UNITED STATES
Poet Philip Levine dies
Philip Levine, a former US poet laureate whose work was vibrantly, angrily and often painfully alive with the sound, smell and sinew of heavy manual labor, died on Saturday last week at his home in Fresno, California. He was 87. The cause was pancreatic cancer. Levine served as poet laureate from 2011 to 2012. He received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for his collection The Simple Truth and won two National Book Awards — in 1980 for Ashes: Poems New & Old and 1991 for What Work Is. In spare, realistic free verse, Levine explored the subjects that had animated his work for decades: his gritty Detroit childhood; the soul-numbing factory jobs he held as a young person; Spain, where he lived for some time as an adult; and the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s. “A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland” is how the poet Edward Hirsch, writing in the New York Times Book Review, described Levine in 1984.
UNITED STATES
Scorpion on a plane
A scorpion stung a woman on the hand just before her flight from Los Angeles to Portland took off. Flight 567 was taxiing on the runway on Saturday night last week when the passenger was stung, Alaska Airlines spokesman Cole Cosgrove said. The plane returned to the gate, and the woman was checked by medics. She refused additional medical treatment, but she did not get back on the plane. Meanwhile, flight attendants killed the scorpion and checked overhead compartments for any additional unwanted arachnids. Oregon State University basketball coach Wayne Tinkle told ESPN that the woman was sitting two rows in front of him. “The plane was coming from Mexico before us, and [the scorpion] was on the plane,” Tinkle said. “The woman was a real champ. She acted like it was a mosquito bite. They got it off her, but the needle was stuck.”
UNITED STATES
Presidential drollery
Being president is not all drone strikes and crisis meetings. A video released on Thursday last week shows President Barack Obama posing in front of the mirror with aviator sunglasses, playing around with a selfie stick and struggling to enunciate “February.” In a skit recorded by BuzzFeed called “things everyone does but doesn’t talk about,” Obama can also be seen blaming himself for making cookies too big to dunk in a glass of milk — “thanks Obama” — and drawing a picture of his wife, Michelle. The president is also captured pretending to score a winning basket, before being interrupted and receiving a quizzical look from comedian Andrew Ilnyckyj posing as a staffer. Obama responds “can’t I live, man?” before declaring “YOLO man” — you only live once.
GERMANY
CDU trounced in Hamburg
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered heavy losses in Hamburg city-state elections on Sunday, where an anti-euro party looked set to enter parliament. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) easily won the election in their traditional northern stronghold, as expected, after an election campaign fought on local issues. The anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AFD) won about five percent of the vote according to early exit polls which, if confirmed, would see them narrowly enter their fourth state parliament. Public broadcasters projected the CDU won only about 16 percent, its worst-ever Hamburg result and one of its lowest nationwide, against about 47 percent for the SPD.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number