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The 40-year-old model wore her boldest Met Gala look to date, showing off her abs in a bedazzled bra and dangerously low-rise skirt.

Humanoid robots are being added to the automation of waste sorting.

The supermodel took the "Costume Art" theme more literally than anyone.

The supermodel took the "Costume Art" theme more literally than anyone.

The actress was facing an uphill battle, attempting to prove her claims against the film's director.

The actress was facing an uphill battle, attempting to prove her claims against the film's director.

Sacked Russian Minister Flees To US Amid Corruption Probe In First Of Ukraine War

A Russian minister has become the first known high-ranking official to flee Russia and seek asylum in the United States since the Ukraine war began over four years ago, amid a fraud probe.

Denis Butsayev, a senior Russian official recently dismissed from the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, fled to the US to avoid criminal prosecution, regional media reports say.

President Putin meets with then General Director of the Russian Environmental Operator Denis Butsayev

He was officially removed from his post as deputy minister on April 22 by an order of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Soon after, and pending possible arrest,  Butsayev left the country by traveling through neighboring Belarus.

"Butsayev's departure is the first known case of a sitting official of this rank fleeing the country," independent journalist Farida Rustamova wrote. Butsayev is "lucky to have friends who were able to warn him on time," one source told the journalist.

Prior to his appointment to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry in 2025, Butsayev served as CEO of the Russian Ecological Operator (or, Environmental Operator), a state-backed entity with charge of the country's national waste management reforms.

Butsayev has not been formally charged, but he's a person of interest amid an ongoing probe of other senior officials for corruption. According to more details in Meduza:

In late April, several anonymous Telegram channels reported that a criminal case had been opened against Yury Valdayev, the administrative director of Russian Ecological Operator (REO) — the operator company of the garbage reform — on fraud charges. Butsayev worked at REO from April to November 2019, was subsequently appointed first deputy governor of Belgorod Region, and returned as CEO of REO in November 2020, a post he held until moving to the Natural Resources Ministry in 2025.

Criminal cases have also been opened against two other senior REO managers, Yekaterina Stepkina and Maxim Shcherbakov, Vedomosti’s sources say, and Butsayev is mentioned in the case materials as well. In what capacity he appears there, and what the cases concern, is unclear.

According to more on Butsayev, "He does not appear on U.S., Canadian, British, or EU sanctions lists, and his current whereabouts are unknown, Faridaily reported."

While nothing is currently known or confirmed as to his guilt or innocence in alleged fraud, regional opposition and anti-Moscow media tend to hail any such officials as heroes valiantly fleeing a Kremlin crackdown. However, this could also just be another standard corruption case in a region which has a long history of it.

Russia’s former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources, Denis Butsaev, has fled the country.
After his dismissal on April 22, he rushed to Minsk, then Tbilisi, and is now believed to be in the USA — the first known high-level official to escape amid a major corruption probe into… pic.twitter.com/aHnamwcbow

— Strategic News of Ua (@2_vatalive) May 2, 2026

The last couple years have seen a much broader Kremlin purge of top military ranks connected to the Ukraine war, but this situation seems to have stabilized of late. As for the war in Ukraine, it has seemed stalemated, with Russian forces reportedly making slow but steady gains; however, Ukraine's drones have been able to inflict serious damage on Russian oil refineries and export facilities, especially in recent months.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 19:40

London Bridge is not falling down. Only its junior royals. Its titled seniors — like Camilla — are still living large.

As it turns out, it ends with a statement.

As it turns out, it ends with a statement.

Fury is erupting as fire survivors who barely escaped one of California’s worst wildfires just eight years ago push back against a state policy they say is forcing dense housing onto the only road they have left to escape.

“I’m literally trying to go into labor any day this week and need to keep my stress levels super low.”

In search of a new look for his ailing lineup, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza inserted his best hitter into the leadoff spot Monday.

The actress went accessory-free and rocked her blond hair in beach waves for fashion's biggest night.

The actress went accessory-free and rocked her blond hair in beach waves for fashion's biggest night.

The former vice president won't weigh in.

LaVar Ball's still got it.

A pair of freshmen Ole Miss football players were arrested by the Oxford Police Department over the weekend on DUI charges. 

Virtue Gone Mad: Manager Punished More Harshly Than The Shoplifter He Stopped

Authored by Theodore Dalrymple via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

Nietzsche thought that the decline of the Christian religion in Europe would inevitably lead to a social, cultural, and moral crisis. This was because a traditional morality based upon religious belief could not be upheld once the religious belief itself weakened or was abandoned.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

This was not an original thought. The poet and essayist Matthew Arnold said much the same thing in a poem, “Dover Beach,” written in the 1840s but not published until 1867, before Nietzsche:

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar...

This, thought Arnold, had the consequence that life would have no transcendent meaning. His answer to this problem was human love, the only solution to moral, social, and intellectual chaos:

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Nietzsche’s solution was different. He didn’t approve of the old morality anyway, of compassion for the poor, kindness to strangers, and so forth, which he thought was the means, or even the ploy, by which the weak and feeble lorded it over the strong and healthy, and subdued them to the great detriment of human creativity.

He suggested instead that strong men should take life into their own hands, submit to no authority, and decide for themselves what they should do, all in the pursuit of superior creativity and Dionysian enjoyment. The strong, not the meek, would inherit the earth, and the best would rise to the top and dominate. There should, and would, be a transvaluation—a reversal—of all previously held values.

Arnold and Nietzsche were right about the decline of religious belief and the moral and intellectual confusion it would bring about. But the change in moral values that came about was not to so much the transvaluation wished for by Nietzsche as a perversion of the former values, as famously pointed out by the write G.K. Chesterton, who was far more realistic than Nietzsche, not long after Nietzsche’s death:

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered…, it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

The truth of this is borne out by a recent case in England. Sean Egan, the manager of a supermarket store in Walsall, England, one of a large chain, who had worked for the company for all his 29 years after leaving school, was dismissed because he was involved in a physical confrontation with a prolific shoplifter in his store.

He asked the shoplifter, who had at least 100 convictions, to leave the store, whereupon the shoplifter became abusive and aggressive, spitting at Egan, who then tried to restrain him.

The shoplifter alleged that Egan had assaulted him, and the store dismissed the employee of 29 years for not having followed company policy. There was a public outcry, a public demonstration outside the store, and many people vowed never to patronize it or any of its branches again.

The company, using the kind of managerial language in which it is almost impossible to tell a straightforward truth, put out a statement:

“We have very clear guidance, procedures and controls in place to protect our colleagues and customers from the risk of harm, which must be strictly followed. These include detailed procedures for handling shoplifting incidents, which are in place to protect both the colleague involved and surrounding colleagues and customers, and which seek to de-escalate and calmly control the situation. We will not ask colleagues to put themselves at risk. As a responsible employer, our focus is entirely on taking the correct action to ensure health and safety is maintained at all times.”

In this incident, we can see that both Nietzsche and G.K. Chesterton were partly right. A debased compassion for everyone, no doubt a derivative of Christianity, in the form of an abstract concern for health and safety above all other considerations, encouraged a vice (shoplifting) to flourish while an act of heroism and obedience to duty, at a level higher than that of mere following of procedure, was reprehended and punished.

Procedure is good as a guideline, and in some instances, though not very many in everyday life, is essential—for example, in the flying of an aircraft. But where is it is bowed down to and worshipped as if it were a jealous god, it leads to a brainless formalism, gross injustice, and an absurd situation in which a man who attempts to prevent shoplifting is punished much more severely than is the shoplifter.

The shoplifter was given a sentence of 42 weeks’ imprisonment, which, since 50 percent remission in England is automatic, means 21 weeks (and the government has recently all but abolished prison sentences of less than a year). Meanwhile, the 46-year-old manager of the supermarket has lost his job in the only company for which he has ever worked and will not easily find another—or would not have done so had there not been a public outcry.

As Nietzsche might have put it, there has been a transvaluation of all values.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/04/2026 - 19:15

This marked the Olympian's third time stepping out for fashion's biggest night in 26 years.