World in brief, Dec. 6

Last dictator standing at Christmas
Nando’s, a restaurant chain based in South Africa, has withdrawn a controversial ad after it received threats from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s youth militia. The ad, for the chain’s six-piece chicken combo, shows Mugabe setting out dinner name tags for his fellow dictators, now deposed. He then pauses to reminisce about his time with them, in a flashback set to Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days.” The president has a water-gun fight with Moammar Gadhafi, makes sand angels with Saddam Hussein and sings karaoke with Mao Tse-tung before coming back to reality to find himself alone at his dinner table at Christmas. According to the BBC, the youth militia branch Chipangano had called for Nando’s to withdraw and apologize for the ad or face boycotts. It is considered an offence under Zimbabwean law to insult Mugabe or undermine his authority. You can still catch the ad on YouTube.Rubber on, L.A. porn
Actors in the Los Angeles adult film industry may soon be required to use condoms in their movies, if an initiative of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation is passed. The group gathered 64,000 signatures to ensure the initiative is put on a ballot. However, not all are pleased with the effort, which is meant to reduce the threat of transmitting sexually transmitted infections on set, the Los Angeles Times reported. Free Speech Coalition, a porn lobbying group, says the testing currently offered by the industry is sufficient. The initiative would also allow the city to charge a fee to inspect film sets. Cases of HIV-positive porn actors have led to several temporary shutdowns of the L.A. porn industry, most recently in August of this year.

World won’t end in 2012
The Mayan calendar is often said to predict that the apocalypse is in December 2012. But a new interpretation says that the calendar actually predicts the end of an era, and not the world itself. Mayan codes researcher Sven Gronemeyer told the Associated Press that the date marked the return of the Mayan god of creation and war. It would also mark the end of one of the 400-year periods into which the Mayan calendar is divided. According to Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropological History, only two out of 15,000 Mayan texts mention the date, and no Mayan text predicts the end of the world.

Christmas cheer overload
Too much Christmas cheer in stores has a negative impact on the purchasing habits of shoppers, researchers from the University of Oxford have found. According to The Telegraph, as stress levels run high due to the pressures of the holiday season, people are less willing to spend money in stores which have gone overboard with the holiday spirit. Nancy Puccinelli, the researcher who led the study, explained the holiday atmosphere can actually make stressed shoppers feel worse. The result can be less traffic and fewer sales for retailers in the short-term and losing customers in the long run, Puccinelli said.

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