UNITED STATES
Fighter jet crashes in Utah
An F-35 jet crashed on Wednesday at an air force base in Utah, officials said, adding that the pilot ejected and was taken to a hospital for observation. The 388th Fighter Wing said on its Twitter account that the F-35 A Lightning II crashed at the north end of the Hill Air Force Base runway. It said the cause of the crash was unknown and would be investigated. The fighter wing said emergency crews both on and off the base responded to the crash. Brock Thurgood said the pilot landed near his property near the base, KSL.com reported. Thurgood said the pilot was “walking and he was coherent,” but added that his hands were “bloodied up and he was a little banged up.”
UNITED STATES
Drugs found in candy boxes
Authorities on Wednesday seized thousands of suspected fentanyl pills hidden in candy boxes at Los Angeles International Airport. Someone tried to go through security screening with some snacks and bags of candy at about 7:30am, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “However, it was discovered that inside the ‘Sweetarts,’ ‘Skittles,’ and ‘Whoppers’ candy boxes were fentanyl pills,” the statement said. About 12,000 pills were seized by sheriff’s detectives and Drug Enforcement Administration agents assigned to a drug task force at the airport, authorities said. The suspected trafficker fled, but has been identified, authorities said. Authorities have warned that drug dealers have been disguising fentanyl in candy wrappers and manufacturing them in rainbow colors.
UNITED STATES
One killed in highway pileup
Dozens of vehicles, including semitrailers, were involved in a deadly crash in heavy fog on Wednesday on Interstate 5 in Oregon. One person was killed in the multivehicle crash that happened in the southbound lanes of the interstate north of Eugene, Oregon State Police told KOIN-TV. About 60 vehicles, including up to 20 semitrailers, were involved in the crashes that spanned more than 1.6km and led to the closure of that part of the interstate. The Department of Environmental Quality responded to address leaking fluids from six of the semitrailers, police said. School buses from Eugene were reportedly sent to take several dozen stranded motorists to a nearby truck stop.
ISRAEL
Settlers attack soldiers
Jewish settlers stormed through a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said yesterday, throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles and using pepper spray on troops who were trying to disperse the settlers. The settler rampage late on Wednesday came days after a similar incident in the same area and as Israeli-Palestinian tensions are surging over Israeli raids in the West Bank and an uptick in shooting attacks by Palestinians.
BRAZIL
Bolsonaro narrows gap
President Jair Bolsonaro narrowed his gap with challenger former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 11 days before Brazilians cast ballots in the country’s second-round vote, a new poll released on Wednesday showed. Lula has 52 percent support against 48 percent for Bolsonaro, the Datafolha institute found, narrowing the spread of the previous week, which was 53 percent to 47 percent. The figures exclude voters who plan to cast blank or spoiled ballots — 5 percent of respondents, Datafolha estimates.
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
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
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