Popular Elsewhere
14:50 UK time, Friday, 16 September 2011
A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
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asks a popular Vanity Fair article. It's not referring to economic expansion but, instead, about their trains. And the answer, it says, is 820 miles in 288 minutes - between Shanghai and Beijing. For Simon Winchester, who boarded the new high speed train, the quirks of Chinese rail journeys are still there. Over 30 years ago he stepped off his train in China to Roll Out the Barrel being played over the loud speakers for him. While he wasn't welcomed by such a big gesture this time, Winchester was taken by the minute detail of train hostesses training. They were trained to smile a perfect "eight tooth smile" - learnt by placing chopsticks between their teeth.
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Children are meant to pick up languages quickly aren't they? That was New York Times correspondent Clifford Levy's assumption when instead of an international school. He'd convinced himself that what his children were doing was "no different from what millions of immigrants in the United States do all the time". But he recalls a painful journey. Eventually the children do pick up the language, eventually being mistaken for natives, which has one definite advantage:
"Foreign residents have long resented how Russian theaters and museums charge foreigners a steep premium. We took great pleasure in sending the kids in to buy our tickets at the cheaper price."
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In a well hit Guardian article Marina Hyde is . "Cast your eyes over the spread of nine photos of a heavily false-eyelashed Cheryl looking down the sights of a sniper's rifle, or taking part in a mock raid and so on," Hyde says, "and ask whether they do not, in fact, trivialise life on the front line to a degree that would be hilarious were it not so distasteful." Hyde finds a whole heap of anecdotes about celebrities' forces visits - from Geri Halliwell demanding Soya milk to Myleen Klass's plane becoming a Taliban target.
"Targeted, if you please - as though the evildoers had lain in wait with the specific aim of taking out an erstwhile member of Hear'Say".
It's safe to say she isn't impressed, despite Cole's tailored camouflage outfit.
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Occasionally an old news story can mysteriously pop up on a site's most read list. But Time's most popular article really takes the biscuit. The article from 2 May 1955 is . The piece describes a genius with a worldly innocence.
"He once agreed to buy an elevator for his two-story home because 'the man who came to interest me in it - I liked him so much, I could not say no'."
