PeterRS

I think a lot of people do not use their sense of smell very acutely. I recall a flight from Amsterdam to Hong Kong in economy class. Until the doors were about closed, I thought the seat next to me would be empty. Then a tall Dutch guy entered and sat in it. Unfortunately he then took off his shoes. I cannot tell you how awful was the smell emanating from those shoes and his socks. Mabe I should have said something, but I endured that flight and hated almost every minute of it. One reason I enjoy being with Chinese from the southern regions of the country is the rather sweet skin smell which comes from a diet heavy on rice. This is not so prominent in the northern Provinces where rice is not as common in the diet. Oddly I do not get that with Japanese and so there must be some other food helping produce that smell. On the other hand, Japanese rice is very different from Chinese grown rice. Having lived in Hong Kong for 20 years I became very accustomed to that.

Boeing was no doubt thrilled that it would get the contract to build the replacement for the US President's Air Force 1 747-200 aircraft. Well, actually, it's two aircraft, one the mirror image of the other. The new ones will be modified versions of the last of the 747 line - the 800 series with the additional extension to the upper deck. Normally with military projects, the Air Force would be charged on a cost basis plus an agreed profit margin. Thanks to Donald Trump's intervention (I suppose we can at least thank him for one positive decision), he objected to the extimated cost of $4 billion per plane. As a result Boeing agreed to reduce the price to that from the Government Accountability Office of $3.2 billion. Now the company is ruing its obeissance to the President-elect. Cost overruns mount year after year. This year $482 million was added to the loss, bringing the total to more than $2 billion. As Boeing's CEO Dave Calhoun stated last year, "A very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken." Boeing is still reporting losses on its commercial businesses - in all but two quarters since early 2019. Last week, it was another $1.1 billion, worse than that predicted by analysts. It still pins its short-term hopes on the 737 Max and the 787 with the much-hyped 777X still further delayed. With design started in 2011, Lufthansa became the first alrline to place an order for the 777X: for 34 of the aircraft. By 2019 it had reduced its commitment to just 6 aircraft. Commerical introduction was originally planned for 2019. That is now not expected until 2025 at the earliest. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/business/air-force-one-boeing-loss/index.html?dicbo=v2-ZNebZ1y&iid=ob_mobile_article_footer_expansion

Speculation totally dismissed by virtually every expert knowledgeable about events in Beijing. As @reader suggests, it was a flimsy, unbelievable excuse covering up something a good deal more sinister.

As the economic woes of China's property giants Country Garden and Evergrande continue to get worse, Xi Jinping and his cronies will surely start to feel much more heat from apartment owners who paid up front and now have nothing, contractors who delivered materials and have never been paid and local authorities which had banked on both land sales and property sales' income seeing bankruptcy at their doors. Now another potentially more dangerous event has made his rule more complicated. On the surface, it's a simple affair - the death of former premier Li Keqiang of a sudden heart attack. Li was a reformer and much loved throughout the country during his 10-year premiership. Xi will no doubt be thinking back to 1989 and the death of another popular senior party figure and reformer, Hu Yaobang. Hu had risen to the post of General Secretary of the Party. In 1987 he was forced to resign by hard-liners for siding with student protests which had arisen countrywide. Yet with Deng Xiao-ping as his protector, he remained a member of the ruling Politburo. In Hu's place Deng placed another reformer, Zhao Ziyang. The student protests were quelled - for a time. Hu died on 15 April 1989, like Li Keqiang of a heart attack. He was 73. Li was even younger at 68. So why should this be a worry to President Xi? Allegedly with his last words Hu had asked that he be buried simply without fuss, in his hometown in Jiangxi Province. Following his death there was a small scale demonstration urging the government to reconsider his legacy. It was virtually nothing in the wider scheme of things in that country. Yet a week later on the day of Hu's official funeral in the Great Hall of the People, word had spread and around 100,000 students marched in Tiananmen Square outside. They came to petition the government and handed a letter addressed to the hard-line Prime Minister Li Peng. The letter had no effect. The protests in Beijing grew and then started in other parts of the country. What began as mourning for a popular leader soon morphed into grievances about student accommodations, serious inflation and increasing corruption The leadership was shaken and uncertain how to react. As the numbers in the Square continued to increase, on May 19 Zhao Ziyang himself came into the Square and using a megaphone begged the students to disperse. He knew what the Politburo was planning and he knew he was powerless to stop it. During part of that visit he was seen to be in tears. His address to the students was later smuggled out of China. His speech included the following excerpts - "Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here is not to ask for your forgiveness . . . You are still young, we are old, you must live healthy, and see the day when China accomplishes the Four Modernizations. Unlike you, we are already old, and do not matter . . . We were also young once, we protested, laid our bodies on the rail tracks; we never thought about what will happen in the future back then. Finally, I beg the students, once again, to think about the future calmly. There are many things that can be solved." Zhao bowed and then walked off. Most of the students applauded and many themselves were in tears. But they did not heed his warning. They were unaware that that very day Zhao had been stripped of all his posts. Within days, the Tiananmen massacre - or 'incident" as the Chinese leadership continues to call it - occurred. Zhao was put under house arrest and never appeared again in public before his death in 2005. Fearing another outburst of protests, Zhao's funeral was held among the tightest security. Now comes Li's death. Already socal media has been awash with tributes. There have been public displays of grief, particularly in Li's home Province of Anhui. But today's censors are far more savvy than in 1989. Instructions have been given to ensure that mention of Li makes no mention of his advocacy of political or economic reform. The media has been instructed to stick to the party line when eulogising Li. Public mourning has been discouraged. I guess there is not much else Xi can do, given that the ideas of reformer Li who was appointed at the same Party Conference as ultra conservative Xi were quickly replaced as Xi concentrated all power in his own hands. It is tempting to wonder what might have happened had Li become President rather than Xi. I suspect China would today be quite a different country. But we will never know. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/china-seeks-to-stifle-public-grief-for-former-premier-li-keqiang

So very sad. But again, it was surely was your friend's responsibility - although that is never easy to admit. I do not know the limits of his medical insurance but surely one of the essential aspects of any insurance policy is that you insure yourself for lengthy treatment of some grim illnesses. Your friend's policy may have reached its limits in Thailand. Surely it would have done so much earlier had he been seeking treatment in many European countries.

I do it just to keep myself clean and feeling clean, as well as not to give off any farang odours in parts of the world where farang are less common. Apart from odours expelled during excessive sweating, we all tend to smell of what we have generally eaten.

Apologies, should have mentioned the Basilica is in Arezzo. And I was not nearly as interested in world affairs in those days!

There is just so much to see south of Florence - stunning scenery and the fascinating towns of San Gimignano, Montalcino, Siena, Pienza, Montepulciano and, if time permits, also a couple of hours to take in the Basilica of San Francesco with its stunningly restored frescos of the master of the early Renaissance, Piero della Francesca. Yes, the Campanile collapsed in 1902 but I don't remember it clearly 😁

Seems you haven't travelled much in South East Asia. These old fashioned toilets can be found in most countries. The only toilet in Bangkok's Nature Boys was this model - at least until a few years ago, although it may not have changed. I have also come across them in public toilets and some in more private accommodations in quite a number of other towns and cities elsewhere in Thailand, as well as in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and even in Singapore. I have seen some in China over the years. After all this was the way most Asians did their ablutions until relatively recently. I loathe them because it means crouching down and sometimes it's difficult getting pants out of the way 😵 But expecting all Asians to act and behave like westerners is in my view rather ridiculous unless they are given specific instructions. A bit like those Japanese toilets. With English instructions, they'd be easily used by everyone. Even though I came across my first one in Japan nearly 20 years ago, I still am unsure which buttons to press apart from those which have a little diagram. If the Chinese owners of that restaurant in Chiang Mai had instructions how to use a western toilet - which i have seen in quite a few on my travels - I suspect that the number of those attempting to use them the old way would be reduced.

Japanese have had by far the best sit down toilets for many years. The only problem is that you either have to learn Japanese to work them or a degree in some sort of technology!

We have all heard that the leaning of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was stabilised back in 2008 when the publlic was told it would remain 'static' for another 200 years. This year marks the 850th year of the laying of its foundation stone. But Italy has several other mediaeval towers, notably the 14 in San Gimignano south of Florence of which the tallest is 54 metres. Now there is another that has got the authorities worried about the rate of decline. Situated in the heart of Bologna in the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana are two tall towers, the 12th century 48 metre-high Garisenda Tower and its neighbour the 97 metre Asinelli Tower. As I saw on a visit 4 years ago they are magnificent. The tall one seems to be fine but the Piazza around them has just been closed for a few years as the smaller now requires attention. It slants at 4 degrees compared to Pisa's 3.9 degrees. The Tower was mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy and Dickens' Pictures from Italy. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/29/bologna-seals-off-leaning-tower-fears-tilting-too-far

Sorry to hear about your buddy but I do suggest with respect it's hardly fair to blame his death on Thailand. Anyone who lives here - or even just visits - surely knows that medical costs are up to each individual, not the state. Hence the requirement and necessity for some form of medical insurance. I have a reasonably simple policy - far less coverage than I used to have when I was travelling around the world for various employers. But enough. I go to a mix of private and public hospitals depending on the problem and the likely cost of treatment. Just last week I stupidly fell and with a wound that was clearly quite deep I went to nearby BNH. I was treated immediately and will have the sutures taken out on Thursday. Not exacly cheap but immediate attention and very kindly staff. Three years ago I made my first visit to the Chulalongkorn public hospital. The doctor I see there spends three days a week at that hospital and three at Bumrungrad. The consultation fee at Chula is 200 baht. At Bumrungrad around 1,600 baht! On my first visit, she recommended I have a complete abdominal CT scan. That was scheduled 3 weeks later. When she looked at the results, she spotted a small cyst on the pancreas. She felt it important to see if there was anything worrying underneath. Accordingly an MRI was scheduled for a further 3 weeks later. All clear but she recommended another scan 6 months later and then annual scans for 3 years after that. With pancreatic cancer so difficult to detect in its early stages, I have been delighted with the treatment. Even more so at the costs. Even without insurance, I believe all the scans would have cost less than one MRI at Bumrungrad. I just could not imagine living or traveling outside my home country without sufficient health insurance. But we all make our choices.

I do not think @Moses is an idiot - intelligent, yes. I assume he is Russian and has lived in Russia most if not all of his life. Naturally therefore his views are skewed towards Russia. I know several Americans and British whose views are similarly skewed towards that of their own governments even with a more or less free press pointing out that their views are wrong. But then is the press really free? Much of the news is manufactured in the US by a right-wing Australian nonagenarian whose primary objective is to make loads and yet more loads of money, even at the expense of the truth - and even by promoting a man whom he claims to loathe! Let's face it. It seems half of Republican voters in the USA are still in Trump's pocket despite all the publicity given to his many, many crimes. But then how he would act during a future Presidency was pretty much known before he announced his candidacy in 2016 - for anyone prepared to delve seriously into his background, that is. With the ghastly Roy Cohn as his mentor, his massive ego and his determination to outdo his father's achievements, he surely owed his ascendency to the near total failure of the American poitical system with so many of its voters desperation for a change. Russia, along with its pals in China, may well do its best to help Trump win again. After all, the voters' choice may well be beween an octogenarian incumbent who is presently disliked as a candidate by many in his own party and a near octogenarian criminal who is still loved by many. Something is very wrong with the state of so-called democracy IMHO. PS: the post was edited to change the ages of Biden and Trump which were inaccurate in the original.

Not difficult when many opposition parties and most major opposition political figures are either killed or jailed. There is no free press in Russia. The President has the power to control the media and obtain preferential media exposure. The electoral system is skewed to ensure the dominance of United Russia candidates. The chances of appeal are all but zero. President Putin signed into law a decree allowing a three day voting period thereby increasing the likelihood of rigging the outcome. Other parties are of course permitted, but only if they offer little or no opposition or, better still, have links to United Russia. For the 2020 elections, three new parties were allowed to participate - New People, For Truth and Green Alternative. Each, though, has links to the Kremin meaning that even though they might siphon off votes from the increasingly unpopular United Russia, the votes will not go to more genuine opposition parties. According to the levada website you quoted, about 85% of the Russian population supported Putin at the start of 2023. The cult of personality surrounding Putin includes a number of popular brands - Putinka vodka, PuTin canned food, Gorbusha Putina caviar and others. Putin and his image is everywhere. There is no viable opposition. I am not a fan of a dual party system as in the USA or, largely speaking, in the UK. Nor am I a fan of the electoral processes in either country. The Presidents/Prime Ministers of neither country win by popular vote, and so a comparison with Russia is quite meaningless. But, apart from Trump and his lying hordes, virtually all people in each country accept the result of voting without question as having been free and fair.

I guess most do not but the French almost all use bidets.

You did not read my post. I started by stating - "I could have gone into more detail by quoting other sites. But the above is virtually what all state." The site you quote bears no credibility since in its own words it states - "Levada Analytical Center (Levada-Center) is a Russian non-governmental research organization." In other words, it is based in Russia. Enough said! What about the views of the Russian-Election Monitor. Who are they? "The "Russian Election Monitor" is the initiative of a group of European scholars, former and active politicians, and public officials united by the strong belief that Russian voters have the same right to democratic and free elections as every citizen in Europe does. Electoral experts and citizen election observers working hard to make the electoral process in Russia more free, fair, and transparent deserve all our attention and full support." Here is what they wrote of last month's elections. "8, 9 and 10 September in Russia were days of elections of State Duma deputies in four districts, heads of 21 regions, deputies of 16 regional parliaments, 12 city councils of regional capitals, as well as elections in the occupied territories and numerous local elections . . . "Assessing the elections, experts observe a serious deterioration in the realization of voting rights by citizens. The drop is striking even compared to the previous elections which were not particularly free and fair either. "This year's campaign is characterized by centralized propaganda, censorship, forceful suppression of any dissent, demonstrative use of administrative resources for the benefit of the United Russia party and its candidates, coercion of administratively dependent (state-employed) categories of voters to participate in elections and vote for specific candidates. All this comes with a widespread unpunished violation of electoral legislation, the principles of equal and free elections, and the voting rights of citizens. A significant loss of independence by election commissions is recorded." https://www.russian-election-monitor.org/elections-2023-even-less-free-and-fair-than-before.html

Certainly Australia did the same after the 1996 massacre in Hobart that killed 35 people. Apart from tightening gun laws it instituted a buyback and amnesty with almost 600,000 guns being handed in to authorities. Since then there have been two more amnesties. In 2017 a 3-month amnesty had 57,000 weopons being handed in. In January this year, after what was the first year of a permanent firearms amnesty 17,000 weaopons were handed in. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/21/over-17000-weapons-surrendered-in-first-year-of-australian-firearms-amnesty

With respect Moses, you are certainly not comparing like with like. American Presidential Elections may well have their problems, but they are nowhere as bad as those in Russia. As is stated in wikipedia - "Elections in Russia have not been free and fair under Putin's rule. Political opponents are jailed and repressed, independent media are intimidated and suppressed, and electoral fraud is rampant. Political scientists characterize Russia's political system as "competitive authoritarianism" or a hybrid regime, as it combines authoritarian and democratic institutions." I could have gone into more detail by quoting other sites. But the above is virtually what all state.

Why surprised? That was 1871. Now it is 2023. Britain has passed legislation making registration of firearms some of the strictest in the world. It was a massacre in Dunblane in 1996 that killed 16 primary school children and one teacher that led to even stricter gun control legislation in the UK. Sydney's website GunPolicy.org estimates there are 5.03 guns in the UK per 100 people. The US has 120.5 guns per 100 people. According to ABC News, the USA has had 565 mass shootings with loss of lives in 2023 alone. Britain has had none!

Purely convenience. I don't read Russian and so have to look back at what a specific post refers. I suppose @vinapu will not mind if i start occasional posts in Chinese 🤣

This is surely the most extraordinary aspect of this very sad case. Inquests in the UK normally occur very soon after death. If drugs or other dangerous substances are suspected, a longer time will be necessary for samples to be tested. These take weeks at most. The other odd aspect is that inquests are public except where there are "real issues" of national security. Apart from the verdict of "suicide" I don't recall reading anything about the manner of the suicide other than it related to the poor boy's head.

The usual GOP retort to the humongous number of mass killings in the USA following the 'thoughts and prayers' platitudes is "mental health." Well in this case the killer's mental problems were known in advance, yet nothing was done! And with the mental health of the perpetrators of most of these mass murders is never really known - or is known to people like immediate family who will not report it - the gun lobby continues to rub its hands in glee and loves its increasing profits.

I am aware there are members of this forum from many countries. And that is a good thing because it allows for a variety of views. But the written language of posts is English (with occasional quotes or epithets in another language like 'entre-nous'). @TotallyOz Can we please have a ruling about posts in other written languages - even if they are translations of earlier posts in English?

And for those who believe the baloney, I failed to mention the efforts made by Quatar to find a peaceulf solution. https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/28/10/2023/qatar-affirms-commitment-to-continuing-diplomatic-efforts-to-endbloodshed-of-palestinians

The fact is you cannot. You misread my post and assumed only the three warring parties would be involved in any peace settlement. Odd how you have forgotten all those countries which have been involved in peace processes in the past - Norway, the Madrid Conference, the Geneva conference, Egypt,Jordan and a host of others. If you seriously think that conflicts are only settled by the particpants, your knoweldge of recent history is remarkably slim. How about Northern ireland. Two bitter Anglo_irish foes brought together by the USA and peace resulted. Emjoy the baloney!