A little sorta good news

You know why I haven't posted anything but the Twitter things Sunday for the last 2 days?  Because there is a lot of hate and suck out there, and today, I am deciding to do something about it.

I am going to look for anti-hate, anti-suck- but not "gag me cute" stuff to brighten our days.  And I just found a perfect one on FoxNews to start.  Let me say I am not a big fan of Emmanuel Macron.  But after this story, he's my favorite sitting French President...


French President Emmanuel Macron gave a teenager a lesson on etiquette after the youngster used a nickname to address him. 
Macron was in the middle of taking selfies and shaking hands with people in Paris on Monday when a teenager stopped him in his tracks, Sky News reported.  “How’s it going, Manu?” the teenager asked the French president, using a familiar nickname for "Emmanuel."

However, Macron scolded the teenager, who was with a group of friends.

“No, you can’t do that, no, no, no, no,” Macron told the teenager. The teenager apologized to Macron and referred to him as “Mr. President.”

However, Macron was not finished explaining the importance of good manners.  “You’re here, at an official ceremony and you should behave," Macron said. "You can act like a clown, but today, it is the 'Marseillaise,' and the 'Partisans Song,' you call me 'Mr President of the Republic' or 'mister.'”

The teenager started to sing “The International,” a Soviet anthem, as Macron continued to lecture.


“The day you want to start a revolution you study first in order to obtain a degree and feed yourself, ok? And then you can lecture others,” Macron continued.


Talk about the PERFECT response... let's see what else we can find...


CNN has a contribution as well... I had to really look for it... and once again, we go to Paris...


It's not often a morning train delay announcement provokes smiles.
There again, it's not often that services are halted so someone can give birth surrounded by commuters.
That's what happened in Paris on Monday when a woman went into labor on board a busy RER A rail service.
To celebrate the unexpected event, the newborn has been offered free rail travel throughout the city up until the age of 25.
The boy was delivered with the help of passengers, emergency workers and rail staff at around 11:40 a.m. while the train was held at the city's Auber Station.
"We can confirm that everything is going well," a spokesperson for French public transport operator Régie Autonome des Transports Parisien (RATP) announced on the network's Twitter feed.


Hopefully he won't be riding it singing the Internationale..

From the BBC, this is actually an update on a post of there's I saw earlier.  Apparently, former tennis champ Boris Becker is having some lawsuit problems vis-a-vis his recent bankruptcy.  He found a rather clever way of getting out of the suits- so he thought- diplomatic immunity. 


Lawyers for the 50-year-old three-time Wimbledon champion say he was appointed a sport and culture attache to the EU by the Central African Republic in April.

No seriously, this is a real place-  been called that since Independence in 1960 (except for 1976-9, when it was the Central African EMPIRE.)  So, he had diplomatic immunity- or did he?  Today, we find...

The CAR embassy in Belgium confirmed it had issued him a diplomatic passport.  However, a top official in the CAR foreign ministry told a French news agency the passport was fake.

Cherubin Moroubama told AFP the serial number on the document matched one of a batch of "new passports that were stolen in 2014".  He added that the passport, dated 19 March 2018, does not bear the signature or the stamp of the foreign minister.

CAR foreign minister Charles Armel Doubane later told Reuters an inquiry was being launched into who had issued the passport.

Hopefully, Becker will get this all straightened out before his score becomes "love serving time..."


Next up, the Moscow Times also has an update to a story I read a few days back- a deaf cat named Achilles who predicted Russia's fortunes in the World Cup.

Who doesn’t remember Paul the Octopus who rose to fame after correctly predicting the outcome of the 2010 World Cup?

Not to be outdone, at least 11 Russian animals have been enlisted to pick winners during this summer’s tournament, the Interfax news agency reports. After all, it is always wise to get a second, third or even 11th opinion.

Besides Achilles, the list includes:

Garik the otter
Pushok the bunny
Nathan the Raccoon
Milya and Glyasik, hippos
Spartak the lemur
a wolf, unnamed in the article
Yasha the reindeer
Puziryok the beluga whale
and, Cleopatra the tapir

No word on how well they are doing, other than that Achilles and Puziryok picked Russia over Saudi in game one (and who wouldn't?) and that Cleopatra sees the final as being Argentina over Spain.


On Xinhua, I had to get a little dirty to get this story...


China's imports of solid waste dropped significantly in the first quarter of this year as the government steps up enforcement of a ban on solid waste imports.

IMPORTING solid waste, you say?  Well, they do mean garbage, not poop...

China began importing solid waste as a source of raw materials in the 1980s, and has for years been the world's largest importer, despite its weak capacity in garbage disposal. Some companies illegally bring foreign garbage into the country for profit, posing a threat to the environment and public health.

Given rising public awareness and a green development drive, the government decided last year to phase out and completely halt such imports by end of 2019, except for those containing resources that are not substitutable.

China's customs authority seized 137,000 tonnes of illegal trash imports last month in what it called the largest campaign against trash smuggling in recent years.


And we thought WE were getting the crappy end of trade with China...



Best I could do on the Japan Times was the headline:

Why do the Japanese suck at learning English?

Answer:  lotsa reasons.  But my two favorites:  1) Eigo arerugii ("allergic to English"); and 2)...

We’re also taught that the English sentence is composed of three main components: subject, verb and object (S, V and O), and the stark black-and-white clarity of it all is jarring. The Japanese are used to muting the subject in a conversation to the point that it’s often hard to discern whose thoughts are being expressed, and by whom. Names and nouns are often left out. News reports refrain from 実名報道 (jitsumei hōdō, using real names in their reporting).

In other words, it's too easy to know what you're talking about.  When was the last time you heard THAT about English?