A Russian man has died in a shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast.  Footage of the incident circulating on social media shows Vladimir Popov, 23, desperately struggling on Thursday to fight off the shark in the resort city of Hurghada. Popov has become the latest casualty of rare shark attacks that have crept into Egypt’s Red Sea region in recent years. In an official statement, Egypt’s Ministry of Environment announced a two-day closure of the coastline for swimming and other water sports activities. Authorities also said they have managed to capture the guilty tiger shark and transport ..read more

In early December last year, famed auction house Christie’s was forced to cancel bidding on a large, flawless, pink diamond predicted to sell for as much as $35 million. The rock, the FBI told the auction house, had been stolen from a famous Middle East powerbroker by a Florida-based psychic in a shocking scheme involving a personal assistant, online spiritual counselling, FedEx, and almost $100 million in jewellery in need of an “aura cleanse.” A few weeks earlier, on November 22, the FBI had arrested John Lee, a resident of Davenport, Florida and Paramus, New Jersey, on charges of mail and w ..read more

There are so many great things about being single. You can wipe your takeaway grease on your duvet and leave the cap back on the toothpaste – without any moans. You don’t get any judgemental looks when you order your second Deliveroo of the day, even though you said you couldn’t afford Paris. There’s no one to “accidentally” take the good charger to work with them, leaving you to spend half the day holding the crap one with the masking tape around it at the very specific 45 degree angle it works at. But somehow, somehow people manage to make you feel as though there’s something wrong with bein ..read more

STOKE-ON-TRENT, England – A strange affliction has fallen upon this proud city. Famous for being the historic heartland of Britain's once world-leading pottery industry, and for much more recently spawning singer Robbie Williams, Stoke-on-Trent has fallen on harder times. And, seemingly inexplicably, it’s become the global capital of a potent drug known as “monkey dust”.  According to some politicians and media outlets, monkey dust turns users into super-strength “zombies” with the power to chew through plate glass windows and jump from tall buildings unscathed. The cheap off-white powder ..read more

This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium. Born in Chechnya in 1990, photographer Gena Kagermanov fled to Belgium with his family when he was 10. In 2015, one year after the Donbas conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine, he travelled to the region to do some photographic work for local NGOs. Then, starting in 2020, he returned regularly to the war-torn area to document how people live their lives in the region. His last trip ended shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Instead of focusing on destruction, I wanted to portray the larger social context as an essential ele ..read more

A motley assemblage of army veterans, yogis, and psychonauts are mingling in April in the garden of a luxury property just outside Austin, Texas, on the hottest day of the year yet in the state. Some 350 people are here to dance to ambient music and celebrate a unique new religious congregation that worships with a psychedelic sacrament – one they claim to have created themselves by crossbreeding magic mushrooms with hallucinogenic toad venom. Welcome to the Church of Psilomethoxin. This all came about because co-founder Ian Benouis, a former US army Blackhawk helicopter pilot turned psyc ..read more

Young people from ethnic minority communities are more likely to have a positive view of Andrew Tate than white young people, new polling data shared with VICE News has suggested. The Savanta survey of 1,214 people in the UK aged between 16 and 25 showed that 41 percent of Black respondents and 31 percent of Asian respondents viewed Tate positively. In contrast, 15 percent of white respondents viewed Tate, currently under house arrest in Romania over accusations of sex trafficking, in a positive light. The survey revealed that just one in five young people have a positive view of Tate, though ..read more

A version of this article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands. Ten years ago, I saw a corpse for the first time. A friend of mine had died unexpectedly while studying abroad. It took almost two weeks for his body to be brought back, a long wait before I could say goodbye. In the days leading up to touching his cold skin one last time, his death felt abstract to me, hard to grasp. But once I saw him lying there in the morgue, it became crystal clear that he’d never be back. Early on in the grieving process, I mostly felt his absence. A new year had just started, and he wasn’t there to celeb ..read more

Tens of thousands of people in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine are at risk of being flooded after an enormous dam was destroyed, with Ukraine accusing Russia of deliberately blowing up the facility. The Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River spanning the Ukrainian-Russian frontlines in southern Ukraine was breached in a huge explosion Tuesday morning unleashing a wall of water that authorities fear could cause extensive damage around the city of Kherson and other low lying areas. By late morning, footage on social media showed most of the dam and hydroelectric facility were completely submerg ..read more