Judah northern or southern kingdom

Hotels in the northern province of Chiang Mai have been forced to cut their rates by up to 90%, in a desperate bid to attract more domestic tourists. According to a Bangkok Post report, La-Iad Bungsrithong, from the northern chapter of the Thai Hotels Association, says with tourists mainly favouring the southern beach destinations this month, hotel operators in the north of the country are preparing for the forthcoming low season. The resurgence of Covid-19 late last year meant that in December, only 1,000 Chiang Mai hotels, offering between 20,000 and 30,000 rooms, stayed open. This month, occupancy rates have plummeted to less than 3% and are not expected to rise beyond 5% during the Songkran holiday next month. La-Iad says traditional target markets such as China are currently off-limits due to the Chinese government placing restrictions on citizens travelling out of the country. “Even though vaccine distribution has started globally, the target markets for Chiang Mai such as ... » Learn More about Chiang Mai hotels slash prices amid ongoing slump in tourism

Wong Fei-hung is the most famous of all the exponents of southern-style Chinese martial arts, and his exploits have passed into legend. There have been around 100 films about him, 77 of which feature actor Kwan Tak-hing, who became synonymous with Wong during the 1950s and 1960s . Radio plays, pulp novels, newspaper story serialisations, and television series have been devoted to his life. At one point, no less than seven newspapers were running serialised novels about Wong at the same time. The martial arts master became known to international audiences in the 1990s when he was played by Jet Li Lianjie in Tsui Hark’s supremely successful Once Upon a Time in China film series . In spite of his status as a folk hero, very little is known about Wong and his life. Indeed, much of Wong’s history has been coloured by the fictional exploits attributed to him. As a line in American director John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance goes, “When the legend becomes the fact, print ... » Learn More about Played by Jet Li and Jackie Chan, who was Wong Fei-hung for real? Tracing the life of the martial arts legend

Hong Kong martial arts films owe much of their success to martial arts choreographers. But their history is mainly undocumented. A brief 1999 essay by the Hong Kong Film Archive’s Yu Mo Wan, called Martial Arts Directors in Hong Kong Cinema, set out the historical framework of the craft and provided some of the material for this story. The first wuxia films were made in Shanghai, then known as “the Hollywood of the East”, in the 1920s. According to Stephen Teo’s all-encompassing book Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, 1922’s Vampire’s Prey is the earliest example of a film with wuxia characteristics, and The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, released in Shanghai 1928 and directed by Zhang Shichuan, is generally considered to be the first of the genre as we would recognise it. Chang Cheh, the renowned Hong Kong film director, said the martial arts in Red Lotus Temple were modelled on the “Shanghai school of Beijing opera”, which he said was a “lowbrow and coarser” variant of Chinese ... » Learn More about How martial arts choreographers changed Hong Kong cinema

71 new Covid cases in Thailand today, the generals are being told they’re going to face pay cuts and a Thai doctors has issued a warning about the link between Thai’s love for sugary sweets and life-threatening diseases… there goes my afternoon donut. And don’t worry, I’m not going to sing my way through the news today, it’s just nice and cool in my home studio so you can enjoy the cool with me. We’ve also got a new segment at the end of the news today… you’ll see that soon enough. 71 new coronavirus cases have been announced today, 31 of them from the hotzone of Samut Sakhon, just south of Bangkok. This beings the total number of confirmed cases in Thailand to 26,441. The death toll remains at 85 people. The Thai Army, Navy and Air Force are aiming to trim the number of generals in the ranks by 25% by 2029. But plenty of critics say the plan is probably just more words and won’t ever happen. A Thai doctor is reminding Thais about the clear links between eating sugary foods and ... » Learn More about Thailand News Today | Thai army trim the Generals, sugar making Thais fat | March 8

Over January and February, the country also spent more than US$1.3 billion importing plastic products, up 30.8 percent from the same period last year, according to the ministry. In 2020, Vietnam imported over 6.6 million tons of plastic totaling more than US$8.3 billion, up 3.5 per cent and down 7.7 per cent respectively from the previous year. Its largest suppliers of plastic and plastic products included China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United States, official data showed. Meanwhile, Vietnam's Ministry of Health on Monday started a Covid-19 vaccine inoculation campaign, the country's largest vaccination campaign in history, with over 100 million injections expected to be conducted nationwide, Vietnam News Agency reported Monday. The first doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine began to be given at 8am local time Monday to health workers directly treating Covid-19 patients in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, the southern Ho Chi Minh City and the northern Covid-19 epicentre Hai ... » Learn More about Vietnam: Country’s plastic import value surges in 2 months as Covid-19 cases come under control

Good Day! Here are the top stories of The Manila Times for Wednesday, March 3, 2021. READ: More cases of Covid variants detected Thirty new cases of B117, or the so-called United Kingdom variant of the coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid-19, have been detected in the country alongside the first six cases of the B1351 or the South African variant, the Department of Health said on Tuesday. READ: Metro Manila virus surges worrying ‒ Octa According to the March 1 monitoring report of academe-based Octa Research Group, the rise in the number of cases in some cities in Metro Manila has become a “serious case for concern.” READ: Vaccines key to ‘new normal’ Vaccinating “ambitiously” against Covid-19 is critical in attaining sustained economic recovery, economist-lawmakers at the House of Representatives said. READ: Companies want to buy vaccines for employees A growing number of employers and business establishments around the country have expressed their ... » Learn More about KUWTT: More cases of Covid variants detected | Mar 03, 2021

MANAUS, BRAZIL (REUTERS) - Brazil’s Air Force delivered emergency supplies of oxygen on Friday (Jan 15) to the jungle state of Amazonas, where hospitals overwhelmed by resurging coronavirus cases were airlifting patients to other states to save them from dying of suffocation. Brazil has the world’s worst Covid-19 death toll outside the United States, and Manaus was one of the first Brazilian cities struck by a spiraling death count and case load from the first wave of the pandemic last year. President Jair Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the pandemic and opposed stricter social controls to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, said on Friday the government had already done what it could in Manaus. “The problem is terrible there. Now, we have done our part,” he told supporters outside the presidential palace, adding that the military was installing a temporary hospital. A new variant of the virus, sharing characteristics with other highly infectious variants, has been ... » Learn More about Oxygen arrives in Brazilian state overwhelmed by Covid-19

The days of small drug busts in Thailand are long over, since at least 2017 seizures of illicit narcotics have involved shipments of multiple millions of “yaba” speed tablets and truckloads of high-purity crystal methamphetamine weighing hundreds of kilograms and often over a tonne. But even by the standards of the kingdom’s new normal, the size of the latest bust was a jaw-dropper that stunned even seasoned cops and counter-narcotics officials. On November 12 an intelligence tip-off led police to a warehouse in Chachoengsao province close to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport where they found a massive stash of ketamine, or “Super K”, a hallucinogenic drug increasingly popular in East Asia. Weighing in at over 11.5 tonnes with a street value of close to US$1 billion, it marked the biggest interdiction of illicit drugs in the history of a country that has been the main transit route for illicit narcotics spilling out of Myanmar since the 1950s. The unprecedented seizure threw ... » Learn More about Why Thailand’s is Losing its Battle with Illicit Narcotics from Myanmar

The memory of Thanaruek Laoraowirodge’s favorite Thai food dish is intertwined with the memory of his grandmother, Somsri Chantra. Originally from the eastern town of Trad, Laoraowirodge vividly remembers the chicken stew that she would cook after he returned home from school. The dish, as simple as it is, is included in his family’s upcoming cookbook, a volume that will detail the recipes created by his khun yai , or grandmother. Not surprisingly, Yai Somsri’s recipes also make up much of the menu for his family’s popular Bangkok eateries, Supanniga Eating Room and Krua Supanniga by Khunyai. Laoraowirodge considers the upcoming tome to be the family’s first funeral cookbook. “It will include all stories of memories from our family members with khun yai, related to her life and her cooking,” he says. Family Thai Food Recipes Most Thais consider funeral books a way to safeguard good memories of a loved one. Distributed by family members as mourners file into the temple ... » Learn More about Funeral Cookbooks Preserve Thai Food Recipes and Memories

HANOI (Xinhua): Vietnam's Ministry of Health on Monday (March 8) started a Covid-19 vaccine inoculation campaign, the country's largest vaccination campaign in history, with over 100 million injections expected to be conducted nationwide, Vietnam News Agency reported Monday. The first doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine began to be given at 8am local time Monday to health workers directly treating Covid-19 patients in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, the southern Ho Chi Minh City and the northern Covid-19 epicenter Hai Duong province. The Ministry of Health said that vaccination is an important, effective, proactive and indispensable measure in the process of Covid-19 pandemic prevention, and a top priority for the government to help bring lives back to normal. In the coming days, vaccination will start in other cities and provinces that have been hit by the latest wave of Covid-19 infections, targeting people working on the frontline against the epidemic such as health workers, ... » Learn More about Vietnam kicks off Covid-19 vaccination campaign