Putin ‘made Gordon Brown sit in a small chair’

Gordon Brown believes Vladimir Putin once deliberately belittled him by making him sit on a small chair during a visit to Moscow. Remembering a meeting in 2006, when Brown was then Tony Blair’s chancellor, the politician said: “I was put in a very low seat so that I was looking up at him.” He described Putin as “a relatively small man” who wears “stacked heels”. Brown said Putin read out information about him “as though he wanted to prove he knew more about me than I knew about myself”. Speaking to The Telegraph, Brown added: “I can tell you he was threatening me even then.”

Balance test can signal early death

An inability to stand on one leg for ten seconds after the age of 50 could indicate you are facing an early death, according to a new study. Researchers found that people who failed the simple balance test had double the risk of dying from any cause in the next ten years than those who passed it. Some 1,702 participants aged 51-75 were asked to undertake a balance test and then monitored between February 2009 and December 2020, for research published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Unusual items found in man’s stomach

Doctors found hundreds of coins, nails, batteries, magnets, stones, screws and shards of glass inside a man’s stomach, reported The Metro. When medics in Turkey performed an endoscopy with ultrasound and X-ray scans, they were stunned to discover 233 items in the 35-year-old’s stomach. After the objects were removed, the man’s brother said: “I thank the doctors for their attention and support.”