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Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said observing hygiene standards in Japan has drastically changed his perspective of cleanliness in the US, and joked that he’s “never felt dirtier” in his home country.
Kimmel said on Tuesday evening episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that before going to Japan on a seven-day family trip, he thought the US was “pretty buttoned-up” despite having areas for improvement.
“But now, after traveling to Japan, I realize that this place, this USA we’re always chanting about, is a filthy and disgusting country,” he said.
Kimmel said he was blown away, in particular, by Japan’s bathrooms.
“Not only did I not encounter a single dirty bathroom, the bathrooms in Tokyo and Kyoto are cleaner than our operating rooms here,” Kimmel said.
The TV star lauded the loos at Japanese truck stops, which he said were “cleaner than Jennifer Garner’s teeth.”
“It’s like the whole country is Disneyland, and we’re living at Six Flags. I’ve been home 36 hours. I’ve never felt dirtier,” he said.
Kimmel added that he was impressed by how Tokyo residents don’t litter despite the lack of public trash cans, which were removed by local authorities in the wake of the 1995 sarin gas attacks.
“They’re like, okay, no more trash cans. Everybody clean up after yourselves. And guess what? They clean up after themselves,” Kimmel said.
“We are like hogs compared to the Japanese. I can’t imagine what they must think of us,” Kimmel said. “Oh, the garbage people. Yes, the Americans. Garbage. Yes.”
Public bathrooms have become the source of tourist fascination in Japan, where toilets can come with automatic bidets, heated seats, sensors that take your pulse, and sound systems to mask the noise of flushing. In 2019, a Japanese toll operator installed public toilets on the Central Nippon Expressway that could measure driver fatigue.
Japan is typically known internationally for fostering a focus on cleanliness and hygiene. During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the Japanese national team made headlines for cleaning their dressing room after beating Germany 2-1 in an upset.
At the same tournament, FIFA praised Japanese fans for tidying up the local stadium after watching their matches.
Kimmel is one of tens of millions to recently visited Japan on holiday. A weak yen is thought to be fueling a tourism boom there, with government statistics saying tourists spent about $35.9 billion in 2023.
Monthly visitor arrivals in Japan grew to 2.78 million in February, surpassing 2019 levels in what its tourism industry believes will be a continued, strong post-pandemic recovery.
The website Politico reported that the Europol has suffered a serious security breach, a batch of sensitive files of top law enforcement officials, including Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle, went missing last summer.
The sensitive documents were in a secure storage room at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague. The European police launched an investigation, which is still ongoing, into the security breach.
“On Sep. 6, 2023, the Europol Directorate was informed that personal paper files of several Europol staff members had disappeared,” reads an internal agency note seen by POLITICO. When officials checked all the agency’s records, it discovered “additional missing files,” it added.
“Given Europol’s role as law enforcement authority, the disappearance of personal files of staff members constitutes a serious security and personal data breach incident,” the note, shared on its internal message board system and dated September 18, said.
EUROPOL notified the impacted individuals and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS).
The disappearance of personal files of EUROPOL officials poses a serious risk to the impacted individuals and to the agency’s operations, including its investigations.
An unsettling aspect emerges from POLITICO’s report regarding the discovery by a citizen of some of the files in a public place in The Hague.
It is still unclear how long the files have been missing or which are the cause of the security breach.
The missed personnel files included those of Europol’s Executive Director De Bolle and three of her deputy directors, Jürgen Ebner, Andrei Lințǎ and Jean-Philippe Lecouffe.
Missed files include human resources files that contain a huge trove of sensitive information.
POLITICO reported that following the security breach, the agency head of Human Resources, Massimiliano Bettin, was placed on administrative leave.
“Europol’s sensitive hardcopy HR files are kept locked away in a safe, in a room that is limited to restricted personnel. Very few people know the code to the safe, one of the officials who had direct knowledge of the procedure said. It is unclear how the files were taken.” continues POLITICO.
POLITICO speculates that the files could have been taken to damage Bettin, citing internal conflicts within the agency.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, EUROPOL)
Thailand’s Constitutional Court has accepted a petition to disband the nation’s largest opposition party that was previously found guilty of breaching the charter over efforts to amend the royal defamation law.
The court accepted the petition by the Election Commission to dissolve Move Forward Party on Wednesday, based on the same court’s verdict in January that the group’s campaign to loosen the lese majeste law, also known as Article 112 of the Thai penal code, amounted to an attempt to overthrow the country’s constitutional monarchy.
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Move Forward has 15 days to submit its defense, the court said in a statement.
The case is the latest in a series of blows against the upstart party, which shook Thai politics by winning the most parliamentary seats on support from largely young and urban voters who had grown frustrated with nearly a decade of military-backed administrations. Its candidate Pita Limjaroenrat was blocked by pro-establishment conservative lawmakers from becoming the prime minister last year, before being cleared of allegations that he had violated election rules.
Read More: Thailand’s New Prime Minister Is Getting Down to Business. But Can He Heal His Nation?
If the opposition party is dissolved, Pita and other executive members will likely be banned from politics for 10 years. As part of the January ruling, the charter court ordered Move Forward to stop all attempts to revise the royal insult law, which protects the monarchy from defamation and carries up to 15 years in prison for each offense.
Move Forward’s current predicament has been likened to that of its predecessor, Future Forward Party, which was dissolved and whose key leaders were barred from political office for a decade. A fresh dissolution order could also potentially unleash more political unrest that may roil Thai financial markets anew.
But the reformist party, which won 151 seats in the 500-member parliament and almost 40% of the popular votes in May 2023, has remained unfazed, with Pita saying the group had “long prepared” itself for a potential dissolution.
When a political party is dissolved, its sitting lawmakers may join a new party within 30 days to keep their seats in the lower house.
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