Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
‘Stop me before I bet again in Singapore’
A performer holds over-sized deck cards in front of the Resorts World Sentosa casino Feb. 14 (REUTERS/Pablo Sanchez)
At least 264 people in Singapore have asked to be put on a list that would prevent them from entering the city state’s newly opened casino. Except for nine housewives and 19 unemployed people, the rest had jobs and probably families that they did not want to hurt with a gambling problem. Family members who think a relative might have a gambling problem can also apply to have them banned.
The $4.7 billion Resorts World Sentosa opened on Feb. 14, Valentines Day and the first day of the Chinese New Year, which was considered auspicious. It is the first of two casinos resorts (and a Universal Studios theme park) that is meant to help transform Singapore from a manufacturing and shipping center to a global hub city built on financial services and a playground for wealthy visitors. This is quite a change for a country often called the “nanny state” because of its many prescriptions and prohibitions, famously for instance, banning chewing gum for its irksome tendency to land up on sidewalks and onto people’s shoes.
For decades Singapore had banned gambling as well, noting a Chinese proclivity towards gambling and its often attendant ruinations on families. But the ban didn’t stop folks from taking a bus across the Singapore Strait to neighbouring Malaysia, which sports a hilltop casino in the Genting Highlands.
Blood-suckers and blood-thirsty revenge: an interview with South Korean director Park Chan-wook
South Korean director Park Chan-wook talked vampires and the movie industry at an interview with Reuters in Seoul this week as his movie “Thirst” prepares to enter the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival which opens today. Park’s movie “Oldboy” won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004 and this is his first film in competition since then.
“Thirst” stars Song Kang-ho and Kim Ok-vin 
as a priest turned vampire and a femme fatale respectively.
