BEIJING – What do you get when you combine two popular foods from China and Italy? The answer is a”baozza”.

The idea to take a Chinese steamed bun – known as a baozi – and stuff it with cheese, tomato and other pizza toppings, came to American consultant Alex Cree during a trip with clients in southern China.

“We were talking about the idea of maybe combining bao with more traditional American flavours like burger and different things and somebody said ‘pizza baozi’,” Cree said. “I said ‘bao-zza!’ and the more I thought about it, the more I thought there might be something to this,” he told Reuters Television.

Cree experimented with recipes when he returned to the United States. He later quit his job and moved to China in 2016 to set up shop in the basement of a Beijing shopping mall.

Read also: American marries bao and pizza to get the best of both worlds

Baozza come in four flavours – Margherita, Meat Lover, BBQ Chicken, and Hawaiian Jalapeno. The price for two buns is 20 yuan (S$4.05).

Owen Zheng, who sampled a baozza during a recent publicity event in the Chinese capital, said he liked the combination of spices and chewy cheese. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a baozi like this and I think it’s not bad,” he said.

Vendors of traditional steamed buns – filled with pork and onions, fried liver or vegetables – were not convinced.

“I don’t think it’s going to become very popular in China,” said baozi shop owner Zhan Mimi.

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KATHMANDU – Nepal is urging climbers on Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, to help remove garbage from a camp abandoned two years ago after an earthquake triggered avalanches killing 18 people, as officials prepare to handle a rush of climbers.

Tourism and mountain climbing are the main sources of income for the Himalayan nation and make up 4 per cent of its economy. Climbing is recovering from a series of earthquakes in 2015 that killed a total of 9,000 people.

Ten huge canvas bags each capable of holding 80 kg (176 lbs) of trash are to be placed at the ruined site of Camp Two on Mount Everest for climbers to deposit garbage they have retrieved, said Tourism Department official Durga Dutta Dhakal. “This way we hope to bring down the trash without any extra cost, using helicopters that return empty after dumping climbing ropes at the high camp,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.

The helicopters operate during the climbing season that typically runs from March to May to dump climbing ropes.

Sherpas would be paid to pick up the trash, said veteran climber Russell Brice, a New Zealander who runs the Himalayan Experience guiding company. “We will pay US$2 (S$2.79) for each kilo of trash the sherpas bring down,” Brice said.

Mountaineers have removed more than 16 tonnes of trash from Everest in the past, but there are no estimates of how much still litters the mountain.

Camp Two, located at 6,400 metres (21,000 feet) above sea level above the treacherous Khumbu Icefall known for crevasses and avalanches, is a major camping site for climbers of Mount Everest and Lhotse, the world’s fourth highest peak.

More than 600 people scaled the 8,850-metre (29,035-foot) Everest summit last year from the Nepali and Chinese sides.

Hiking officials expect the number to swell this season as many mountaineers, whose $11,000 per-person permits received two-year extensions after the quake, are expected to return.

A group of hiking companies that sponsor climbers said it was trying to boost coordination between teams at high camps to avoid long queues of climbers forming in the mountain’s “Death Zone”. “This will reduce crowding, minimise risks and improve safety,” Dambar Parajuli, chief of the Expedition Operators’ Association, told Reuters.

NAIROBI – The price of ivory has fallen by nearly two-thirds in the last three years, according to research conducted in China and published on Wednesday by the conservation group Save the Elephants.

At its peak in 2014 wholesale prices for raw ivory stood at US$2,100 (S$2.927) per kilogramme at Chinese markets, but by 2017 the price had fallen to $730 per kilogramme, according to the report by two ivory trade experts, Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin.

“Findings from 2015 and 2016 in China have shown that the legal ivory trade especially has been severely diminished,” Vigne said in a statement.

Chinese demand has driven a decade-long spike in elephant poaching in Africa, where the population has fallen by 110,000 over the last 10 years to just 415,000, according to a recent continental survey.

Vigne said both the amount of ivory for sale as well as prices had fallen at 130 licensed outlets in China, reflecting a drop in demand in the world’s biggest ivory market.

Read also: Hong Kong convicts two for ivory on radiocarbon dating

The researchers said China’s economic slowdown, plus a crackdown on corruption which sharply reduced the giving of ivory trinkets as gifts to officials, had also crimped demand.

At the end of this month China’s 34 remaining licensed ivory-carving factories will be closed, after a recent government order putting an end to the legal trade.

But it remains unclear how the closing of the legal market will affect the illegal trade in elephant ivory.

International trade in ivory was banned in 1989, yet poaching continued and has accelerated in recent years, feeding a black market controlled by criminal gangs.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Save the Elephant’s founder, said it was a critical but hopeful moment for the future of elephants.

“With the end of the legal ivory trade in China, the survival chances for elephants have distinctly improved,” Douglas-Hamilton said.

“There is still a long way to go to end the excessive killing of elephants for ivory, but there is now greater hope for the species.”

BEIJING – German automakers Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen will recall nearly one million vehicles in China, according to the country’s quality regulator.

Mercedes Benz will recall nearly 400,000 vehicles of different models produced between May 2015 and February 2017 due to concerns that parts of the ignition circuitry could overheat under some extreme conditions, according to a statement posted on the website of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (ASDIQ) late Tuesday.

In a separate statement it said Volkswagen would also recall more than 572,000 vehicles in China to address potential problems arising from leaks in the panoramic sunroof.

Read also: Volkswagen pleads guilty to US criminal charges, pays US$4.3 bn in ‘dieselgate’

It came after a recall announced earlier this month affecting nearly 680,000 of VW’s premium Audi cars in China over defects in coolant pumps that could lead to engine fires.

In January, Volkswagen recalled more than 342,000 cars in the US for the same problem.

VW’s business has been under the microscope since 2015, when it was revealed the company had installed software on 11 million cars that allowed them to cheat emissions tests.

The creepy child-like figure that was spotted inside an Indonesian forest is back. This time, it was caught scurrying around a carpark at an unnamed location.

In the video, posted on the Wujud (Paranormal Team) Facebook page, the mysterious figure can be seen crawling under a white car and running for cover between cars.

The figure, which bears a similar resemblance to Gollum from Lord of the Rings, appears to be bald and naked.

The video has been viewed more than 14,000 times since it was posted on Saturday (Mar 25).

The humanoid figure first appeared in a video uploaded by YouTube account Fredography one week ago (Mar 22). The video went viral and has since garnered more than 4 million views as of this afternoon (Mar 29).

In the video, a group of motor trail enthusiasts were riding inside a local forest in Indonesia’s western-most province when the lead rider suddenly fell off his bike due to a figure on the trail ahead.

Some riders chased the figure, but it ran into the shrubs and disappeared.

According to The Jakarta Post, many people left comments on the video, sharing their theories about the mysterious figure.

Some suspected the figure to be a member of the Mante tribe, an Aceh urban legend about the origins of modern-day Aceh people. However, the existence of the tribe has yet to be proven.

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HONG KONG – A Hong Kong court has convicted two men for illegal possession of ivory chopsticks after radiocarbon dating proved it was produced after 1990 and therefore unlawful, local media reported.

Hong Kong, a key hub for the ivory trade and manufacturing, announced plans last year to phase out sales completely by 2021.

Government officials bought the pair of ivory chopsticks from a crafts shop during an operation last August in the city’s Sheung Wan district, which is dotted with curio and antique vendors.

Radiocarbon dating showed the ivory was obtained after 1990, according to an earlier government press release.

The pair were Tuesday handed fines of US$770(S$1,073) and US$1,000 respectively.

Read also: China watches Hong Kong vote as protests threatened

“It’s the first time the Hong Kong government has ever used radiocarbon analysis to determine the age of ivory – that’s a total game changer in the market,” WildAid wildlife campaigner Alex Hofford told AFP.

While environmental groups welcomed the use of forensic evidence, they condemned the light penalty, compared with the maximum punishment of a US$640,000 fine and two years in jail.

Domestic trade in ivory imported legally into Hong Kong before 1990 is legal with a government licence.

“Today’s sentencing is a strong reminder that penalties in Hong Kong need to increase to reflect better the gravity of wildlife crime and be an effective deterrent to prevent illegal ivory traders from carrying out similar acts in future,” said Yannick Kuehl of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC in a statement.

Read also: Hong Kong protest leaders say they face criminal charges after new leader chosen

The Chinese government announced plans late last year to ban all ivory trade and processing by the end of 2017 in a move hailed by conservationists.

Critics have argued Hong Kong’s five-year timetable to outlaw sales was too slow and would attract ivory laundering to the city as mainland China moves forward with the ban.

Conservationists estimate that more than 20,000 elephants were killed for their ivory in 2015, with similar tolls in previous years.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which took effect in 1975, banned the ivory trade in 1989.