RUSSIA
‘Twerk’ dance school probed
Investigators on Tuesday were probing a dance school after a video showing teenage girls in bee costumes performing the sexually explicit “twerking” dance move was viewed millions of times online. The video, called Winnie the Pooh and the bees, shows a group of girls in striped orange leotards and short black wrap skirts performing on stage at a dance school in the city of Orenburg. Since being uploaded onto YouTube over the weekend it has gained more than 5 million views, drawing the attention of the powerful Investigative Committee. The investigators said they were looking into an incident of “so-called twerking” by “underage girls in revealing outfits.” Twerking entered the global lexicon after US pop star Miley Cyrus infamously performed the gesture at the MTV VMA awards in 2013. Children’s Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov called the dance move “vulgar and insulting.” Regional prosecutors issued a statement saying they were looking into “all activities” offered by the youth center that hosts the dance school and were also investigating its businesswoman owner.
NETHERLANDS
Chimpanzee downs drone
Beware. Chimp Tushi at the Dutch Burgers’ Zoo is a real drone-buster. When the zoo sent a drone over the chimpanzee enclosure for a better look at how their 14 apes live, the response was swift. With the unfamiliar intruder coming close to them, 23-year-old female Tushi waited in a tree, gritted her teeth and with two whacks from a long branch downed the drone. No sweat. Zoo spokesman Bas Lukkenaar said on Tuesday that “we can write the drone off. It cost about 2,000 euros [US$2,122]. Then again, it doesn’t surprise that Tushi did this. She is very handy with sticks.” With the camera still rolling on the ground after Tushi’s strike, the zoo got some closeup footage anyway — of chimps coming to inspect their kill.
ISRAEL
Cheese smuggler thwarted
When health inspectors spotted a mail truck crossing into the nation from the West Bank, something did not smell right. Further examination discovered the source of their suspicion — cheese. The agriculture ministry said the truck contained 300kg of cheese stuffed into cans, bottles and other unsanitary containers. The driver, a Palestinian in his 40s from east Jerusalem, was arrested in Monday’s incident. He is an employee of the Israeli mail service and admitted to smuggling the cheese in hopes of reselling it. The ministry said the same man was caught a month earlier, committing the same offense. The cheese was not refrigerated, had no health certificates and was unfit for consumption. It said the bootleg cheese posed a public safety concern and was destroyed.
HONDURAS
National police chief burgled
Burglars broke into the house of the national police chief on Monday, making off with a computer, he said. “The criminals must be disappointed because they didn’t get much,” Commissioner Hector Ivan Mejia said. Mejia and his wife, who were out at the time, live in a gated community called Altos de la Granja on the south side of the capital, Tegucigalpa. Local media reports said the burglars jumped a wall to get into the upscale community and also made off with a safe, but abandoned it in a vacant lot when they were unable to open it. A flutter of commentary erupted on social media in the crime-weary nation, which has the world’s highest homicide rate — 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, according to the UN. “Not even [the police] are safe!” a Twitter user wrote.
UNITED STATES
Singer Percy Sledge dies
Percy Sledge, who soared from part-time singer and hospital orderly to lasting fame with his aching, forlorn performance on the classic When a Man Loves a Woman, died on Tuesday in Louisiana. He was 74. His family said in a statement released through his manager, Mark Lyman, that he died “peacefully” at his home in Baton Rouge. The cause of death was liver failure, Lyman said. A No. 1 hit in 1966, When a Man Loves a Woman was Sledge’s debut single. The song was a personal triumph for Sledge, who seemed on the verge of sobbing throughout the production, and a breakthrough for Southern soul. It was the first No. 1 hit from the burgeoning Muscle Shoals music scene in northern Alabama, where Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones among others would record, and the first gold record for Atlantic Records.
UNITED STATES
Shooting suspect arrested
The suspect in a fatal shooting at a North Carolina college campus was arrested on Tuesday after being found asleep on a Florida beach 800km away, police said. Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, 20, was sought for the shooting on Monday of a male employee in the Wayne Community College library. Police said they were investigating the case as a “possible hate crime” and looking into Stancil’s extensive tattoos and possible affiliation with white supremacist groups. “Stancil had a calculated plan and he in fact carried out that plan,” Jeremy Sutton of the Goldsboro Police Department told a news conference in the North Carolina town. Stancil was taken into custody in Florida early on Tuesday, according to Goldsboro town officials. “Mr Stancil was found sleeping on the beach in Daytona City, where he was approached by officers with the Volusia County [Florida] Beach Patrol for violating the city’s no sleeping on the beach ordinance,” a police statement said. Officials said Stancil, who was armed with a knife, was taken into custody without incident.
UNITED NATIONS
‘Bond’ given mine mission
Daniel Craig, who won acclaim playing James Bond, added a mission on Tuesday when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed the actor as the first Global Advocate for the Elimination of Mines and Explosive Hazards. In a brief ceremony at UN headquarters, Ban thanked Craig for his commitment to support the agency’s vision for a world free from the threat of land mines and explosive remnants of war. “Along with moviegoers worldwide, I have been on the edge of my seat watching Mr Craig as James Bond defuse ticking time-bombs with seconds to spare,” the secretary-general said. “I am even more excited that Mr Craig has agreed to use his star power to draw attention to the noble causes of mine destruction and mine awareness.”
CANADA
Astronaut to release album
Astronaut Chris Hadfield plans to release the first album written and recorded in space. Hadfield, 55, gained fame in 2013 with his take of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. “Space album! Happy to announce that we will release a full album’s worth of music written and recorded in space in fall 2015 with Warner Music Canada. Exciting!” he wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. Hadfield, who retired as an astronaut in June 2013, had an acoustic guitar and a laptop during his stay aboard the International Space Station from December 2012 to May 2013. “The guitar and vocal tracks were recorded in space — a human first,” Warner Music said.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
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