Talking points
Our editors will be looking ahead today to these developing stories ...
They may be at an age when most people are enjoying a rather sedate retirement, but the great-grandfathers of rock and roll - The Rolling Stones - will instead be staging the biggest concert Macau has ever seen at the Venetian Macao's Cotai Arena tomorrow night. It's been just over a decade since the Stones - fronted by Mick Jagger - last played in southern China with two sell-out gigs in Hong Kong. So expectations are high for the 14 on Fire tour, with tickets well and truly sold out except for VIP packages costing a cool HK$14,800.
Today is International Women's Day, a global event celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women. First held in Europe in 1911 to drum up support for the suffrage movement, the day was adopted by the United Nations in 1975. In Hong Kong, the city's second-highest government official, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, will deliver a speech at an official reception to mark the day. Lam is the only woman in Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's administration. The number of women in the city's civil service has been growing and eight of the 17 permanent secretaries - the highest civil service rank - are women.
Hong Kong's small but active Ukrainian community will take to the streets today to protest against the action of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Crimea. From midday, Ukrainian expatriates and their supporters will hold a rally outside the Marks & Spencer store in Central, calling for a peaceful solution to the escalating crisis in their home country, a former part of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the city's growing Russian-speaking community will hold its annual ball at The Excelsior in Causeway Bay tonight.
Events in the Ukraine also threaten to have an impact of the Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. Competition begins in earnest today after last night's opening ceremony, with Britain, Germany and France the first countries to say that they would not send ministers to the event because of Russia's intervention in the Ukraine. The 31-strong Ukrainian team yesterday decided to compete rather than go home in protest. Forty-five countries and 575 athletes are due to compete in Sochi.
It's the election which is not really an election. North Korean voters will elect a new national legislature tomorrow, but they don't get a choice of candidates, with each district only having one candidate, who has already been chosen for them by the ruling elite. Supreme leader Kim Jong-un is one of the almost 700 "candidates", standing in district 111. With the decision on candidates decided for them, voters get to vote "yes" or "no". Virtually all pick "yes".
