Apparitions, Animals, and Cannabis

In this week's Odder News: ghost lumberjacks, poison "bunnies," and Russian Bachelor.

• Wake up and smell the...cannabis? In Bashkiria, hemp has been growing right outside the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Apparently, ministry staff had no awareness, but residents kept coming to film the building's hedges, laughing, and posting the videos on the internet. The police finally caught on and are investigating the ministry's cannabis operation.
• Why did the moose cross the road? He wanted to see the Northern Capital, St. Petersburg. Last week, a moose was caught on video walking, running, and swimming all over town. This is not the first incursion of big game in the city: according to the same article, 26 moose were found around St. Petersburg at the end of May. But this one seemed to be competing in some kind of swim run, racing cars and swimming through ponds all over the place.
• A ghost was caught on camera in the Buryatia taiga. Lumberjacks set up cameras to catch illegal loggers in the act. While animals and people sometimes get caught on the candid camera, this one looked less like a human and more like an ephemeral apparition with light passing through it. Since humans can only enter this area by permit, and the nearest village is about two kilometers away, this being can only be a ghost.
• "Poison bunnies?" Of course. This is what the internet had been waiting for. The mysteries of the deep ocean are more elusive than the mysteries of the galaxies, and a diver in the Sea of Okhotsk recorded unusual "naked" mollusks with no shells on their backs. They are surprisingly cute, although they do look kind of like aliens. The creatures are not unknown to science though; they are called nudibranchs (get it, nude?) and are distant relatives of slugs and snails. These creepy-crawlies prefer warm climates, and biologists think they are appearing around Sakhalin with more frequency due to the warming of the water.
• The MUZ-TV awards turned awkward when host Ksenia Sobchak – a former presidential candidate, mind you – unexpectedly roasted rapper Timati and his new girlfriend. Timati, a Tatar hip hop artist and entrepreneur, met his new love on the most recent edition of the Russian Bachelor. Sobchak forced Timati to clarify whether this long-time bachelor is going to stay long-term with this woman he met in a contest. The host sat down with Timati and his new woman, gave him a weird shoulder squeeze, declared that women come and go from his life with frequency, and discussed Timati's most recent ex. The rapper appeared to barely contain his hostility toward Sobchak.