Nominative case: forbidden name in North Korea and replacement of Elon Musk

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What female name will no longer be found among ordinary citizens of North Korea, from where the British BBC has grown into tax problems in India and who has become the successor to Elon Musk on Twitter. The most interesting events of the outgoing week are in the Izvestia selection.

Cancellation culture

There can be as many people with the surname Kim in North Korea, but no one is allowed to wear the proud name of Zhu E from now on. According to Radio Free Asia, this week the North Korean authorities ordered all women and girls with this name to urgently – literally by the end of this week – change it to any other.

The fact is that this is the name of the daughter of the leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, who has recently become a frequent companion of her father at events of national importance. Kim Joo Ae, believed to be 9 to 11 years old and believed to be the North Korean leader’s second oldest child, first appeared in public late last year to watch a ballistic missile launch with her father and the military. Since then, she has been to public events four more times.

Photo: Korea Stamp Corporation

Stamps depicting Kim Jong-un and Kim Joo-ae before the launch of the Hwaseong-17 ballistic missile

The funny thing is that the official media never named the daughter of the leader of the DPRK by name, referring to her as a “noble child”, “respected child” or “beloved daughter”.

By the way, the image of Kim Joo-ae will soon appear on 5 out of 11 new stamps that are issued in the DPRK in honor of the last launch of the Hwaseong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile. It was a demonstration of Pyongyang’s goal of strengthening “the most powerful and absolute nuclear deterrent.”

Pay your taxes, but don’t sleep well

The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC has long irritated the authorities of a number of countries. Now this British media has found itself in disgrace with the Indian authorities. The company’s offices in Delhi and Mumbai were raided this week as part of an investigation into the BBC’s tax avoidance.

It is noteworthy that suspicions of financial fraud appeared shortly after the release of the two-part documentary film India: The Modi Question in January in the UK. In it, journalists tell about the period when the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, headed the state of Gujarat, where in 2002 there were bloody clashes between Muslims and Hindus. Then more than a thousand people died, mostly of the Islamic faith. For many years, one of the perpetrators of that tragedy was directly named Modi. The US even banned him from entering its territory for several years. And the British government of that period, as shown in the BBC film, held Modi “directly responsible” for not stopping the killing of Muslims during the riots.

Security personnel outside the BBC Mumbai office

Photo: REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas

In India, the screening of this film, of course, was banned, so the local population did not see it. But still mostly condemned. Many have even signed a petition demanding a total ban on the Broadcasting Corporation in India. However, last week the country’s Supreme Court rejected it. At the same time, the judges nevertheless ordered an investigation into films and television films, the content of which denigrates India and its statesmen.

Perebdeli

At the end of the week, in the saga of unidentified objects flying over the territory of North America, which were taken either for Chinese spies or for UFOs, one interesting and plausible version appeared. It is possible that the objects shot down over the United States and Canada were literally the work of self-taught amateurs.

At least the other day, the Northern Illinois ballooning circle reported missing a $12 homemade K9YO craft with a miniature solar array. He was last seen at an altitude of 39,000 feet off the west coast of Alaska, roughly in the same area where an F-22 fighter jet (one missile, by the way, costs about $400,000) shot down a “dangerous unidentified object.”

Photo: REUTERS/US Navy photo/Ryan Seelbach

As Ron Meadows, founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions, a manufacturer of special balloons for hobbyists, told Aviation Week, amid news of obscure objects in the sky, he tried to contact the military and the FBI to “try to enlighten them that many of these things, probably are, and that they won’t look too smart knocking them down.” But received a refusal to communicate.

Now the community of fans to launch balloons is worried that their other “brainchild”, the W5KUB-112 balloon, which has already circled the globe several times and is due to enter US airspace on February 17, is at risk of being shot down.

Officially a woman

During the long career in politics of the current President of France, Emmanuel Macron, his wife Bridget, who is 24 years older than her husband, was insulted more than once because of such a difference in age. The most famous case was a collage in 2019 by a Brazilian on social networks, in which he compared two couples – Macron with Brigitte and the then President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro with his pretty 37-year-old wife Michelle, providing it with the caption: “Now you understand why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro, he’s just jealous of him.” That story became scandalous, however, because Bolsonaro himself commented on this insulting post, writing at the bottom of the collage: “Do not humiliate this guy, ha ha ha.”

On the topic of the fact that the wife of the young head of the Fifth Republic does not shine with beauty and is far from the first freshness, the French themselves have been sarcastic more than once. But the most distinguished were two women, one of whom posed as an independent journalist, and the other as a clairvoyant. In December 2021, in a YouTube video, they launched a rumor that Emmanuel Macron’s wife was actually born a man named Jean-Michel Tronier and in reality never gave birth to her three children. Subsequently, this claim was enthusiastically taken up by the president’s enemies among the extreme right groups, yellow vests and anti-vaxxers.

Emmanuel and Bridget Macron

Photo: Global Look Press/IMAGO/Jonathan Rebboah

Meanwhile, Bridget Macron herself and Jean-Michel Tronier, who in reality is her brother, filed a libel suit. And this week we won it. True, the punishment for labeling Bridget as a transgender turned out to be not special – the court in Lisieux fined two gossips only €2,000 each. But the truth prevailed.

Tailed CEO

At the end of last year, Elon Musk, who bought the Twitter platform and rather bored many of its users with his attempts to reform the social network, conducted a survey. He asked subscribers if he should leave the post of head of the company, and, having received a “blessing” from the majority for this, he promised to do so as soon as he finds “someone stupid enough to agree to this job.”

This week, Elon Musk presented to the public the new head of the company – his dog Floki of the Shiba Inu breed. We must pay tribute, the billionaire prepared thoroughly for the joke: he seated Floki in the boss’s chair, dressed him in a T-shirt with Twitter corporate symbols and the inscription СEO (chief executive officer) and laid out documents with social network logos on the table in front of him.

Photo: Elon Musk’s social networks

“The new CEO of Twitter is just great. He is perfect for this job. Much better than the previous guy, ”Musk signed under the photos of the dog, without specifying who exactly he means by the“ previous guy ”- himself or his predecessor Parag Agrarwal.

However, it is clear that Elon Musk himself is still the CEO of the company. Although he promised to continue searching for his replacement. How serious he will be in this is still a big question – Musk recently hinted that he would like to seduce the famous video blogger MrBeast, who became famous for filming expensive stunts on YouTube, to the role of the head of his company.

Counting diapers

This week, South Korea published interesting statistics that visibly showed how bad things are in the country in terms of population aging and the birth rate. To do this, it turned out to be enough just to calculate and compare how many adult diapers and similar products for children were in the country in 2021.

According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, for the whole of 2021, South Korea produced and imported 112,000 tons of disposable adult diapers, while the same figures for the production and purchase of baby diapers were more than one and a half times lower. In 2019, the demand for adult diapers was also higher, but the difference was not yet so critical.

Photo: TASS/EPA/YONHAP

According to data from last year, the proportion of South Koreans over 65 in the country’s population was about 18%. And against the backdrop of a low birth rate, which the authorities are unable to spur, it will only grow: thus, according to forecasts, by 2035 the proportion of those over 65 will reach 30%, and by 2050 – 40%.

At the same time, servicing pensioners is a heavy burden on the authorities and working fellow citizens. Recently, there has been growing support in South Korea for the idea of ​​raising the free public transport age from 60 to 70. In the greater Seoul area, for example, retirees took the subway 3.7 million times for free last year, costing the subway $250 million and prompting plans to raise subway fares by as much as 30%.

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