UNITED KINGDOM
Bollywood seen liberalizing
Actress Vaani Kapoor said Bollywood has become more liberal about intimacy on screen ahead of the release of her new film Befikre (Carefree), a contemporary romantic comedy with passionate kissing scenes. The movie, set in Paris and co-starring Ranveer Singh, also references sex and drinking, subjects normally absent from the traditional, conservative song-and-dance romances for which Bollywood is famed. “There’s a change in society,” Kapoor said during a promotional event in London on Monday for the film. “I feel they are evolving and with them you obviously see the cinema evolving and the people who are making it evolving and people accepting it and being more liberal and lenient towards it,” she said. Befikre, which has been approved by India’s Central Board of Film Certification, is to be released in cinemas worldwide on Dec. 9.
AUSTRALIA
Police seize 500kg of MDMA
A police operation has seized more than 500kg of the drug MDMA in Sydney worth A$60 million (US$44.34 million) and arrested two Chinese, officials said yesterday. The men, aged 38 and 34, appeared in a Sydney court on Monday on drug importation charges, a police statement said. They were denied bail and face potential life prison sentences if convicted. The drug arrived in Sydney last month in a shipment of aluminum rollers. Australian Border Force officers examined the consignment and detected a crystalline substance concealed within the rollers. Police made a controlled delivery of the rollers to a Sydney warehouse last week and the men were arrested on Sunday.
CHINA
Double entendre and fries
Authorities are investigating a Shanghai-based fried chicken chain for possible “violations of social order” over its sexually suggestive name — “Call a Chick” — and menu items, the Shanghai Daily reported yesterday. “Chick,” or “chicken,” is slang for prostitute in Chinese. The newspaper said the restaurant offered menu items that included “virgin chick” (spring chicken) and “chick’s sex partner” (beverages), among others. It also ran a suggestive promotion slogan titled “Satisfying all your expectations over chicks.” The newspaper said Call a Chick first came under fire in the western province of Sichuan when a woman complained to the media after her eight-year-old son kept asking her its meaning. The Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau said it had launched an investigation, the newspaper said. “The content involved could violate social order,” it quoted Li Hua (李華), deputy director of the advertisement department of the bureau, as saying. Laws ban advertisements that undermine public order or violate ethical standards. Offenders can face fines of up to 1 million yuan (US$145,127) and have their business license revoked, the Shanghai Daily said.
CHINA
Insulting executive fired
A top executive at German automaker Daimler has lost his job after being accused of yelling insults about local people and using pepper spray in a dispute over a parking spot. The company’s Chinese truck and bus division chief executive officer Rainer Gaertner was accused of starting an argument in an upscale Beijing neighborhood last week. A post that circulated on social media alleged that Gaertner said all Chinese were “bastards,” then used pepper spray to push back onlookers confronting him.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
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