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Russian court denies WNBA’s Brittney Griner’s appeal, World’s dirtiest man dies after showering, Ian flood-damaged EVs flaming time bombs, Adidas drops Kanye West, Author Colleen Hoover dominating the book charts.
A Russian court has denied an appeal by 32-year-old WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner of her 9-year prison sentence on drug charges in August. The athlete is now expected to be moved to a penal colony, NBC reported. With the sentence upheld, hope for Griner’s release will now shift to the possibility of a high-profile prisoner swap between the United States and Russia.
A 94-year-old Iranian man who hadn’t bathed for 67 years became ill three weeks after villagers convinced him to shower against his fears that he would become ill, the Daily Mail reported.
Three weeks later, he began to get sick and died shortly thereafter. Before showering, doctors had examined him and discovered he had a robust immune system due to his lifestyle which included drinking from puddles out of a rusty oil can, eating rotten porcupine meat, and smoking animal feces.
Officials and mechanics in Florida are saying that flood-damaged electric vehicles are turning into “ticking time bombs” that are going up in flames without warning on roads, parking lots, and even on the backs of tow trucks, ABC reported.
Officials also said that in some cases, EVs have burst into flames, remained on fire, and reignited hours later.
Sportswear Adidas company has ended its partnership with rapper Kanye West, the latest in a string of companies, organizations, and individuals distancing themselves after he made antisemitic comments. In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech” and finds West’s comments “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous,” CNN reported. Adidas said ending the partnership will cause the company to lose around $246 million in its fourth-quarter sales.
TMZ reported that Forbes claimed that, after the end of the Adidas partnership, West was now worth somewhere around $400 million, which ends his previous billionaire status of a net worth around $1.3 billion.
Although the Amazon book charts change every hour, there is one name dominating the bestsellers list: Colleen Hoover. As of this writing today, she held 3 of the top 10 and 6 of the top 50 positions: 1, 3, 8, 18, 23, 32. George R. R. Martin held four slots.
Hoover is a 42-year-old mom and former social worker from a small Texas town who previously spent her time tending cows. Her latest novel released this past week, It Starts With Us, published by the Simon & Schuster division Atria Books, set a company record for first-day fiction sales and sold over 800,000 on its first day of release. It also had more pre-orders than any novel in in Simon & Schuster’s 98-year-old history, NPR reported.
Her successful formula appears to be including a wide variety of tropes and genres in her writing that reaches a mostly young, ethnically diverse audience, bolstered by a large contingent of social media influencers.
