【明報專訊】CAN you imagine how you will feel after dealing with a marathon press conference for over 10 hours? That will certainly wear you out! Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has had to deal with 300 journalists for over 14 hours, breaking the world record. The spotlight has been on whether he was blackmailed by Trump to investigate the dealings in Ukraine of Hunter Biden, former US Vice President Joe Biden's son.

Abuse of plastic bags

THE levy (徵費) scheme on plastic bags was implemented in Hong Kong ten years ago. Greeners Action, an environmental organisation, kept a record of how 6,112 flat-top bags (平口袋) had been used at 20 supermarkets from July to September. It is found that 27.1% of the bags were abused. Some people just took away the bags themselves. Others used the bag to carry non-exempted (非豁免) food. Moreover, there are no limits on how many bags one can take to carry exempted food like frozen chicken wings.

Controversial map

A CARTOON can hardly trigger controversy. It is not the case for Abominable (《長毛雪寶》), a new DreamWorks adventure movie at the cinema early this month. There is a scene showing a controversial map with a dashed line that matches China's claim in the South China Sea. That offended the Vietnamese authorities, who have ordered the movie be banned from being shown around the country. Director of the movie Jill Culton once said that the Chinese elements had been added by Pearl Studio, a joint venture by DreamWorks and Chinese investors. (photo.2)

■Gear up

Refer to p 1 and p 2 to answer the following questions.

(1) Pasi Silander thinks ( Finnish / Hong Kong / Finnish and Hong Kong ) schools should try to dismiss the class earlier.

(2) Volodymyr Zelensky is a friend of Joe Biden's. (True / False / Not given)

(3) Abominable shows that China has no claims in the South China Sea. ( True / False / Not given )

(Answers on next text)

■Glossary

marathon (adj) 馬拉松式的

wear sb out (phr v) 使某人疲倦

abuse (v) 濫用

trigger (v) 觸發

[Smarties' Power English 第258期]