Talking Points

Chen Zuoer, a former key negotiator for the mainland government, will officially launch his memoir, Negotiations on The Handover of Sovereignty of Hong Kong - A Witness Recounts in Admiralty. In excerpts released this week, Chen writes that former governor Chris Patten's attempts to introduce political reforms before the 1997 handover had angered Beijing. Patten's reforms ran counter to secret agreements between Britain and China, of which Patten was unaware, Chen says.

A US District Court judge in San Jose, California, will hear Apple's demand for a sales ban on eight Samsung Electronics products. Last month a jury ruled in favour of Apple's claim that Samsung infringed its patents by copying designs for its smartphones and tablets. Samsung was ordered to pay US$1.05 billion. Samsung will appeal against the decision, saying it was "unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners".

Sanitation workers will descend on Beijing's Tiananmen Square and its surroundings from today for a huge campaign to spruce up the area ahead of the upcoming National Day celebrations and the Communist Party's once-in-a-decade change of power. Officials want the pavement to be "clean enough for people to sit on the ground" by the time the round-the-clock clean-up effort finishes on September 27.