RUSSIAPresidential Roulette
Last week former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov joined Russia’s Fatherland Party and confirmed he would run for a legislative seat this December. But will he run for president next summer? A recent poll shows how the votes would land if the election were held now.
Yevgeny Primakov (Prime minister until 5/99): 23% Gennady Zyuganov (Communist Party leader): 16% Yuri Luzhkov 9Mayor of Moscow): 10% Sergei Stepashin (Prime minister until 8/99): 8% Vladimir Zhirinovsky (Head of Liberal Democratic Party): 6% Grigory Yavlinsky (Head of Yabloko Party): 6% Aleksandr Lebed (Governor of Krasnoyarsk): 5% Viktor Chernomyrdin (Prime minister until 3/98): 3%
FRANCEMac Attack
French farmers have a beef with McDonald’s. In the past week and a half, farmers’ unions have rallied outside three restaurants, protesting the North American import tax on French luxury goods like foie gras, Roquefort cheese and truffles. The most violent demonstration caused 1 million francs in damage. The target, say the farmers, is not the chain itself–which employs 45,000 cattle raisers in France–but the globalization of the food industry that the Golden Arches represents. Phi-lippe Labbe, director general of McDonald’s-France, said the farmers were targeting the wrong people. “We’ve been sandwiched between two monsters,” he said, “and are paying the price in a conflict for which we’re not responsible.”
JAPANA Punked-Out National Anthem
Rock superstar Kiyoshiro Imawano is enraged that his label, Polydor, has nixed the release of his latest album. Why the change of plans? Because the CD includes a punked-out version of “Kimigayo,” Japan’s national anthem. It isn’t the rendering of the song that spooked the label. It’s the song itself. The ballad, which existed for decades as the unofficial anthem, was finally legalized this month. But not with-out protests from many Japanese, who say lyrics praising the emperor and his eternal reign recall World War II Japan. Polydor says it didn’t want to take sides. But the label’s decision hasn’t cramped Imawano’s style. He belted out the punky “Kimigayo” to a packed and fervid audience last Tuesday.
Egypt: The Valley of the Golden Mummies
In Egypt’s desert, man’s best friend is a pack animal–especially if you happen to be an archeologist. Three years ago, a guard at the Temple of Alexander was riding near the oasis town of El Bawiti when his donkey’s hoof poked a hole in the desert floor. Peering through, he found a tomb packed with mummies. Today, the site, known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies, is thought to be Egypt’s most extensive ancient burial ground. Some 10,000 mummies, dating from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300, may lie within almost four square miles. The 104 excavated so far–some brightly gilded, others in decorated gypsum, still others in plain linen–don’t compare in splendor to King Tut. But the middle-class wine merchants of Bahariyya Oasis buried their dead with human touches the Great Pyramids lack: one woman faces her husband, gazing on him through eternity. And what wealth they had is amply displayed, along with a squat, leering statue of Bes, the god of pleasure and the town’s deity. In November, a new museum opens to display five of the new finds.
FRANCELights Out
Ah, Paris, city of light. But not for patrons at one wildly popular new event. In a sort of performance-art experiment, documentary filmmakers Michel and Philippe Relhac are running a pitch-black eating establishment: no windows, no lights… and blind waiters. Diners find themselves fingering food to identify it (beef? mutton?). And the anonymity spurs quick friendships at the tables. Meanwhile, the waiters serve as constant reminders that some of us live our whole lives in the dark. Drawbacks: much spilling, some food fights, and at least one uninvited fondle. But for about $30, most find the evening quite worthwhile. Dark a l’orange, anyone?
GERMANYHands Off!
German chancellor Gerhard Schroder generally enjoys being on TV. But in a rare display of anger, Schroder canceled an interview for the commercial station RTL because of a comedy series the station is planning about Germany’s First Couple. Schroder aides say he doesn’t mind being the butt of jokes, but he does mind when they’re aimed at his wife. “This is the line that shouldn’t be crossed,” Schroder told the German daily Bild. “Hands off my family.” An RTL spokesman for the show says: “We’ll be cheeky but not nasty, nothing below the belt.” But apparently those assurances weren’t enough for the chancellor.
HOBBIESBeetlemania Sweeps Japan
Next time you feel like stepping on an insect, you might want to make sure it’s not a stag beetle. Last week a Tokyo insect specialty shop, Waku Waku Land, sold a large one for $90,000. In Japan, collecting beetles is common, but the 8-centimeter-long stag is “one in hundreds of millions,” explains a staffer of the shop. “It’s a record size.”
