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.
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
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing