World Briefs

A satirical pop song implicitly comparing Russians planning to elect Vladimir Putin as their president in March polls to patients of a psychiatric hospital has gone viral on the Russian internet.

“Our madhouse votes for Putin / Our madhouse will be glad to have Putin,” a rock band sings to video footage of pyjama-clad patients and masked doctors dancing manically.

Last month, Prime Minister Putin announced a plan to reclaim the presidency in March presidential polls in a move that can keep him in power until 2024. The victory of the former KGB colonel, who already occupied the top Kremlin post between 2000 and 2008, is virtually assured in the March polls.

“I feel that they stole our constitutional right to choose and that is what incenses me most of all,” the band’s frontman Alexander Semyonov said. (AFP)

Tintin ‘fakes’

A Brussels restaurant stuffed with Tintin memorabilia has been ordered by heirs of the comic book hero to remove scores of items honouring the boy reporter with the quiff.

Days before the release of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie on Tintin, a national icon in Belgium, Bob Delvigne said he had been ordered to remove “fake” objects, amounting to 80 per cent of the items decorating his restaurant.

The order came from Moulinsart SA, the company that manages copyright for the heirs of Tintin author, Herge. Moulinsart is headed by Briton Nick Rodwell, second husband of Herge’s widow Fanny Vlamynck. Mr Rodwell has angered Belgian lovers of the cartoon hero as well as other Tintinophiles for restricting the use of Tintin’s image. (AFP)

IQ swings

Youngsters experience huge swings in intelligence during their teenage years, a finding with widespread implications for education, scientists reported yesterday.

The results will not surprise parents who find their children are a sandwich short of a picnic at one stage of their adolescence but a few years later display shafts of brilliance – or sometimes the reverse. But the study says the shifts are linked to changes in the structure of the brain, not to hormonal surges, a finding that challenges an enshrined belief. (AFP)

‘Stole bridge’

Two brothers have been charged with stealing a western Pennsylvania bridge and selling the 15.5 tons of scrap metal for $5,000.

Police said 24-year-old Benjamin Jones and 25-year-old Alexander Jones, of New Castle, used a blow torch to break up the 50-foot-long by 20-foot-wide Covert’s Crossing Bridge, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, in late September or early this month.

They face charges of criminal mischief, theft, receiving stolen property and conspiracy. (PA)

‘Coke’ officer

A US Army non-commissioned officer was arrested in Colombia as he prepared to travel to Paris carrying a large stash of cocaine, officials said yesterday.

Burton Lemar Deion, 26, “was found with two backpacks filled with 1,999 grams of cocaine,” a narcotics police source said.

The officer allegedly travelled to Bogota from Italy, where he is stationed, and spent three days in the Colombian capital before trying to return on October 12, when narcotics police arrested him at El Dorado International Airport. (AFP)

Electric police cars

Rome’s police force has bought 14 electric cars from French producer PSA-Peugeot-Citroen, officials said at a press conference yesterday with Italian Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo.

The 14 Citroen C-Zero vehicles bought for 500,000 euros will replace the oldest and most polluting squad cars and will patrol the historic centre as the Eternal City aims to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent before 2020.

“These cars are for particular kinds of missions,” said Ayoul Grouvel, director of distribution and mobility strategy at PSA. (AFP)

Get smart

A group of audacious pickpockets has managed to nab the smartphone of Paris’s chief of police while he was preparing to board a train, police sources said on Wednesday.

The thieves at the Gare de Lyon train station distracted Paris police prefect Michel Gaudin by asking him to sign a petition and swiped the mobile telephone from his pocket, the sources told AFP.

No sensitive information was contained in the phone, the sources said.

The embarrassing episode comes as the French interior ministry is in the midst of a campaign to raise public awareness of the growing risk of mobile telephone thefts. (AFP)