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Live on TV: The Fall of Greece
Chris Heath • GQ
On the clip that captured a society falling apart.
Then, far to the moderator's left, an animated blonde woman says something that clearly riles a short-haired young man on the opposite end. This lurch -- from heated debate to something much crazier -- happens in a flash. The short-haired man picks up his glass of water and, rising to his feet, throws its contents in the blonde woman's face. It's a direct hit. She seems to freeze, but after that it's all so fast, so frantic. A dark-haired older woman, sitting between the water-thrower and the moderator, gets up from her chair and jabs the aggressor with her newspaper. The short-haired man lunges toward her, then swings violently at her. A right, a left, a right. Each time, he connects. You can't believe how fast he moves, how hard he hits. Then the screen goes blank. The clip is from a popular Greek morning TV show that was broadcast live on June 7, 2012, ten days before Greece's second election of the year amid the ongoing economic turmoil. The three key participants are all members of the Greek Parliament.
ANTENNA TV/AFP/GettyImages
Welcome to the Hotel of Doom
Simon Parry • Daily Mail
A visit to the hotel North Korea starved to build, still unfinished after breaking ground in 1987.
This is the behemoth I have come to see -- a colossal monument to the insanity of North Korea. The 1,082ft-high Ryugyong Hotel is due to open next summer, an astonishing 24 years behind schedule. I was determined to be the first foreign visitor to set foot inside. Work actually began in 1987 under the regime of Kim Jong-Un’s grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, and was meant to open two years later as a calculated snub to neighbouring South Korea. As Seoul hosted the 1988 Olympics, North Korea would open what would then have been the world’s tallest hotel. The structure of the mighty pyramid was quickly completed, but work came to a shuddering halt in 1992 after the collapse of Pyongyang’s benefactor, the Soviet Union. It was an economic disaster for North Korea and provoked a devastating famine that killed up to 3.5 million people.
Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
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