03-8870 2041 if they come across the carcasses of any bird or other animals that look unusual or suspicious. Recently, several video clips had gone viral on social media showing the discovery of a large number of dead pigeons around a fountain at the popular leisure area in Ipoh.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
IB Nation Sports Talk: Notre Dame Football We In Or We Out
Irish Breakdown answers subscriber-submitted questions about Notre Dame football and more on today's show. Some of today's topics include: * In the past year, Notre Dame has solidified themselves in the national eye as a perennial playoff contender. We In or We Out? Advertisement * A year from now, Notre Dame will be seen nationally as elite and as a perennial title contender. In or Out? * Two years from now, Notre Dame will be seen nationally as the title favorites. In or Out? * Three years from now, Notre Dame will be seen as Clemson or Georgia was for their short years of dominance. In or Out? * With ND taking what appears to be that next step as a dominate program with HMF, what in your opinion would be the next step to becoming elite? * Joe Rudolph will have our OL playing at a championship-winning-level in late Nov., Dec., & January. In or Out? * Adon Shuler will perform like a top 5 safety in all of CFB for the 2025 season. In or Out? Advertisement * Guerby Lambert's injury won't affect his conditioning or his ability to be one of ND's starting tackles this season. In or Out? * We In or We Out: ND will officially name a QB starter prior to the first snap of the Miami game? * The combination of the running backs and Tight Ends will have more receiving Touchdowns than the Receivers. In or Out? * Much More! There's more to discuss and debate in Rapid Fire as well. See the list of topics below! Today's Rapid Fire topics include: * Which has the better chance to happen this season: Jadarian Price rushes for at least 1,000 yards or Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa has at least 100 tackles. Advertisement * Fill-in the blank: The College Football Playoff era began in 2014 and it's BLANK Notre Dame's 109 wins rank No. 5 in that time. * How has what you think of Chad Bowden changed since he left Notre Dame for Southern Cal? * We predict the Vegas over/under season win total for Arizona State for this season. We look at their schedule and then guess what we think Fan Duel has as their over/under number for the 2025 season. * Mel Kiper Jr's reaction to the Shedeur Sanders slide to the fifth round was as polarizing as Sanders himself. Some people have even said Kiper should be fired for doubling down on being so wrong. Was Kiper's draft performance good or bad for ESPN? Advertisement * Kirk Cousins will be 37 when the NFL season begins. Falcons GM Terry Fontenot went on Mad Dog Radio yesterday and said they're being patient and taking calls about Cousins. What do you think Cousins' future holds? * If you're the Pittsburgh Steelers, would you keep waiting for Aaron Rodgers or would you make a move for Cousins? Be sure to check out the Irish Breakdown message board, the Champions Lounge Irish Breakdown Content 2025 Scholarship Chart 2025 Football Schedule Notre Dame 2026 Scholarship Offers 2025 Commit Rankings - Offense 2025 Commit Rankings - Defense 2024 Recruiting Class 2023 Recruiting Class 2022 Recruiting Class Advertisement Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more. BECOME A MEMBER Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time! Join the Irish Breakdown community! Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes Follow me on Twitter: @SeanStires Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter
