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.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
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