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Here is a little fashion tip, and it can help you save some money too.

In case you do not already know, give-away shopping bags, the reusable type, have become quite a fashion statement among the chic in some of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities from New York to Hong Kong.

Not all shopping bags can make the grade, of course. But the best-designed ones are obviously worth fighting for, as the stampede for a limited supply of designer shopping bags a few months ago in Hong Kong showed.

In New York, retailers ranging from upscale department stores, mid-price chains to fashion boutiques are engaged in heated competition to make the most durable, fashionable shopping bags, reported the New York Times. To retailers, the sudden popularity of shopping bags is a marketing opportunity as customers carry them around like walking billboards to the office, the beach, or restaurants.

Indeed, many young women are treating shopping bags as a second handbag. More and more men, too, can be seen using them to carry items that they otherwise would have stuffed into their jacket or trouser pockets.

Nobody is known to have done a serious study to explain the rise of the lowly shopping bag in the world of haute couture. But there are plenty of commentators and knowledgeable bloggers suggesting that the new breed of shopping bags, because of their reusability, have won a place in the hearts of many young, trendy and environmentally conscious city people.

In the past, most shopping bags, whether plastic or paper, were thin and equipped with crude handles. Few shoppers ever thought twice about throwing away these bags as soon as they got home. Toting a shopping bag around with one’s personal belongings inside was definitely not the cool thing to do.

Apparently, the common perception about shopping bags has changed a lot in the past few years along with growing public concern about the environment. As a gesture to preservation, more people began reusing shopping bags for as long as they could last. This change in habit obviously has not gone unnoticed by retailers.

Having bought a pair of shoes at a leading department store in Shanghai, I was pleasantly surprised by the apparent quality and durability of the well-designed shopping bag, emblazoned with the brand’s logo. It is made of a plastic-coated fabric with handles of the same material securely sewn onto both sides. I gave it to a friend who has been using it for grocery shopping for several weeks, and it is showing no signs of wear and tear.

Retailers in the United States have reportedly gone to even greater lengths in creating the ultimate shopping bag. Envisioning the shopping bag as “a work of modern art”, Saks Fifth Avenue, an up-market department store in Manhattan, hired a renowned graphic artist to create it, reported the New York Times.

Another New York retailer is said to have assigned a team of sales executives and designers on a spare no expense basis to redesign its shopping bags. The team took six months to produce the new design that cost more than twice the industrial average to produce.

Despite the higher costs, shopping bags have remained free of charge. All smart retailers can see that penny-pinching on shopping bags is bad business considering the huge benefits from free advertising.

I am sure there will be people willing to spend thousands of yuan for one of those leather trimmed designer tote bags. For most of us, a durable shopping bag will do just fine. Let us hope the popularity of shopping bag is not just another fad. It is a fashion trend we should all embrace.

The South-East Asian Conference on the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) kicked off in Nepali capital Kathmandu on Tuesday.

Nearly 50 people working in the government and non-government sector in 11 countries including Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Philippines and France are taking part in the conference held for the first time in Nepal.

The conference organized by the Health and Population Ministry and Primary Health Center jointly is expected to review the implementation condition of the convention, discuss the challenges seen during its implementation and prepare the future strategy as well.

Despite Nepal had signed the FCTC ratification in December 2003,the bill for its approval has not been passed yet following the ongoing House obstruction.

Speaking at the inaugural session of the conference, secretaries at the ministry Sudha Sharma and Pravin Mishra informed that Nepal has already prepared the bill on tobacco control and presented it to the cabinet for the approval.

Center director Shanta Lal Mulmi, WHO Nepal representative Alexander and Framework Convention Alliance Shoba Jon were also among those speaking in the session.

Thailand’s weekly cabinet meeting Tuesday agreed to extend relief measures to help reduce the public’ s cost of living, Thai News Agency reported.

The measures include free electricity for a household using up to 90 units a month and free tap water for a user of no more than 20 units a month.

However, an amount of the free-use-household water is lowered from 30 to 20 units per month.

The extended-relief scheme will start from January and after three months the government will review the steps again.

Hong Kong share prices gave up early gains to end a Monday morning session little changed on persistent worries over the slowing US economy and China’s austerity measures, dealers said.

“The lack of direction in the market stems from uncertainties in the global markets, particularly the US, as the subprime mortgage nightmare continues,” said Peter Lai, investment manager at DBS Vickers.

The Hang Seng index ended down 8.34 points or 0.03 percent at 26,858.67, off a low of 26,582.68 and a high of 27,142.88.

Wall Street fell Friday as investors fretted over announcements to be made this week by financial institutions like Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, which had been struggling against losses from unpaid housing mortgages.

Dealers said also weighing on the market was speculation that China may continue raising its interest rates and the reserve requirement for bank deposits to cool its economy and bring down inflation.

Surging consumer prices in China didn’t show a slowdown sign, with the consumer price index (CPI) hitting a new high of 7.1 percent in January, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday.

The January’s figure was the highest monthly level since 1997. CPI, the main gauge of inflation, once increased by 7.0 percent in December of 1996 and 6.9 percent last November.

The figure was as most market analysts expected but slightly lower than China’s central bank forecasts. The Bank of China forecast the CPI for January would jump 7.5 percent or higher.

“The CPI was mainly driven up by factors including the severe snow disaster that ravaged more than half of the country’s areas and food price hikes during the Spring Festival,” said Yao Jingyuan, the chief economist of the NBS.

The bureau said food prices ballooned 18.2 percent in January from a year earlier, grain prices rose 5.7 percent and cooking oil prices increased by 37.1 percent.

Pork prices, which had been blamed as the major factor driving up CPI figures throughout the later half of last year, soared 58.8percent in January, the bureau said.

Non-food prices, however, rose only 1.5 percent, it said.

The CPI rose 6.8 percent in urban cities, compared with 7.7 percent in rural areas.

According to a report released by the Lehman Brothers, the snow disaster would likely push up China’s CPI in the near future and cool down the country’s economy.

French favorites Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder won the ice dancing gold and Canada’s Jeffrey Buttle took a surprise lead in the men’s event at the world championships in Goteborg, Sweden, on Friday.

Delobel and Schoenfelder turned in a romantic performance to The Piano soundtrack by Michael Nyman, finishing well ahead of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada in the three-leg event.

The French pair triumphed overall even though Four Continents champions Virtue and Moir produced the evening’s highest score in the free dance.

“We really gave our best,” said Delobel. “We were under a lot of pressure so it was not easy but I think we performed well. We are happy now.”

“It was a very emotional performance and later we felt a lot of stress waiting for the result.”

Virtue and Moir trailed in third place going into the final leg but produced a pitch-perfect performance to the soundtrack of the musical Umbrellas of Cherbourg to clinch the silver.

“We are just thrilled, we couldn’t be more excited,” said Virtue, who has skated with Moir for 11 years. “It has been a great journey. We are so fortunate to have each other.”

Russians Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski took bronze with a cool performance to Rimsky Korsakov’s Night on Bald Mountain.

In a confident performance to Astor Piazzolla’s Adios Nonino, Buttle was the surprise winner of the men’s short program to lead ahead of yesterday’s final.

While French title holder Brian Joubert and several other favorites made crucial mistakes, Buttle gave a faultless performance and scored the highest technical mark to end on 82.10 points.

That was well ahead of American Johnny Weir, who was second on 80.79 points, with Four Continents champion Daisuke Takahashi of Japan in third on 80.40 points.

“I felt very comfortable today on the ice,” said Buttle, who was runner-up to Takahashi at last month’s Four Continents championships held for non-European countries.

Former twice world champion Stephane Lambiel of Switzerland was not at his best, finishing fifth behind European champion Czech Tomas Verner.

Oprah might want to nail down her furniture. Tom Cruise is scheduled to return to “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” nearly three years after a couch-jumping appearance that spawned countless YouTube parodies and late-night jokes.

The two-part show will coincide with the 25th anniversary of Cruise’s booty-shaking turn in the film “Risky Business.” Friends and colleagues will surprise Cruise with taped messages honoring his work in movies, according to a statement Thursday from Harpo Productions.

Winfrey will interview Cruise from his home in Telluride, Colo., for the first show on May 2, which will cover his “family, his life and the future,” Harpo said. Then on May 5, Cruise will appear in Winfrey’s Chicago studio.

Cruise became the butt of jokes after a May 2005 appearance on Winfrey’s show, where he repeatedly jumped on the talk-show host’s couch, saying his love for then-new girlfriend Katie Holmes was “beyond cool.”

Cruise and Holmes became parents in April 2006 with the birth of their daughter, Suri, and married in Italy in November 2006.

The Olympic flame is to pass through northwest China’s Qinghai Province from Sunday to Tuesday, covering the International Olympic Day on June 23, organizers announced Wednesday in the provincial capital Xining.

The Olympic flame is scheduled to arrive in Geermu City by flight from Tibet Autonomous Region, said Feng Jianping, head of Qinghai Sports Bureau in a press conference.

Geermu, China’s salt lake city, is the first stop of the three-day Qinghai leg starting on Sunday. It is a rising industrial city on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, developing recycling economy in resourceful Qaidam Basin.

The second stop is the Qinghai Lake, the largest salt water lake in China.

The last stop is Xining, which is called “Summer Resort Capital of China” for its cool summer, said Feng.

Located on the northeast part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Qinghai is hometown of Fuwa Yingying, a Beijing Olympic mascot embodying the Tibetan antelope in the province’s Hol Xil National Natural Reserve.

The Kunlun jade, which is used for making Beijing Olympic medals, or “Gold Inlaid with Jade”, are also produced from the province’s Kunlun Mountain.

Carlos Brito, chief executive of brewer InBev SA, says he doesn’t care for perks — and neither should the people who work for him.

“I don’t want the company to give me free beer; I can buy my own beer,” he told Stanford MBA students earlier this year.

Brito, who will be leading Anheuser-Busch after the company agreed to InBev’s $52 billion takeover offer, has been described as “an American-style” manager who is fiercely private and admits himself that he did not always get “the people thing,” when he started off in sales.

Anheuser-Busch is a perked-up company with corporate jets for executives and free beer for the workers — as well as generous donations to local communities and politicians. Similar employee extras at Belgium’s Interbrew vanished when it merged with Brito’s Brazil-based AmBev in 2004.

“His reputation precedes him as a no-frills, no-thrills severe cost-cutter,” says Eric Shepard, editor of beer industry newsletter Beer Marketer’s Insights.

Brito rarely grants interviews and is reticent with the press, sticking to a few standard lines when he must face the camera for InBev’s annual results or shareholders’ meetings. The company refused to even confirm whether he was married with four children, saying “We don’t give details on his private life.”

Alberto Cerqueira Lima, a former colleague of Brito’s at Brazilian brewer Brahma and now head of a Massachusetts-based market research firm, says “if he could, he would remain anonymous,” describing Brito as a “workaholic and a methodical and pragmatic executive.”

He showed himself to be a careful businessman who kept his cool during a difficult monthlong courtship of Anheuser-Busch when both companies threatened to start a hostile battle.

“He says the right things,” says Shepard. “He knew the kind of backlash that he was going to get and I don’t think he ever betrayed any sort of hostility even as they were making hostile moves.”

“Publicly, he maintained that he wanted a friendly combination and ultimately that’s what he got,” he said.

The new company will create the world’s largest beer company, turning out major brands such as Budweiser and Stella Artois. InBev’s focus on carving costs made it the world’s most profitable brewer, wringing profit from stagnant markets and winning admiration from shareholders and the rest of the industry — but angering workers.

“It’s quite an American style compared to the Western European standard,” said Kris Kippers, an analyst at Belgian investment firm Petercam. “He’s really an American-style manager; those who deliver, who do good work, are rewarded.”

Born in 1960, Brito studied mechanical engineering in Rio de Janeiro and applied to several U.S. universities for a master’s in business administration. He was accepted by several — but could not pay his way.

A family friend put him in touch with Brazilian investment banker and billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, who told Brito he would pay for his graduate studies at Stanford.

“All he wanted in return were periodic reports and clippings from the United States to keep him up to date with what was going on there,” said Cerqueira Lima. “Brito insisted on knowing how he would pay Lemann back and Lemann said, ‘I do not want to be paid back. One day you will do for others what I am doing for you.’”

Lemann put Brito to work at Brahma when he bought it in 1989, later merging it with another beer company, Antarctica, to form AmBev.

Brito acknowledges that he didn’t always get “the people thing,” when he started off in sales, seeing that as the only truly important part of a business.

He first saw a promotion from head of sales to head of operations — in charge of workers and manufacturing — as a step down. But he says he surprised himself by enjoying managing people and coming to understand how they were at the heart of the business.

Brito had been head of InBev’s North American business for just over a year when he became CEO in August 2005, as the Brazilian management team firmly took the reins of the company and rolled out zero-based budgeting that forces managers to justify every expense.

He doesn’t have his own personal assistant or company car and shares a desk with top finance, marketing and human resources executives in an open office that he says allows dozens of two-minute meetings to discuss the business throughout the day. Hiding behind an office door is for the mediocre, he claims.

Brito admits that InBev’s Spartan style can make it difficult to attract experienced staff because few enjoy its “more risk, more reward-type environment.”

“It is very hard to find people that will be excited about the way we are trying to build the business, but once you find them they get really connected to the company, they cannot work anywhere else because they love this kind of openness and candor,” he told the Stanford students.

InBev prefers to hire young graduates and promote from within on merit instead of seniority. Brito says he believes it is important to focus on the 250 people — out of 85,000 workers — who make a difference to the company.

“These people, they are managed in a different way, because we want to make sure they are excited, they’re not going to leave the company,” he said at Stanford. “We’ve got to make sure these people are engaged and getting everything they have to grow our business.”

Talented people want to work for successful companies that are growing and generating new career opportunities, he says: “You want to build something that’s better than you.”

The Beijing Olympics presented to the world a charming and fine image of China and a Beijing largely unknown to Westerners through TV coverage of the Games, said the French newspaper “La Tribune” on Friday.

The splendid opening ceremony directed by well-known Chinese movie director Zhang Yimou gave the Games a good start. Live TV coverage of the life in Beijing showed an image unfamiliar to Western audience, with lots of skyscrapers, magnificent sports facilities and well-organized Games, which has won the appreciation of all athletes, the paper said in an article.

The paper noted that the Chinese government’s measures to reduce emission and improve air quality worked well. Drizzles from time to time brought humid and cool air, making the weather more comfortable.

Beijing had blue skies for more than half of the days during the Games, and the local residents enjoyed the pleasant ever summer in their memories, the paper added.

Beijing has put huge investment into the construction of sports venues and infrastructure, including subway, light rail transit and express way system. All these investments paid off in easing traffic and providing convenient public transport, the paper said.

The paper hailed the Beijing Olympics as the most expected Games over the last decades, and said that Beijing has happily fulfilled people’s expectations.