UNITED STATES
Man survives on taco sauce
A man whose car was stranded in snow in central Oregon for five days survived by eating taco sauce packets and starting the engine periodically to warm up. A snowmobiler on Friday found Jeremy Taylor, 36, of Sunriver, and a search-and-rescue team member who rode to him on a large snow tractor brought him out of the woods, Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sergeant William Bailey said. Taylor, an avid outdoorsman who loves to go off-roading, was last seen buying gas on Sunday last week in Sunriver. He told his rescuers he and his dog, Ally, became stuck in deep snow on a US Forest Service road later that same day.
ESTONIA
Voters head to polls
Estonians yesterday voted in a general election with the center-left coalition dueling its traditional liberal rivals and a surging far-right party buoyed by a backlash from mostly rural voters in the Baltic eurozone state. The lackluster campaign has focused on bread-and-butter issues, such as taxation and public spending, as well as tensions over Russian language education for the country’s sizeable Russian minority and the rural-urban divide. Nearly 40 percent of the 880,690 eligible voters have used e-voting in advanced polling, with officials confident that the online system can withstand any attempted meddling. A poll collating e-voters and those intent on using paper ballots suggested a tight race. No exit polls were to be released, with initial official results due by midnight.
AUSTRALIA
Two dingoes put down
Two dingoes have been put down after a French mother and son were mauled at an Australian tourist island, authorities said yesterday, the second attack in the popular spot in just more than a month. The pair had just stepped out of a vehicle at the World Heritage-listed Fraser Island off the Queensland state coast on Thursday evening when they came across a pack of dingoes, paramedics said. “The couple panicked and ran back toward the vehicle and it was that time when the pack actually chased them and attacked,” Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman Michael Augustus said on Friday.
ECUADOR
Guaido to return home
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday said that he will return home after concluding a visit to Ecuador, raising the prospect of a showdown with the government that he is trying to force from power. “I’m announcing my return home from Ecuador,” Guaido said after meeting President Lenin Moreno. He also called for protests in Venezuela today and tomorrow, days that coincide with the country’s Carnival season. Guaido’s spokesman Edward Rodriguez said that “it’s possible” that he will return today.
GAZA STRIP
Balloons prompt airstrike
Israeli aircraft have struck two Hamas observation points in the enclave, a security source said yesterday, after the Israeli army said that balloons carrying an “explosive device” were sent toward Israel. No injuries occurred from the strikes late on Saturday east of Al-Bureij and east of Rafah in the south of the blockaded enclave run by Hamas, a security source said. Late on Wednesday, Israeli aircraft targeted several militant sites in the enclave after an “explosive balloon” launched from the area damaged a house in Israel.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
China’s military news agency yesterday warned that Japanese militarism is infiltrating society through series such as Pokemon and Detective Conan, after recent controversies involving events at sensitive sites. In recent days, anime conventions throughout China have reportedly banned participants from dressing as characters from Pokemon or Detective Conan and prohibited sales of related products. China Military Online yesterday posted an article titled “Their schemes — beware the infiltration of Japanese militarism in culture and sports.” The article referenced recent controversies around the popular anime series Pokemon, Detective Conan and My Hero Academia, saying that “the evil influence of Japanese militarism lives on in
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
RSS