The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Alex Ferguson’s wines sell for almost HK$30 million in Hong Kong Posted: 24 May 2014 04:22 AM PDT The wines being auctioned, which are part of Ferguson's collection, are worth an estimated £3 million and include many rare and fine wines, such as Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Burgundies, and Finest First Growth Bordeaux from Chateau Petrus and Chateau Lafite, ranging from 1986 to 2011 vintages. Today's sale at Christies Hong Kong saw around 90% of 257 lots sold for a total of almost HK$30 million, the auction house said. The firm's pre-sale estimate for the Hong Kong sale was between HK$26 million and HK$32 million. The top lot, a six-litre bottle of 1997 Domaine de la Romanee Conti, including a card signed "Best Wishes, Alex Ferguson" sold for HK$1,225,000, including buyer's premium, to a bidder in the room. "We were fortunate in the sense that we had the provenance of Alex Ferguson's name and more importantly, the right wines for the market," head of wine for Christie's David Elswood told AFP. All of the top ten sales at the auction of Ferguson's wines were for Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Elswood said, adding that it is one of the most sought after in the world at the moment. Six bottles of the same wine from 1999 were sold at HK$1.1 million and another lot of six bottles from 1995 were sold at HK$735,000, including the buyer's premium. "If you could pick out one wine that was in vogue and in fashion, it would be Domaine de la Romanee-Conti," Elswood said. The London portion of the auction will see 140 lots go on sale on June 5, and 85 lots will go on sale online from June 9 to 23. Ferguson retired last year after guiding Manchester United through its most successful period, winning two European Cups, 12 Premier League titles, five FA Cups, four League Cups, the UEFA Cup Winner's Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, the Inter-Continental Cup and the FIFA World Club Cup. The fiery Scot started collecting wine after a visit to France in 1991, and admitted he began the hobby as a distraction from managing one of the world's largest clubs. "You have to have outside interests to distract you from the intensity and the pressure you come under as a football manager," he explained in a Christie's video promoting the sale. Hong Kong, which abolished duties on wine imports in 2008, has become a gateway to the booming wine market in mainland China. In recent years, the city overtook New York to become the world's biggest wine auction hub. Other items to be sold during Christie's Hong Kong spring sales include a large Golconda diamond necklace, expected to fetch as much as HK$80 million and influential Chinese ink painter Xu Beihong's work "Eagle", forecast to sell for up to HK$20 million. – AFP, May 24, 2014 |
| World-first dialysis machine for infants is born Posted: 23 May 2014 06:13 PM PDT Until now, babies with kidney failure were treated with machines built for adults, with smaller filters and other imprecise adaptations that tend to withdraw too much or too little of the waste fluid building up in the body. "Incredible but true," said Claudio Ronco from the San Bortolo Hospital's renal research institute in Vicenza. "It's like using a tool for a car to fix a watch." Yet companies have been loath to invest in baby-targeted machines as they are not profitable enough, he added. "The number of neonates (infants) around the world that suffer from this disorder is very small and therefore there is no point for a company to invest in technology." So Ronco and colleagues launched a fundraising programme, hosting sports games and concerts and collecting some 300,000 euros (RM1.3 million) to build a prototype. This attracted help from two Italian manufacturers, and so the child-friendly machine dubbed Carpediem (Cardio-Renal Paediatric Dialysis Emergency Machine) was born. The first beneficiary, a girl with multiple organ failure weighing just 2.9 kilogrammes, was treated in August last year. "The baby was almost dead," Ronco told AFP. "This baby could not be treated with any other treatment. When the baby was discharged from hospital we really had the impression that we had done something very good." The girl underwent 25 days of dialysis and was sent home after 50 days with her organ function restored. Nine other babies have since been treated in Europe, of whom seven survived, said Ronco. This was an "incredible" percentage given the historical mortality rate of up to 90%, he explained. "This technology has the potential to revolutionise the treatment of infants with acute kidney injury," said a press statement from The Lancet medical journal, which published the study. It can be used on newborns and children up to 10 kilogrammes, can handle smaller volumes of fluid much more accurately, and allows the use of a much smaller catheter. About 18% of infants with low birthweight and about 20% of children admitted to intensive care are estimated to suffer from acute kidney injury, according to the statement. In a comment on the study, Benjamin Laskin of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Bethany Foster from Montreal's Children's Hospital said the girl's survival was "an outcome that would have been less likely just several years ago". "The smile of the baby when she came to visit me three days ago – that smile was worth 40 years of medicine," added Ronco. – AFP/Relaxnews, May 24, 2014. |
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