UNITED STATES
Pilot blames mushrooms
An off-duty pilot who tried to shut down the engines of a plane mid-flight over the weekend had taken magic mushrooms and thought he was having a nervous breakdown, court documents showed on Tuesday. Pilots wrestled Joseph Emerson out of the cockpit on Sunday after he lunged for handles that would have starved the engines of fuel. Emerson, who told police he had not slept in 40 hours, also tried to open an emergency exit in the rear of the aircraft and had to be restrained by the cabin crew during an emergency landing. “I pulled both emergency shutoff handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just want to wake up,” Emerson told police, according to a criminal complaint. Emerson and the investigating officer “talked about the use of psychedelic mushrooms, and Emerson said it was his first time taking mushrooms.” The 44-year-old was arrested on Sunday evening after the Alaska Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.
ZIMBABWE
Missing tourist found
A German tourist who went missing in a national park teeming with wild animals has been found alive and in “good health” along with his rental car three days later, a spokesman for the national parks agency said on Tuesday. Tinashe Farawo with the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said that Andreas Hoberg had last been seen buying a drink at the park shop in Matusadona National Park before going for a game drive at about 3.30pm on Saturday. He failed to return by 6pm, when all game drives should end, and the car rental company failed to locate him on its GPS tracking system, Farawo said. Authorities deployed a helicopter, land vehicles and sniffer dogs to scour the remote 1,400km2 park that is home to lions, buffalo, leopards, elephants “and all the dangerous animals you can expect in the bush,” he said. The telephone network is poor in the area and he was yet to get more information about the tourist’s age, whether he was with others or how deep in the park he had ventured, he said. “We were gravely worried. We are happy he is well,” Farawo said. “He says his car developed a mechanical fault. It’s a white car, so we were hopeful we would find it.”
PORTUGAL
World’s oldest dog dies
Bobi, who was this year ordained the oldest dog in the world by Guinness World Records, has died at the ripe old age of 31, media reported on Monday. “We have better memories of a long life where he was happy and, above all, where he made a lot of people happy, especially his family,” Bobi’s owner Leonel Costa told local media from the village where he lives. A purebreed Rafeiro, a Portuguese livestock guard dog whose normal life expectancy is between 12 and 14, Bobi was not supposed to make it beyond puppyhood. He was born on May 11, 1992, along with three other pups in a wood storage shed owned by the Costa family in the village of Conqueiros. Because the family owned so many animals, the father decided they could not keep the newborn puppies and the parents took them from the shed the next day, while the mother dog Gira was out, said Leonel Costa, who was eight years old at the time. However, they did not realize they had left one puppy behind, and that puppy became Bobi. “He died at the age of 31 years and 165 days,” Guinness World Records said, which declared him the world’s oldest dog in February.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
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