World Vignettes — Brand promotion, Bond style

LOS ANGELES: British agent James Bond, famous for fast cars and even racier women, is lending his trademark flair and sophistication to mar...

LOS ANGELES: British agent James Bond, famous for fast cars and even racier women, is lending his trademark flair and sophistication to market upscale products. Pierce Brosnan, as agent 007 in the new Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, will be seen more in advertisements for Smirnoff Vodka, BMW cars, Omega watches and Ericsson Cell phones than in movie promotions. MGM will spend 20 million dollars promoting the movie but product endorsements will boost the movies’ effective advertising by nearly five times that amount, said MGM marketing spokesman Randy Greenberg.

Hitler dropped

PRAGUE: The Czech town of Karlovy Vary is to drop Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler from its roll of honour after all, deputy mayor Zdenek Musli said. A week earlier, he had opposed scrubbing Hitler’s name off the list of honourary citizens of Karlovy Vary, formerly Karlsbad, which had honoured the Fuehrer in 1938 as a way of saying “thank-you” for annexing the Sudetenland, then a mainly ethnic German region in northern Czechoslovakia.

Clinton’s `Buddy’

WASHINGTON: At last it’s official! The new White House puppy’s name is “Buddy”. President Bill Clinton ended a week of frenzied speculation by announcing at his formal end-of-year press conference that he named his little chocolate colored Labrador after his favourite uncle who died this year. “My uncle raised and trained dogs for over 50 years,” Clinton said. He also thanked Americans for the thousands of names they sent to the White House, entered in newspaper contests or circulated on the web. But he said the decision was “mostly a personal thing.” The new puppy also seemed to respond best to `Buddy’, according to Clinton, who hinted he may not be running the whole show at the White House these days.

Thai Army ways

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BANGKOK: The Thai army, battling falling recruitment due to a rising number of transsexuals showing up on draft day, has developed new techniques to test whether a conscript is faking his sexual preferences or not, Army sources said on Wednesday. “For conscripts who show up with breast implants we have set up a committee of three doctors who will check the draftees’ reactions to certain stimuli,” said an officer at the Thai Army recruitment office. The officer, who requested anonymity, said the exact nature of the testing techniques were an Army secret.

Bombs in Beijing

BEIJING: Over 2,500 bomb-like devices were unearthed in downtown Beijing, a Chinese daily has reported. Initial analysis showed the 20-cm rusty devices were bombs for military use but it remains unknown who made them and when they were made, Beijing Youth Daily said on Tuesday.

Construction workers unearthed the devices while laying cable in a southern district of Beijing recently, it said. Police were called to remove them and a bomb squad will dispose them off, it said.