Life & Style | Lithuanian couple crowned ‘wife carrying’ world champions

A Lithuanian man and his wife have won the world ‘wife carrying’ title, leaping over timber and wading through waist-high water to beat dozens of other couples for a second year running. The prize is the wife’s weight in beer.

Vytautas Kirkliauskas and his wife Neringa Kirkliauskiene cleared a grueling 253.5 meter obstacle course in 1 minute 6.72 seconds this weekend. That was just a tenth of a second ahead of former six-time world champion, Finland’s Taisto Miettinen and his new partner Katja Kovanen.

“After the second obstacle I thought I wouldn’t make, but it’s a great result” Kirkliauskas said, adding “my wife, she is the best.”

Couples from over a dozen countries, including Australia, France and Germany, took part in the annual race in the central Finnish municipality of Sonkajarvi, 480 kilometers north of Helsinki, the capital.

Brazil leader hit for cool reaction to João Gilberto’s death

President Jair Bolsonaro came under fire yesterday [Macau time] for a lukewarm response to the death of a Brazilian cultural icon, João Gilberto (pictured, right, in a 1978 snap), one of the fathers of bossa nova music, which gained worldwide popularity in the 1960s.

Impassioned tributes to Gilberto rocketed around Brazilian media, social and conventional, following his death on Saturday. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, told reporters that Gilberto was “a known person. Condolences to the family, OK?”

Brazilian singer Leoni tweeted that Bolsonaro “doesn’t have a clue of the importance of sophistication of João Gilberto.”

Leftist lawmaker Marcelo Freixo tweeted, “Today we lost the true Brazilian legend,” a snippy allusion to the term Bolsonaro’s supporters use for the president.

Bolsonaro has had a rocky relationship with Brazil’s artistic community, and has said he plans to drastically reduce the budget for arts and culture grants.

Massive choir a place for Estonians to find identity, solace

Tens of thousands of Estonians joined in singing folk songs over the weekend on the 150th anniversary of a music festival that inspired resistance to Soviet control and later received recognition from the U.N. cultural agency.

The Estonian Song and Dance Celebration attracted 35,000 singers, more than 1,000 choirs and 700 dance groups to the capital of Tallinn. The event, held every five years, started as a song-only celebration in 1869.

An estimated 90,000 people attended the main concert that closed the festival, which had most of the choirs joining voices for songs with special meaning for Estonians and their national identity. The festival theme this year was “My Fatherland is My Love.”

During Estonia’s nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation, some traditional anthems and songs were banned or had their lyrics changed so singing them was an act of defiance.