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In the 1998 movie Armageddon, Bruce Willis saved the Earth from a giant doomsday asteroid by splitting it in half with a nuclear bomb.
But in reality, such a strategy would just not work, a study has shown. Borrowing a famous phrase from another Hollywood film, Jaws, we would need a bigger bomb.
A team of physics students from the University of Leicester calculated it would have to be a billion times more powerful than the largest nuclear device ever detonated on Earth, the Soviet Union’s 50-megaton hydrogen bomb “Big Ivan”. The asteroid would also have to be detected much earlier than the one in the film to stand any chance of splitting it in time.
The research is published in this year’s University of Leicester Journal of Special Physics Topics.
Public smooching in protest
Couples of all ages locked lips outside a church in the conservative central Mexico city of Leon to protest at the arrest of a man for kissing his female companion.
The “kiss-in” – held at noon on Sunday to coincide with Mass – received applause from some parishioners at the Catholic church.
Manuel Berumen, a 38-year-old university lecturer, was detained for 12 hours for engaging in the public display of affection while strolling last Thursday in a nearby square with his partner and their four-year-old son.
“I took Mayra and kissed her, nothing out of the ordinary. And then we heard a person screaming: ‘There are children here – children!’ as if we were naked or engaging in pornography on the street,” Mr Berumen told reporters Monday after filing a complaint to the country’s human rights advocacy agency.
Unholy brawl over break-fast
An unholy brawl between rival hardline Islamists, some wielding knives, broke out in a Tunisian mosque, after hungry members of one group broke their fast a few minutes early, state media reported yesterday.
The bust-up occurred on Monday when followers of a certain Salafist scholar began to eat within the precincts of the Hidaya mosque in Beja, northern Tunisia, shortly before the evening call to prayer, which signals the end of the daily Ramadan fast, the TAP news agency reported.
That stirred the wrath of a group of “jihadists” worshipping at the same mosque, who accused their co-religionists of heresy, and the argument degenerated into a fight involving knives and tear gas, according to witnesses cited by TAP.
Kenya’s MPs get €1,920 seats
Kenya yesterday opened its Parliament, newly refurbished at a cost of over $11 million and kitted out with plush red leather seats for lawmakers each with a pricetag of $2,400.
“The seats were made by prisoners at a cost of 200,000 shillings (€1,920), which was actually a significant saving on what was originally proposed,” said a parliamentary official, who would not give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The original budget allocated for the seats was twice the amount actually spent.
President Mwai Kibaki opened the 350-seat renovated Parliament, calling it an “institution for governing as well as defending the rights of Kenyans, particularly the underprivileged.
Mafia man gunned down
An alleged key figure in one of Corsica’s most powerful crime families, Maurice Costa of the Brise de Mer gang, was gunned down in broad daylight yesterday at his local butcher shop, police said.
Two masked gunmen shot and killed Mr Costa, 60, at 11.08 a.m. through the window of the butcher shop in the village of Ponte-Leccia in the north of the French island, police said.
Police said a single hunting rifle was fired at least twice and that Mr Costa died on the spot after being struck in the chest. The gunmen fled in a car that was later found burned a few kilometres away.