News feed：Mating needs waiting

[2020.04.29] 發表

【明報專訊】PERHAPS thanks to a lack of visitors, Ying Ying and Le Le have mated naturally. Last year a Sichuan expert floated an idea that the two resident giant pandas, who had borne no children for years, could be sent back to their homeland to find true love, but Ocean Park rejected the proposal. What made the couple come together finally?

Zooming in on data security

VIDEO conferencing platform Zoom, whose users include Silicon Valley (矽谷) companies, admitted that it had ''mistakenly'' transferred certain amounts of user data to China, attributing its ''mistake'' to the rocketing user number in February that had made it wrongly move data to two Chinese data centres. Its security was put under suspicion afterwards. Stephen Wong, head of Hong Kong's privacy watchdog, has zoomed in on the breach and recommended updating the platform to its latest version, setting a chatroom password and using ''disposable'' accounts to reduce the risk of losing all your data to a third party.

More patents, more talents?

CHINA dethroned the US in the area of patent (專利) document submission. Last year it lodged almost 59,000 with WIPO (世界知識產權組織), the UN agency responsible for global matters about intellectual property, beating its rival by more than a thousand. The latter had held the crown since 1978, when the global patent record began.

■Gear up

According to the passages on this page, circle the correct answers.

(1) An expert in ( Hong Kong / Taiwan / mainland China ) recommended that the two resident giant pandas be sent back to Sichuan.

(2) WIPO deals with matters about patents at ( regional / global / environmental ) level.

(3) Stephen Wong doesn't care about Zoom's data breach issues. ( True / False )

(Answers on next text)

■Glossary

mate (v) 交配

float (v) 建議考慮

watchdog (n) 監察機構

zoom in on (phr v) 特別關注

[Smarties' Power English 第277期]