PARIS: Everything from why we follow our noses to trying to match Putin’s pecs is covered. Your weekly dose of unusual news from around the world.
Show him what we have.
World leaders are supposed to rise above it all, but at their meeting in Germany, the G7 leaders couldn’t help but poke fun at Vladimir Putin’s penchant for bare-chested he-man photo shoots.
When asked if they wanted to remove their jackets for a group photograph, Britain’s Boris Johnson said, “We have to show we’re tougher than Putin.”
“We’re getting the bare-chested horseback riding display,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joked.
“We’ve got to show them our pecs,” Johnson interjected, raising the stakes before the leaders were quickly escorted out of the room.
Putin laughed off the insults, saying, “I don’t know if they wanted to undress to the waist or even lower, but it would have been a disgusting sight.”
After UNESCO listed Ukraine’s beetroot soup as endangered cultural heritage, Kyiv declared “victory in the borshch war.” Needless to say, it was not well received in Moscow.
Several countries, including Poland, claim ownership of the soup, prompting Moscow to accuse Kyiv of appropriation.
“This is xenophobia,” said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, clearly concerned that Chicken Kiev would soon become Chicken Kyiv.
But, in classic cloak-and-dagger fashion, Moscow may have pulled off its own culinary coup. The inclusion of Russian salad on the menu of the NATO summit in Madrid was not by chance. Touche!
Please take note, diplomats attempting to settle tricky international disputes over soup and the like. Experiment with sniffing each other’s armpits.
According to new research, people with similar body odours are more likely to get along, proving that “good chemistry” really does help develop friendships.
Israeli scientists used a rigorous set of lab and human sniff tests to show that we are more like dogs than we think, who “constantly sniff themselves and each other to… decide who is friend or foe.”
