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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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