'Let's learn judo with Vladimir'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1071392/Macho-Putin-releases-Lets-learn-judo-Vladimir-DVD.html

Macho Putin in yet ANOTHER display of masculinity as he releases 'Let's learn judo with Vladimir' DVD
08th October 2008
First we saw him shirtless while fishing.

Then he was pictured at the wheel of a massive racing truck and shooting a tiger in the Siberian forest with a tranquiliser.

He has also appeared operating a train, sailing on a submarine and co-piloting a fighter jet.

Now Vladimir Putin - the world's most manly leader - has released yet another display of his own masculinity: a DVD entitled 'Let's learn judo with Vladimir Putin'.

Today he presented the instructional judo DVD that shows him throwing an opponent to the mat.

'Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin' is the product of collaboration between Putin - a black belt - and former World and Olympic judo champion Yasuhiro Yamashita.

At a nighttime presentation minutes into his 56th birthday, Putin said the title was little more than an 'advertising trick'.

Anyone who watches it 'will be learning not from your humble servant but from real geniuses' of the martial art, he said.

But portions shown on Russian television depicted a black-clad Putin talking about the history and philosophy of judo, as well as a white-robed Putin demonstrating moves against a practice partner.

Putin is a one-time judo champion of his home city St. Petersburg - called Leningrad at the time.

He is also an avid skier, and his apparent fitness and devotion to physical activity helped increase his popularity in eight years as president.

This contrasted sharply with his hard-drinking and chronically ill predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who died last year.

'The level of developing of sports undoubtedly defines the level of development of the country itself,' Putin said at the presentation.

'Without sports, it's impossible to speak of a healthy way of life, about the health of the nation as such,' he said.

The original publication of the fishing photos made Putin a national sex symbol.

At the time, the Russian mass-market newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published a huge colour photo of the bare-chested president, under the headline "Be Like Putin".

The picture illustrated a guide to the exercises needed to build up a torso like that of the Russian leader.

The paper reported that women who visited its website posted comments on Putin's 'vigorous torso' and said they 'were screaming with delight and showering him with compliments.'

Russian gay chatrooms and blogs were particularly intrigued by the photos.

Hunt continues for Nazi treasure

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/ap_on_re_eu/germany_nazi_gold

Hunt continues for Nazi treasure
Tue Feb 26, 2008

German treasure hunters were to begin digging Tuesday for what they claim to be plunder buried by the Nazis in a man-made cavern near the Czech border.

The area's mayor, Hans-Peter Haustein, and a man who found the coordinates for the buried booty in a notebook among his deceased father's belongings, maintain that a scan of the spot has revealed that a large quantity of metal is about 20 yards below the surface. They believe it to be either gold or silver, based on the scan with a sophisticated metal detector.

On Tuesday, a drilling company was to start work on the site, about 100 yards from the Czech Republic in the eastern German state of Saxony, boring a hole so that a camera can be snaked down to the find to determine exactly what it is.

Haustein — an amateur treasure hunter who is also a member of Germany's parliament for the opposition Free Democratic Party — said the process could take several days, depending on how much rock needs to be penetrated.

"We have no time pressure," he said. "Our top priority is safety — we can't allow anything to happen."

Haustein has been working with Christian Hanisch to find the suspected treasure for about eight weeks, after Hanisch found the notebook in the belongings of his father, a former Luftwaffe radio operator who died last year.

Haustein said last week that he was convinced they had found the storied Amber Room treasure, but later acknowledged that while there could be "cultural treasures" in the cavern, such as paintings or amber paneling, they are not things that show up with a metal detector.

The Amber Room — named for magnificent wall panels of golden-brown amber — was stolen by the Nazis from a palace outside St. Petersburg during World War II and has never been recovered in its entirety.

Experts have been skeptical of Haustein's claim, pointing out that stories of the Amber Room surface regularly, only to be proved wrong, and that the Amber Room had no significant amounts of gold or silver in it.