Staying with the UK for the moment, Boris Johnson has come under fresh pressure over the Jimmy Savile smear he aimed at Keir Starmer after the Labour leader had to be rescued by police from a mob of anti-vaxxers near parliament. Starmer faced baseless allegations of “protecting paedophiles” and chants about the sex offender from protesters before being bundled into a police car for protection, the Press Association reported. Johnson tweeted that the “behaviour directed” at the Labour leader was “absolutely disgraceful” but did not address the nature of the…
Day: February 7, 2022
The Day in Olympic Falls: Snow, Ice, Tracks and Hills
They fell on the snow and they fell on the ice. They fell on flat tracks and steep hills. They fell on their backs and their hips and, most jarringly, at least one fell going as fast as she could. The Olympics have long been about successes and reaching higher than anyone else. But getting to those heights sometimes means living on the edge. Even the best athletes at the Beijing Games understand that their gold medal dreams can end in an instant. Mikaela Shiffrin found that out again on…
Finland’s China Shift
Advertisement When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Helsinki on the occasion of Finland’s 100th year of independence in 2017, the jubilant mood was reflected on the faces of local and Chinese guests. Xi lauded the “enduring friendship” between Finland and China, which he said set an “example for peaceful co-existence and friendly exchanges between two countries.” The visit culminated in the establishment of “a future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership“ between the two states, and was promptly followed – not coincidentally – by the delivery of two pandas to the Ähtäri Zoo.…
Do Airbags Make Things Too Easy for Aerial Snowboarders and Skiiers?
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — In the Olympic-level snowboarding and freestyle skiing world, there is an innocuous-sounding compound word that almost always evokes a visceral reaction — a deep sigh, a shaking of the head, a knowing nod. Airbags. Nothing has revolutionized the halfpipe, slopestyle and big air competitions quite like giant airbags. And nothing has so divided devotees of the events, who see airbags either as useful training tools or a misguided shortcut to success, even cheating. “Airbags have become like the performance-enhancing drug for freestyle skiing and snowboarding over the…
Original Fight Club ending restored in China after backlash
The Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video has restored the original ending to the film Fight Club after it amended the Chinese edition to tell viewers police had “rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals”, prompting a widespread backlash. The wholesale reversal of the anti-capitalist, anarchist denouement to the 1999 hit film, which stars Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter, made international headlines last month. In the edited version, Edward Norton’s character, the narrator, still kills off his imaginary alter ego Tyler Durden, but a subsequent…