UNITED STATES
State to trap big bear
Authorities in South Lake Tahoe, California, have launched a special effort to trap a 227kg black bear known as “Hank the Tank.” Hank is “readily identifiable due to [his] exceptionally large size and dark coat with a lighter muzzle,” authorities said. Since July last year, Hank has broken into at least 28 homes in and around the Tahoe Keys area. Described as “extremely food-habituated,” Hank has been the subject of at least 102 police reports. “It’s easier to find leftover pizza than to go in the forest,” the New York Times quoted Peter Tira, a California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson, as saying.
ITALY
Etna spews smoke and ash
Mount Etna on Monday belched smoke and ashes in a new eruption, briefly forcing the closure of the Vincenzo Bellini Airport in Catania, Sicily. The ash cloud rose 10km into the air above a crater on the southeast of the volcano, the INGV National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology said on Twitter. The Catania airport closed at lunchtime on Monday. Although it reopened after about two hours, it warned of delays. Ash covered roads, balconies and the roofs of towns nearby, the Civil Protection Department said. The INGV said it had recorded a gradual rise in volcanic-seismic tremor, which could be a sign Etna is heading toward another spectacular burst of fiery lava fountaining, known as paroxysmal activity.
UNITED STATES
Trump’s app has rocky start
Former president Donald Trump’s new social media app has started its gradual rollout, but thousands of would-be users encountered glitches or found themselves placed on a waitlist due to what the app called “massive demand.” On Monday morning, Truth Social topped the chart of the most downloaded apps in Apple’s US App Store, but attempts to download it were met with frustration. Some received the message: “Something went wrong. Please try again.” One journalist made it further, receiving a thank you for joining, but an added message that “due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist ... #170,174.”
HONDURAS
Ex-leader wants home arrest
Lawyers for former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, 53, wanted on drug trafficking charges in the US, on Monday asked that he be granted house arrest while the extradition case against him proceeds, Supreme Court spokesman Melvin Duarte said. A judge ruled that Hernandez would stay in preventive detention until a second hearing next month. The court said on Twitter a judge had agreed to hear an appeal from the defense team to revoke Hernandez’s preventive detention.
GERMANY
Synthetic fuels mulled
The government is opposed to a ban on internal combustion engines from 2035 provided they work on synthetic fuels, Minister for Transport Volker Wissing said on Monday. The European Commission last year proposed a ban on the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines from the middle of next decade, but the debate is far from over. “We want to allow combustion engines after 2035 only if they can be refueled exclusively by synthetic fuels,” Wissing said on the sidelines of an informal meeting of EU transport ministers outside of Paris. “We can’t only bank on electric mobility or hydrogen for the future,” he said. “We need to remain technology-agnostic.”
AUSTRALIA
Hitman nabbed 12 years on
The police have arrested a suspected hitman after a 12-year nationwide hunt, during which he used disguises and even a “fat suit” to evade capture after skipping bail. The search ended on Monday when officers found Graham Potter hiding out in a derelict house in the small town of Ravenshoe, Queensland, after a tip-off from the public. In 2010, Potter fled before his court date, while facing serious charges, including the allegation he was involved in a planned hit at an underworld wedding. Potter was listed as one of the country’s 10 most wanted fugitives. Potter had already served 15 years in jail for the 1981 murder of a 19-year-old shop assistant.
AUSTRALIA
‘Eyes on Antarctica’ funded
The government yesterday announced plans to boost its presence and surveillance operations on Antarctica, unveiling a US$575 million package designed to match China’s growing interest in the pole. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the 10-year funding plan would give the country “eyes on Antarctica” — by increasing the country’s ability to survey and monitor the frozen tundra and surrounding waters using drones, helicopters and autonomous vehicles. The country has territorial claims on 42 percent of Antarctica, the largest of any nation, but has lacked the capability to reach far-flung corners of the continent.
NORTH KOREA
Kim congratulates China
Leader Kim Jong-un vowed to strengthen cooperation with China and together “frustrate” threats and hostile policies from the US and its allies, the Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. Kim made the remarks in a verbal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), congratulating him on the successful completion of the Beijing Olympics, it said. The two countries are defending and advancing socialism, while “frustrating the undisguised hostile policy and military threat of the US and its satellite forces” by strengthening strategic cooperation and unity, he said. Kim said that under Xi’s leadership, China had persevered in the face of an “unprecedentedly severe health crisis and the hostile forces’ maneuvers.”
ISRAEL
Kyiv embassy moved to Lviv
The government is moving its embassy in Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. Several Western countries have also transferred envoys from Kiev to Lviv, located near the border with Poland, in anticipation of Russian military action. Earlier in February, the government said that it would evacuate the families of its diplomats and other embassy personnel from Ukraine due to the escalating tensions.
SOUTH AFRICA
Shoot-out kills 10 robbers
Ten robbers were killed during a foiled cash heist, Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) spokeswoman Grace Langa said on Monday. Police acted on a tip-off and deployed a helicopter to fend off a planned cash-in-transit robbery in Johannesburg’s suburb of Rosettenville. The suspects fired at the helicopter and wounded one of the pilots, prompting police to shoot back. “They shot the helicopter before anybody did anything to them,” Minister of Police Bheki Cele told reporters at the scene. “They shot the pilot,” Cele said, adding that a gang of about 25 gunmen from the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal province, as well as from Zimbabwe and Botswana, were involved in the attempted robbery.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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