Yesterday was...

A good day for:

The people of Guangzhou, where the city's sanitation bureau has promised to build 200 portable lavatories this year to shorten queues outside the 600 public toilets currently having to serve a population of five million.

According to a report in the China Daily, that figure includes one million transients "who often have no other place to go".

Another bad day for:

Santa Claus. A Finnish Santa Claus was reported to have been a passenger on the plane hijacked in Japan. The Association of Santa Clauses, however, denounced him as a non-member with no right to call himself "Father Christmas". Meanwhile, the Santa Claus House in Alaska has been unable to find anyone to dress up in a red suit and say "Ho-ho-ho".