Mixed Shots

Shooting For A Degree

Inside? her hotel room in Zagreb, Olympic medal hope Manu Bhaker is juggling shooting and studies. Bhaker’s pistol gave way to a pen and the shooting gear to her study materials as the 19-year-old logs in for her BA fourth semester exam—a day before the Tokyo-bound Indian shooting contingent hits the range for its first training session in Croatia. A student of political science in Delhi University’s Lady Shri Ram College for Women, the champion shooter’s exams started on May 18. “I will manage both, as I have done in the past,” she told PTI.

The Shark GPS

Sharks use the Earth’s magnetic field as a sort of natural GPS to navigate journeys that take them great distances across the world’s oceans. Researchers said their marine laboratory experiments with a small species of shark confirm long-held speculation that sharks use magnetic fields as aids to navigation—behaviour observed in other marine animals such as sea turtles. The study could help inform management of shark species, which are in decline. A study this year found that worldwide abundance of oceanic sharks and rays dropped more than 70 per cent between 1970 and 2018.

Goddess Corona, Pray Go Away

In the land of gods and goddesses, there’s a new deity— Corona Mai. Women in several villages of Varanasi and Kushinagar in UP have deified the coronavirus and have started worshipping Corona Mai to calm her down. And in Malana, the sequestered village of 2,100 people in Himachal Pradesh who believe they are direct descendents of Alexander the Great, the presiding god— Jamdagni Rishi or Jamlu Devta—will decide if the denizens be inoculated for the virus or give the jab the pass. This comes amid the BJP’s J&K vice president Yudhvir Sethi performing a ‘havan’ to ward off the virus; seers and volunteers of RSS and other Hindu outfits in UP reciting the Hanuman Chalisa eleven times to drive away the coronavirus; and BJP MP Pragya Thakur claiming that she has kept Covid in check by drinking cow urine aka gomutra.?

Eat Chicken Brains, Live Long

Australia’s oldest-ever man has included eating chicken brains among his secrets to living more than 111 years. On May 17, retired cattle rancher Dexter Kruger marked 124 days since he turned 111, a day older than World War I veteran Jack Lockett was when he died in 2002. Kruger told Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview at his nursing home in the rural Queensland state town of Roma days before the milestone that a weekly poultry delicacy had contributed to his longevity. “Chicken brains. You know, chickens have a head. And in there, there’s a brain. And they are delicious little things,” Kruger said. “There’s only one little bite.”

Self-Inflicting Selfie

This is one selfie to die for—well almost. Biker Vishal Singh, 25, was gravely wounded after he tried to take a selfie with a wild, adolescent elephant in Jharkhand’s Dumka district. The elephant had strayed from its herd around a month ago and is wreaking havoc in villages. It is on the way to its natural corridor when Singh came upon the animal and he tried to take a selfie. The tusker caught him with its trunk and gave him what is locally known as the dhobi pachaar—the washerman’s flog.

cenotaph

Illustrations: Saahil, Text curated by Alka Gupta