Swiss police are investigating a crash in which a pensioner was seriously injured when his car was hit by a Lamborghini sports car being driven by a young Russian man who was allegedly racing three others along the banks of Lake Geneva.
The driver of the Lamborghini Murcielago was one of a group who set off from a Geneva hotel at 11.20pm last Thursday in four luxury cars including a 1.4 million euro (US$2 million) Bugatti Veyron. They were said to have driven at speeds in excess of 200kph on the road between Geneva and Lausanne. Swiss police said the drivers were frantically overtaking each other.
“It was like a grand prix,” one witness said.
The unnamed 22-year-old driver of the Lamborghini eventually plowed into a Volkswagen Golf, pitching it 50m across the road. Its driver, a 70-year-old German pensioner, was severely injured.
The Russian was said to have then staggered out of his wrecked car, after which his friends picked him up and fled the scene. Police later arrested all four drivers. The Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve reported that tests showed the driver of the Lamborghini was drunk.
The case has thrown a spotlight on Russia’s so-called “golden youth” — the children of Russian politicians, diplomats and mega-rich oligarchs. On Monday Moscow’s newspapers pondered why these young Russians were so much more appalling than their Western counterparts.
Dmitry Rogozin — Moscow’s outspoken ambassador to NATO — said that the reported antics of the four young Russians had severely dented the country’s reputation abroad.
“The first generation of our ‘new Russians’ are behaving like complete prats,” he said.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
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