MOSKOU (ANP/AFP) - Bij een explosie in een restaurant in Moskou zijn zeker drie mensen omgekomen. Dat melden Russische persbureaus op gezag van de politie. Ook raakten voor zover bekend vijftien mensen gewond.

De explosie vond plaats bij het restaurant Balzi Rossi, aan de rand van het centrum van de Russische hoofdstad. Onduidelijk is nog wat er is voorgevallen. Op basis van onbevestigde berichten op sociale media zou het mogelijk gaan om een gaslek.

Ook klinken er geluiden dat er mogelijk een hooggeplaatste Russische militair aanwezig zou zijn geweest in het pand. Volgens de Oekraïense krant Kyiv Post melden ooggetuigen dat Aleksandr Tsjajko, de commandant van de Russische Lucht- en Ruimtevaartmacht, zijn verjaardag vierde in het horecafiliaal. Dat krijgsmachtonderdeel voert onder meer het gezag over raketlancering en -verdediging. Bevestigd zijn die geruchten niet.

Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: The northern German City of Hamburg is currently in the process of replacing one of its bridges in one single gigantic piece. The new replacement weighs 3700 metric tons and was carefully moved into place over a stretch of 500 meters, requiring extreme patience and precision maneuvering. Some places leave only 40 cm of room to neighbouring buildings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The comedian and Drag Race Down Under judge on Harry Styles, not having the legs for short shorts, and why sleep is the most expensive beauty product

You’re back on the judging panel of Drag Race Down Under vs The World. What do you think gives Australian queens the edge?

I think our drag tends not to focus as much on female impersonation. It’s about building a character. People like Lazy Susan, who’s on the judging panel this year, is one of my favourites because there’s no illusion about this being a man in women’s clothing, but there’s creativity to it. I think Australian drag is about creating art, as opposed to creating a woman.

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Long before looksmaxxers, Aziz ‘Zyzz’ Shavershian was famous online for posting workouts and rage-bait – until he died in Thailand in 2011. A new documentary reveals what really happened

Decades before the extreme aesthetic trend of looksmaxxing, there was Zyzz. Aziz Shavershian was an Australian teenager who became a fitness influencer in the 2000s, filming his workouts and thoughts about the world on his Nokia and posting them to YouTube. Zyzz was big in all senses of the word: many of his videos would see him flexing into unabashedly vain bodybuilding poses, hair feathered like an anime character, as he mocked his audience’s envy with slang straight out of bodybuilding forums: “U mirin’, brah?” He was skilled in rage-bait long before anyone had heard of it, creating accounts to troll himself in case the haters ever forgot to hate. He started an anonymous Facebook page, titled “10,000 likes and I’ll bash Zyzz”, and, when the goal was reached, switched the page to one advertising his protein brand.

Then Aziz made headlines in Australia when he suddenly and unexpectedly died in 2011, at the age of 22. By that point he’d attracted more than 60,000 Facebook followers who either loved him or loved to hate him. His global audience grew even more rapidly after his death as speculation grew about its cause. Fraudulent attempts to access the coroner’s report were made by people impersonating his family. Influencers made videos claiming he had faked his death. Zyzz “sightings” were posted for years.

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The cabaret performers met while on tour in Canada. But it wasn’t until her new partner befriended her mother that Sachie realised how thoughtful he was

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I met Trent in 2012 in a car park in Winnipeg. We were handing out flyers on the Canadian fringe circuit. I was wearing a pink tutu for my contemporary clown show and Trent was in the tight black suit of his vaudeville character the Birdmann. We barely spoke but I had this strange feeling, almost as if I should avoid him – a feeling I sometimes get around people who go on to become important in my life.

Backstage at the next festival in Edmonton, Trent kept trying to give me liquorice but I don’t like it. I wasn’t sure why he was paying me so much attention, although I wondered if he was impressed by seeing me play trumpet in the show.

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Pencil marks in the margins of books gathered over a lifetime was proof of a life lived. So when it came time for Andrew McKean to move into aged care, leaving his books behind made the self thinner

My wife, Patricia, and I came to our nursing home with little more than clothes, a few photographs and some books we could still carry. The shelves we left behind still stand in the emptied rooms of the house we called home for 30 years. Those shelves once groaned under the weight of books we had gathered, page by page, year by year.

Our books told of who we were, or who we thought we might become. There were the novels Patricia read in the long evenings after the children slept, their spines cracked from her hands. There were the histories I brought home from the library sales, dusty volumes of wars and voyages that filled the quiet hours when rain beat on the roof. Poetry too, slim books with thin paper, marked where a line struck true. We kept them not only for the stories printed inside but for the story they made of us.

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Secondhand booksellers believe they may have been caught up in the AI supply chain that sees old books scanned then destroyed

“Sometimes books tell you more than the content,” says Tim White, as he lines up carefully dust-jacketed books and pamphlets in plastic sleeves on temporary shelves in Melbourne University’s Wilson Hall.

He’s preparing his stall for this weekend’s Melbourne Rare Book Fair. For people like White, who runs independent bookshop Books for Cooks, the book as a physical object is just as important as what’s inside it.

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It highlights economic problems—and helps explain how to solve them.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo: