Daily Archives: June 21, 2014

China sees red because the carpet rolled out at Heathrow for Premier Li was 10ft too short

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang

When the Chinese premier visited London this week he was greeted with an honour guard, a Downing Street reception and a meeting with the Queen.

But one aspect of Li Keqiang’s welcome fell somewhat short in the eyes of Chinese officials – the red carpet rolled out for his arrival at Heathrow.

After plans for Mr Li’s visit were shown to the Beijing government, aides complained that the carpet leading from the steps of his plane was not long enough.

The objection was raised with Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, but he is said to have told the Chinese official he had other things to worry about.

Mr Li is said to have demanded to meet the Queen, who welcomed him to Windsor Castle, despite the fact that it is relatively unusual for her to receive world leaders who are not heads of state.

Later he went to Downing Street for lunch with the Prime Minister and business leaders where he was served a Chinese-themed menu including claypot chicken in a savoury sauce with shiitake mushrooms.

China’s Foreign Ministry yesterday played down the diplomatic row over the length of the red carpet.

 

 

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Iraq’s Shiite Militiamen Parade in Show of Force

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Իրաք,շիա զինյալներ, շքերթThousands of Shiite militiamen have paraded in Baghdad and several other cities in southern Iraq with heavy weaponry, signaling their readiness to take on Sunni militants who seized much of the country’s north.

In Baghdad, about 20,000 men, many in combat gear, marched through the Sadr City district on Saturday with assault rifles, machine-guns, multiple rocket launchers and missiles. Similar parades were held in the southern cities of Amarah and Basra, with the militants in Basra displaying field artillery pieces hauled by heavy trucks.

The parades were staged by followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and came after the al-Qaida breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and allied Sunni militants, captured a crossing on the Syria-Iraq border the day before.

 

Shock horreur: Finance minister tells cash-strapped (and perennially rude) French to be NICE to tourists

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France wants to boost tourism to 100million visitors a year and has told locals to be friendlier and more hospitable to foreigners.

The nation needs to shake off its reputation for being unfriendly and learn to be more hospitable, commerce minister Fleur Pellerin said at a national tourism conference in Paris.

France is the world’s most visited country, attracting 83 million tourists in 2012, but the government had now fixed a target of 100 million tourists by 2015, Mr Fabius said.
The nationwide tourist action plan comes after repeated international  surveys have found that the French capital is one of the world’s most hostile places for foreign visitors.

Last year after the Paris Tourist Board issued a ‘politeness manual’ to service industry workers in bid to change the city’s reputation for being the rudest place on earth.

Paris attempted a similar campaign three years earlier, hiring ‘smile ambassadors’ to be friendly to visitors at the city’s main attractions.

 

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UN: Number of World’s Displaced Over 50 Million

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Mideast-Jordan-Syria_Muha

 

For the first time since World War II, the number of people forced from their homes worldwide has surged past 50 million, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.

At the end of last year, 51.2 million people had been forced from their homes worldwide, the highest figure of displacement since World War II, said the UNHCR.

That’s six million more people than at the end of the previous year, reflecting a collective failure to resolve longstanding conflicts or prevent the eruption of new ones, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said in announcing the report.

The latest figures do not include the half million people believed to have fled violence in Iraq over the past week.

The over-50-million number includes refugees and asylum-seekers who fled abroad as well as people displaced within their own countries. The data was compiled from government, non-government partner organizations and UNHCR’s own records.

 

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