Naked men turn out to see ... Naked Men

The exhibit in Vienna's Leopold Museum is entitled Naked Men, so a group of nudists and naturalists took the curators at their word and showed up to see it on Monday in the buff. "It is good to be free, I am seeing this exhibition for the second time now and it is perfect to see Naked Men as a naked man," said one of the visitors who called himself Max and who on his previous visit wore his clothes.

Pianist Herbie Hancock will celebrate the special connection between Turkey and jazz music forged decades ago when the Turkish ambassador opened his residence to white and black musicians at a time when segregation held sway in the US capital. Hancock, a UNESCO goodwill ambassador, is organizing a gala concert with jazz stars from around the world on April 30 at the famed Hagia Irene in the outer courtyard of Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, which has been designated the host city for the second annual UN-sanctioned International Jazz Day.

Fake horse-racing blog dodges Italy's election polls blackout

Which horse are you backing in the Italian election? A blog appears to have found a way around a publishing ban on polls in the two weeks before this weekend's vote by writing up the results of pretend "underground horse races", which appear to reflect each party's standing. In line with the last published official polls, the winning horses of Tuesday's "San Nicola Racetrack" came from the "Bien Comun" stables, a thinly disguised name for the center-left "Italia Bene Comune" coalition. The center-right slate of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was shown coming in just 3.5 "seconds" behind.

Millions of birds have descended on a small Kentucky city this winter, fouling the landscape, scaring pets and raising the risk for disease in a real-life version of Alfred Hitchcock's horror film The Birds. The blackbirds and European starlings blacken the sky of Hopkinsville before roosting at dusk, turn the landscape white with bird poop, and the disease they carry can kill a dog and sicken humans.

Jenni Rivera memoir due out in July in two languages

Some final words from the late Mexican-American singer and TV star Jenni Rivera will be out this summer. Atria Books announced on Monday it is publishing a memoir by the multimillion-selling artist, who died in a plane crash in December at age 43. Unbreakable will come out simultaneously in Spanish and English. It has been authorized by Rivera's family. Atria says the book will reveal the "heart and soul" of Rivera, a mother of five and grandmother of two known for her frank talk about her life. Rivera was born in Los Angeles and launched her career by selling cassette tapes at flea markets. She went on to sell more than 15 million copies of her 12 major-label albums.

Belgian boar hunters come up short in mass cull effort

Efforts to cull a sprawling population of wild boar in Belgium's northern forests met with limited results this week after a party of 200 hunters managed to kill only one animal. The hunt was organized last week by local wildlife officials in a northern forest near the town of Postel, where several road accidents have been linked to wild boar.

Reuters

(China Daily 02/24/2013 page4)