UNITED STATES
Authorities probe close call
Investigators looking into a frighteningly close call involving an airliner that nearly hit airplanes on the ground at San Francisco International Airport are to try to determine why the pilots made the mistake and nearly landed on a busy taxiway instead of the runway. The Air Canada aircraft with 140 people aboard came within 30.5m of crashing onto the first two of four passenger-filled airplanes readying for takeoff. Runways are edged with rows of white lights, and another system of lights on the side of the runway helps guide pilots on their descent. By contrast, taxiways have blue lights on the edges and green lights down the center.
UNITED STATES
TV show stuntman killed
A stuntman for The Walking Dead has died after falling on the Georgia set of the hit TV show. It was the first on-set death in the US in nearly three years. John Bernecker, 33, died at about 6:30pm on Wednesday at an Atlanta hospital after falling on the show’s set in Senoia, about 56km south of Atlanta, Coweta County Coroner Richard Hawk said on Friday. Bernecker died from blunt force trauma and his death is considered accidental, Hawk said. The Walking Dead, the often-gory AMC show based on a comic series about people fighting to survive a zombie apocalypse, is filming its eighth season. The US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation, agency spokesman Michael D’Aquino said in an e-mail on Friday.
UNITED STATES
Repairman trapped in ATM
A Texas repairman found that one of the hardest parts about being trapped while servicing a bank’s automated teller machine (ATM) was convincing customers coming for cash that he was stuck. The technician shouted and passed notes begging for help through the machine’s receipt slot for about three hours on Wednesday, but his appeals were mostly ignored, police said.
UNITED STATES
Three charged in girl’s death
A Hawaii father, mother and grandmother have been charged with murder after allegedly starving a nine-year-old girl. Police on Hawaii’s Big Island on Friday arrested 49-year-old Kevin Lehano, 33-year-old Tiffany Stone and 59-year-old Henrietta Stone. Hawaii County Prosecuting Attorney Mitch Roth, reading from a grand jury indictment, said that they are accused of denying the girl food, water and medical treatment for about a year before she died in June last year. Police said officers and firefighters called to the Hilo home found the severely malnourished and unconscious girl lying on the floor. She was taken to a hospital, where she died. Court hearings are scheduled for tomorrow.
CANADA
Mom jailed for dead babies
A mother who hid the decomposing remains of her six babies in a storage locker was on Friday sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail. Andrea Giesbrecht, 43, was convicted in February of six counts of concealing the body of a child in 2014. Staff at storage company U-Haul discovered the bodies in her locker after she fell behind on payments. Police then found the remains of five boys and a girl, ranging in gestational ages from 34 to 42 weeks, in garbage bags, plastic bins and pails. The advanced decomposition of the infants’ bodies prevented determination of the cause of death and discovery of any evidence that they were born alive, preventing possible homicide charges, Judge Murray Thompson said in a Winnipeg, Manitoba, court.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion