Vietnamese airliner hosts mid-air ‘Hawaiian Dance Performance’
A pre-prepared meal and a slightly dated movie is the best most aeroplane passengers can hope for, but a Vietnamese carrier has taken its entertainment offering to a stratospheric level by serving up a mid-air beauty pageant. None of the male passengers appeared to be dashing for the emergency exits when a string of women [...]
Japan mulls international court for S. Korea row
TOKYO, Aug 11 (AFP) Japan could ask the International Court of Justice to settle a bitter row with South Korea over a disputed island group, Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said Saturday. It comes a day after South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak made a surprise visit to the islands, known as Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo in [...]
Taiwan couple in same-sex Buddhist wedding
TAOYUAN, Taiwan, Aug 11 (AFP) Two women tied the knot today in Taiwan’s first same-sex Buddhist wedding, a move rights groups hope will help make the island become the first place in Asia to legalise gay marriage. Fish Huang and her partner You Ya-ting, both wearing traditional white bridal gowns, said “I do” in front [...]
Shed the gloom over Indo-US ties
Too many pundits in Delhi are writing premature obituaries for the Indo-US relationship. Though the highs of the nuclear deal and the rhetorical extravagance of the Bush years may have subsided, the basic forward thrust of the relationship is not in dispute, and the positive momentum is strongly supported by the influential Indian-American community in [...]
Fashion tycoon overtakes Warren Buffett on rich list
Fashion tycoon Amancio Ortega, owner of clothing chain Zara, has toppled Warren Buffett from his place as the world’s third richest man, with a fortune of £30billion.The 76-year-old Spaniard bumped the Oracle of Omaha off the podium after shares in his retail giant Inditex gained 3.8 per cent yesterday to close at a record high, [...]
Dewani did plot his wife’s murder
A hitman has made fresh claims that honeymooner Anni Dewani’s murder was ordered by her husband. Mziwamadoda Qwabe said the killing in his native South Africa was designed to appear like ‘a random criminal act’. He claimed he was told that businessman Shrien Dewani ‘wanted the wife killed’ and that it had to look like [...]
Restaurant insiders’ reveal their dirty secrets
Restaurant insiders have revealed what really goes on behind customers’ backs.Tricks such as adding extra sugar to kids’ meals so children enjoy them more, and that a daily ‘special’ is often leftover ingredients that need to be used up, were revealed in the list of industry secrets compiled for Good Morning America by Reader’s Digest. [...]
Newsweek slammed for their ‘shocking’ cover
In what is fast becoming Newsweek editor Tina Brown’s signature style, the magazine’s latest cover is intended to shock…and send issues flying off the shelves. For the magazine’s Foodie Awards issue, which lists the 101 best places to eat in the world, the cover shows two spears of asparagus dangling suggestively above a woman’s open [...]
Chinese official’s wife admits poisoning UK businessman
British businessman Neil Heywood was murdered by one of the most powerful women in China after he made a threatening demand for £13million from her playboy son, a court heard yesterday.Gu Kailai, who was said to be having an affair with the British businessman, lured him to a hotel room where she got him drunk [...]
The future of air travel
Nasa has successfully demonstrated a working prototype of the ‘plane of the future’ – although it may be a step back for travellers who love a window seat.The British-built plane is a radical re-design of the traditional ‘fixed-wing’ plane shape which has seen us through 50 years of passenger air-travel, with NASA and Boeing saying [...]
Life on Mars (With a little help from Photoshop)
There was only one thing inevitable about Nasa’s mission to Mars – and it was that the internet would find ways to gently mock it. Pranksters from across the world – with a little help from Photoshop – took the first images beamed back by the Curiosity Rover following its successful landing yesterday, and imagined the [...]
The Barack Obama doctrine’s first term
ASPEN – Public-opinion polls in the United States indicate a close presidential election in November. While President Barack Obama outpolls the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, on foreign policy, slow economic growth and high unemployment – issues that are far more salient in US elections – favour Romney. And, even on foreign policy, Obama’s critics complain [...]
Assad’s merciless assault risks wiping out both his country’s future – and its past
With the Syrian government now flaunting its total control over Damascus – the “final battle” trumpeted by the rebels having been, for the moment, won by their antagonists – Damascus may at least be spared the cultural destruction visited upon much of the rest of Syria. Krak des Chevaliers has been shelled after rebels sought [...]
