A diving sport for daredevils

Daredevil athlete Ken Stornes is known for his extreme videos showing him diving into freezing water. His recent dive involved plunging a little over 40 m underwater. Pics/Instagram

Earlier this month, Ken Stornes, a former Norwegian MMA fighter-turned-extreme athlete, plunged into the icy waters of Nordfjord from a platform on the side of a tall cliff, breaking the record for death diving. Invented by guitar player Erling Bruno Hovden at Frognerbadet during the summer of 1972, death diving or "Dodsing" is a form of extreme freestyle high diving with stretched arms and belly first. Jumps are usually performed from a platform positioned between 10 to 15 m above the water, but the bravest of death divers plunge from much higher, with the current record in the men's classic category sitting at 40.5 m.

"Once again, we take the death dive world record back to Norway, where it belongs," Stornes wrote on his Instagram, where he first posted the video of his insane dive. Stornes, who looks and markets himself as a modern-day Viking, has amassed a following of more than 700,000 people on Instagram alone by posting videos of extreme jumps in bodies of freezing water. His latest feat has been viewed millions of times.

"I'm a person who needs to do things, I like to have something to strive for, and like to do things that can be a little risky," Ken Stornes told a Norwegian news website. "At least it makes me feel alive". Death-diving from over 40 meters is incredibly dangerous and Stornes admits that he could have seriously injured himself if he didn't nail the landing perfectly. Classic death diving requires daredevils to dive with their arms and legs extended horizontally for as long as possible, before curling up into a pike position just before they hit the water.

"I landed perfectly," Stornes said about his record-breaking 40.5 m death dive. "The landing was perfect, and that is what counts." Asked whether he would ever attempt a death dive from 50 m high, and he said, "You can't get away with 50 m without serious injuries."

Charged by AI

Russian scientist imprisoned for 10 months after AI wrongly identified him as a criminal

Alexander Tsvetkov, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Inland Water Biology, has been living a nightmare for the past 10 months. Investigators claimed that he and his alleged accomplice killed at least two people in Moscow and the Moscow region in August 2002.

According to several news sources, despite the mountain of evidence exonerating Tsvetkov in this murder case, Russian authorities chose to trust software powered by artificial intelligence. It had found that the hydrologist's appearance matched that of the wanted killer about 55 per cent, which was apparently enough to warrant his imprisonment.

Bagged to go

Fancy a meal on the go? Japanese company Sanki Consys Co. Ltd's "Willcook" bag, which looks like an average laptop bag, can heat up what is placed inside to 80C in just five minutes. The bag itself weighs just 160 gm and also has insulating properties that keeps food cool.

Fastest fingers first

6-year-old Cao Qixian from China set the new women's world record for solving a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube in 5.97 seconds (average) at the Rubik's Cube International Open in Singapore. Qixian started playing with a Rubik's cube when she was only three.

Caution: finger food

A Connecticut customer has filed a lawsuit against the fast casual chain Chopt over a salad that she says contained a piece of the manager's finger. According to the suit, a manager at the restaurant severed a piece of her left pointer finger while chopping arugula.

Nosy behaviour

A team of scientists studying freshwater ponds on an Australian island observed a rather peculiar mosquito behavior - when feeding on frogs, mosquitoes would always go for the nostrils. John Gould and Jose Valdez spent three years surveying approximately 60 freshwater wetland ponds on Kooragang Island, in New South Wales. Out of the thousands of photos, 12 of them showed mosquitoes feeding on various species of frogs sucking blood from the animals' nostrils. This suggests that the nostril is the optimal location for blood extraction, hence it was worth the risk.

Swiper no swiping

An arizona woman got a huge shock when surveillance footage showed the thief who stole her backyard cameras was four-legged and fluffy-tailed. Esmeralda Egurrola, of Tucson, noticed on Monday that her three motion-activated cameras appeared off-line. So, she checked the most recent recording in each camera from an app on her cellphone. Three videos had documented an entire heist carried out by a grey fox.