Moscow is to ban sales of spirits and other strong alcohol at night and in the early hours of the morning in a bid to wean Russia off one of its biggest health scourges, reports said yesterday.
According to a decree signed by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, shops in the Russian capital will no longer be able to sell drinks containing more than 15 percent alcohol between 10pm and 10am.
This will prevent Muscovites from buying strong spirits like vodka and cognac late at night, but will not affect sales of beer and wine. It remains to be seen how the ban will be implemented.
The ban will come into force on Sept. 1, the RIA Novosti and Interfax news agencies said.
A previous ban had prevented the sale of spirits between 11pm and 8am in Moscow, but it contained a gigantic loophole allowing shops to sell alcohol 24 hours a day in agreement with the local authorities.
Russia earlier this summer implemented a zero tolerance ban on drunk driving passed by parliament after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russians could still not be trusted with drink.
It has also imposed a new minimum legal price for vodka in a bid to hinder the sale of cut-price black market moonshine blamed for the deaths of thousands of Russians every year.
Alcohol abuse kills some 500,000 Russians annually and greatly impacts male life expectancy, which is lower than in impoverished countries such as Bangladesh or Honduras, according to official figures.
“People are not able to look after their health. This needs to be learned,” Medvedev said in a television interview last year when he announced the drunk-driving ban.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS