UNITED STATES
Autistic driver defended
An Alaska restaurant is being overwhelmed with goodwill after its owner defended an autistic delivery driver who was berated by a customer. The customer called Little Italy Restaurante in Anchorage to loudly complain after the delivery employee mixed up an order, claiming the driver was using drugs. Owner P.J. Gialopsos’ daughter answered the phone, and assured the customer the driver was not impaired, but is autistic. Gialopsos told the Alaska Dispatch News that it was not the first time there have been complaints. The driver returned to the restaurant upset after the encounter. It was at that point Gialopsos decided to terminate the relationship — with the customer. She instructed her staff to never again take an order from that person.
CANADA
Drink-driving mom exposed
A young boy on Wednesday called police to alert them that his mother was illegally driving under the influence of alcohol with him in the vehicle. York Regional Police said in a statement on Friday that they charged “a 52-year-old woman after receiving a 911 call from her son advising that his mother was drinking and driving with him in the car.” Authorities received an emergency call from a mobile phone, but nobody spoke on the other end. Police called back and the boy riding in a van answered. “The boy sounded scared, but was able to tell the call taker his name, that he was nine, where he was, the description of the van and where he lives,” police said. Police quickly located and stopped the vehicle in the town of Newmarket, north of Toronto, arrested and charged the mother with impaired driving after a test showed her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and turned the boy over to his father.
UNITED STATES
Polar bear cub ‘healthy’
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium says a polar bear gave birth to a pair of cubs, and though only one survived, staff are “cautiously optimistic” about its health. The zoo in central Ohio on Friday said that staff started hand-rearing the week-old female cub after her mother, Aurora, began taking breaks from caring for her. Zoo staff initially had opted not to intervene in caring for the cubs after talking with staff at other polar bear breeding facilities. Polar bears have the lowest reproductive rates of all mammals. The zoo says one in two cubs typically survives. The zoo says the 0.68kg cub is healthy, feeding regularly and receiving around-the-clock care. Aurora and her eight-year-old twin, Anana, arrived at the zoo in 2010. Both mated with a 28-year-old bear.
CUBA
Official touts trade ties
The agricultural sector can act as “a bridge” to the US, a visiting top US official said on Friday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is the third member of US President Barack Obama’s cabinet to visit the communist-run island after Secretary of State John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. The trip is designed to speed up efforts at normalizing trade ties between Washington and Havana, after the neighbors agreed to restore relations in December after more than 50 years of highly tense ties including the Cuban missile crisis. “I strongly believe that agriculture can act as a bridge between two peoples,” Vilsack told a press conference. “I’ll be travelling back to Washington with the hopes to figure out over time how we, the United States, might have a more permanent presence here in Cuba.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited