A recent study found that hair samples taken from men’s beards contained more bacteria than fur taken from dogs, generating many breathless headlines in the process. However, this factoid is cherry-picked and somewhat misleading.

The actual purpose of the study, originally published in July 2018 in the journal European Radiology but which has reemerged in recent days, aimed to determine whether it was indeed hygienic to use human MRI scanners on our pets (Spoiler: it is).

“The main objective of this prospective multi-centre study is to determine whether it would be hygienic to evaluate dogs and humans in the same MRI scanner by comparing the microbial flora of dogs and humans,” it said.

As our pets enjoy longer life-spans, they experience an increase in diseases associated with their old age, many of which necessitate radiological scans. Germaphobes and hygiene enthusiasts alike were concerned at the potential for the transmission of zoonotic diseases, infectious diseases that can pass from animals to humans (like bird flu or rabies) and which account for 75 percent of new human diseases.

“People are afraid that they will contract a zoonosis if they share scanners with their furry friends,” the researchers wrote in their paper. However, we already share a large number of bacteria with our canine companions owing to our close proximity, even without sharing MRI machines.

The researchers took samples from the coats and mouths of 30 dogs and from 18 bearded men who also had upcoming MRI examinations, by pressing agar plates onto their facial hair. We already know that the vast majority of bacteria found in human body hair are essentially harmless to us (thanks, immune system), and some can be, and often are, beneficial to our health.

Long story short: it’s fine for dogs to use human MRI machines and it might even be more hygienic than it otherwise would have been because of sterilization techniques used after the canine scans.

“In this prospective multi-centre study, we showed that dogs do not pose a significant hygiene risk to humans even if they utilise the same MRI scan facility,” the researchers wrote.

Finally, various studies have extolled the virtues and health benefits of facial hair on men, with some suggesting those without beards were more than three times as likely to be harboring methicillin-resistant staph aureus (MRSA).

Microbiologist Adam Roberts carried out an experiment in which he was able to grow more than 100 types of bacteria from material swabbed from beards and found that it was possible that some of the microbes killed other harmful microbes off. Certain beard bacteria can also be harvested to develop antibiotics.

So while the quantity of bacteria on men’s beards may be higher than man’s best friend, the quality of the bacteria may, in fact, mean they are healthier than their clean-shaven human counterparts and just as healthy as their dogs.

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Former Peruvian President Alan Garcia has died after shooting himself in the head as police arrived at his home to arrest him. The ex-president was rushed to hospital, but doctors could not save him.

As police officers knocked on his door on Wednesday morning, Garcia shut himself in his room and shot himself in the head. The former leader was rushed to hospital, reportedly suffered multiple cardiac arrests during surgery, and died several hours later.

Peruvian president Martin Vizcarra confirmed Garcia’s passing, sending his condolences to the late leader’s family and loved ones.

Garcia, who served as president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 and again from 2006 to 2011, had been under investigation for bribery. The former president was one of more than 230 people across Latin America investigated in a corruption case centered on Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.

The former leader sought asylum in Uruguay last November, after a judge barred him from leaving Peru for 18 months. The asylum request was denied, and a judge in Lima ordered his detention on Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Garcia took bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for a lucrative public transport contract in Lima. Garcia denied the charge, and claimed he was being politically persecuted.

Peru’s last five ex-presidents have all served jail time or are under investigation for corruption. Garcia’s successor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, is also being investigated for his alleged involvement in the Odebrecht scandal. Prosecutors are currently seeking to extend Kuczynski’s detention until he can be brought to trial.

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The current CIA director reportedly played on Donald Trump’s emotions to persuade him to expel dozens of Russian diplomats, using pictures of dead ducks and sick children that she claimed had been exposed to Novichok.

The New York Times reports that the president was reluctant to throw out any Russian officials in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in Britain last year, until Gina Haspel, who was CIA deputy director at the time, showed him pictures of children “sickened by the Novichok” and “a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.”

The revelation marks the first public mention of the existence of such material which the New York Times reports had been provided by British intelligence.

At no point during the Salisbury poisoning saga have the British authorities mentioned the discovery of dead ducks or children having been made ill by poison. Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper says its government sources are not aware of any photographs having been sent to the CIA.

There are now questions over whether Trump was not only emotionally manipulated by a senior member of his own spy agency, but also whether he was shown misinformation or misleading material in order to get him to take more hostile actions against Russia.

It’s suggested that Haspel resorted to playing on the emotions of Trump because he was reluctant to agree to London’s request to expel diplomats. He reportedly regarded the Salisbury poisoning as “legitimate spy games,” although Moscow denies any responsibility for what happened to former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Haspel is said to have pushed for the “strong option” of sending 60 Russian diplomats home, which is what Trump ultimately agreed to.

The pictures shown to the president may refer to the three children who were asked to go to hospital two weeks after the Skripals were found poisoned, but all three were given the all clear.

The children had apparently fed ducks alongside the former spy on the day he was discovered unconscious on a park bench, but there was no evidence of exposure to poisonous substances in any of them and they were sent home.

The report in the NYT has now opened yet more room for speculation surrounding events in Salisbury. There is either evidence which has not been publicly released by Britain for unknown reasons or the CIA was manipulating the material it gave to Trump. 

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The US is targeting Cuba with additional sanctions, including restricting travel to the island nation, limiting remittances, and sanctioning additional entities, White House national security adviser John Bolton said.

US citizens sending remittances to Cuba will be limited t $1,000 per person per quarter, Bolton said on Wednesday. Non-family travel will be restricted to reduce “veiled tourism” that benefits the Cuban government and military, he added.

“Through the Treasury Department, we will also implement changes to end the use of ‘U-turn transactions,’ which allow the regime to circumvent sanctions and obtain access to hard currency and the US banking system,” Bolton said in a speech to veterans of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when CIA-backed Cuban exiles tried to overthrow Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government.

The move comes a day after the White House announced it would stop issuing waivers on implementing the Helms-Burton law, which would penalize anyone in the world who did business with Cuban entities using property seized from US owners following the 1959 Cuban revolution.

“No one will take the fatherland from us, neither by seduction nor by force,” Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Treasury has not officially announced the new sanctions, but Bolton said five entities will be added to the Cuban blacklist, including the military-owned airline Aerogaviota.

The US cut diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, and over the following decades imposed a wide range of sanctions on the island nation, just 90 miles south of Florida. Former president Barack Obama sought to soften the US policy in 2015, leading to the reopening of the US and Cuban embassies and loosening of travel restrictions.

In June 2017, however, Trump rolled back all of Obama’s changes, returning to a hard-line policy on Cuba. Additional sanctions were introduced this year, as part of the US effort to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela spearheaded by Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), son of Cuban exiles.

The Trump administration has accused Cuba of “occupying” Venezuela, claiming that the Cuban military was helping Maduro stay in power.

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Of all the relics kept at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris), the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the True Cross are the most revered. Their fate was in question as the 850-year-old church went up in flames.

Relics believed to be a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, as well as the Crown of Thorns he wore, have been kept at the cathedral for centuries. The braided circle held together by golden thread has about 70 or so thorns attached. The relics were obtained from the Byzantine Empire in 1238, and brought to Paris by King Louis IX.

All of the relics were saved and the cathedral’s treasury was preserved despite the damage, according to a Paris Match journalist who quoted Father Frederic, one of the priests at Notre-Dame, on Monday evening.

Notre-Dame is the most visited monument in the French capital. Over 12 million people visit the cathedral every year, making it the most visited monument in Paris – ahead of the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, according to official statistics.

READ MORE: Watch the moment Spire of Notre Dame cathedral collapses due to fire

It has been damaged and restored many times over its 850-year history, but never so severely as during Monday’s fire that has toppled its spire and caused its roof to completely collapse.

Construction on the original cathedral, located on the central island of Paris (Ile de la cite) began in 1163, and was largely completed by 1260. It was fitted with additional flying buttresses in the 1500s, to support the imposing Gothic structure.

READ MORE: Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on fire (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Built like a “poor people’s book,” the cathedral’s exterior featured sculptures and reliefs illustrating the stories from the Bible – for example, the western facade facing the square showed the Last Judgment – as well as gargoyles and other monstrous creatures.

Notre-Dame was damaged and desecrated during and after the 1789 French Revolution, but was somewhat repaired for the December 1804 coronation of Emperor Napoleon I.

Victor Hugo’s novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1831) revived the popular interest in the landmark, and restoration work began in 1845. Its famous stained glass windows – first built in 1225 – and exterior statuary, were rebuilt at this time. Additional cleaning and restoration work was done in the 1960s and again in the 1990s.

The cathedral has been a target of several terrorist plots in recent years. In February 2017, four people were arrested in Montpelier on charges of plotting to attack the cathedral. A car filled with explosives was found outside Notre Dame in September 2016.

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Prosecutors say that two university students are responsible for letting their backyard barbecue get out of control by about 1000 hectares, and hit them with the bill for the damages: A cool $15.3 million… each.

Normally if a college student says ‘it was lit’ in reference to hanging out and eating barbecue, it would mean he had a good time. In the case of two 22-year-old students in northern Italy, however, it would just as likely refer to a massive fire which burned down forests across half of a mountain last December.

The two were having a cookout at a grandparent’s mountain-side home in the Upper Lake Como area when a blaze broke out. One of the men said that he and his mate immediately called the fire department when they saw the fire, and even “threw themselves at the flames” to try to extinguish them. Despite their effort, the fire spread rapidly over 1,000 hectares of land, including a farm where most of the animals were killed.

Having traced the path of destruction back to the barbecue, local officials concluded that the students were responsible. According to local media, authorities tallied up the eye-watering bill in accordance with a standard formula of $133-$670 per square meter. Officials even say they cut the boys a deal with the over $15 million dollar fine, because the actual total was somewhere around $40 million.

The students maintain their innocence and say local officials are using them as a “scapegoat” for a fire that had “many outbreaks,” and at the end of the day “could not be explained.”

“What is the sense to impose an administrative sanction… already knowing that the two boys, still students, cannot pay it?” Ivana Anomali, the lawyer to one of the accused said.

Authorities, however, told local media that the outlandish sum was justified, calling the incident “a signal that we need to push people to greater responsibility in protecting the environment.”

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US National Security Advisor John Bolton has signaled that Washington’s latest sanctions on Venezuela are a “warning” to “external actors” against deploying military assets to support the government of Nicolas Maduro.

The US imposed new sanctions on the Central Bank of Venezuela on Wednesday, restricting US transactions and cutting off access to US dollars. It also targeted Cuba with sanctions, including travel restrictions.

Bolton said the measures should be seen by other powers, including Russia, as a warning against providing any help for Maduro government, which the Trump administration has branded “illegitimate.”

Bolton said Russia’s recent deployment of military planes to Venezuela posed a “threat to security” in the region, just two months after the US openly attempted to instigate a military coup in the country.

He said Russia’s “provocative” action was a threat to “international peace” and security.

“Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well,” Bolton said, referencing the infamous US policy of opposition to European colonialism in the Western hemisphere beginning in 1823, which ultimately allowed the US to treat Latin America as its own background and experimental coup playground.

During his speech, Bolton also announced new sanctions on Nicaragua’s Bancorp and on Laureano Ortega, the son of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. Bancorp had previously been sanctioned for its links to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA.

The US has also made recent threats to Nicaragua, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning in February that Ortega’s “days are numbered” and the “the Nicaraguan people will soon be free.”

The Trump administration called for the overthrow of Maduro’s government in mid-January and announced it would recognize opposition leader and self-declared president Juan Guaido as the country’s “legitimate” leader.

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The latest ‘Hellboy’ movie has made headlines in Russia after the Russian-dubbed version swapped the word ‘Stalin’ for ‘Hitler’ in an exchange between the movie’s superhero and one of its villains.

The supernatural scare-fest features Russian folklore character Baba Yaga, a deformed looking witch, who (in this interpretation) has only one eye and crawls around backwards instead of walking.

In one scene, Baba Yaga is accused by Hellboy of trying to“raise the spirit of Stalin” but Russian viewers watching the dubbed version hear“raise the spirit of Hitler” instead. It’s unclear why the former Soviet leader’s name was removed, but viewers were left perplexed by the switch.

Twitter users who saw the subtitled version of the movie in cinemas noticed something else strange, too. The word ‘Hitler’ is bleeped out, but the Nazi dictator’s name stills remains visible in the subtitles.

So far, Megogo Distribution, the company responsible for the film’s Russian release has not responded to inquiries from Russian media asking about the motivation behind the change.

It appears, however, that this is not the first time Megogo has changed some details of US films for the Russian audience. Film review website Kinopoisk noted that in the 2017 action movie The Hitman’s Bodyguard, the ruthless Belarusian dictator comes from Bosnia-Herzegovina instead.

Meanwhile, a new poll has found that Stalin’s approval rating is at a record high among Russians — although 45 percent still said his repression and crimes were unjustified.

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A bus carrying over 50 tourists on the Portuguese island of Madeira overturned and slid down a hill. Local media report as many as 28 fatalities, and there are fears that number may rise.

The bus slid off the road and crashed on top of a house around 6:30 pm local time, near the town of Caniço in the municipality of Santa Cruz, on the southeastern side of the island.

Videos from the scene show the wreckage of the white bus on a roadside slope, with rescue crews trying to extract the passengers.

“There are fatalities but information on the number of victims is still not certain,” Filipe Sousa, head of the municipality of Santa Cruz, told the Lusa news agency.

However, Sousa later told the Lisbon-based Jornal de Negocios that 11 men and 17 women, all German tourists, were dead. There were 57 people on the bus, including 55 tourists, a tour guide, and the driver.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is on his way to the island to visit the crash site, Lusa agency reported. The German embassy in Portugal said it has reached out to local authorities, but declined to confirm the casualty figures just yet.

More than a dozen ambulances and other rescue vehicles are to the scene, near the Quinta Splendida hotel and botanical gardens in Caniço. Rescuers continue to pull victims out of the broken-up bus, amid fears that the death toll might rise.

This is the worst bus accident on the island in over 13 years. Five Italian tourists died in a 2005 bus crash in São Vicente, on Madeira’s north coast.

Located in the mid-Atlantic, off the coast of Africa, the Madeira archipelago is a popular tourist destination, with over a million visits every year. It was settled by the Portuguese in the XV century, and it is famous as the birthplace of soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.

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Cuban officials didn’t even need to look for a punchline for their response to new US sanctions, announced on the same day that, almost six decades ago, the failed US-sponsored invasion of the socialist island began.

On April 17, 1961, a well-armed group of Cuban exiles, who were trained and financed by the CIA, landed in the Bay of Pigs with the aim of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s government. But the invaders faced a strong response from the Revolutionary Armed Forces and surrendered after just three days of fighting, while the US faced a massive international backlash for plotting the coup.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez was quick to remind Washington of the embarrassing blunder, writing on Twitter: “Aggressive escalation of US against Cuba will fail. As in Giron (Bay of Pigs), we shall overcome.”

Rodríguez blasted the sanctions, which he called “an attack against International Law and the sovereignty of Cuba and third states.”

The head of the US Division in the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Josefina Vidal, also chipped in, promising that the US will lose once again, just as had happened in the Bay of Pigs.

White House national security adviser John Bolton announced the new sanctions on Havana in a speech before the veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

“Under this administration, we don’t throw dictators lifelines. We take them away,” he stressed.

The sanctions will see remittances sent by US citizens to Cuba limited to $1,000 per-person per-quarter and non-family travel restricted to stop Cuban government from benefiting from “veiled tourism.” Five more entities will also be added to the Cuban blacklist, including the military-owned airline Aerogaviota, Bolton said.

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