News Round Up for May 23, 2017 - P.O.W. Report

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

News Round Up for May 23, 2017

Stories:
  • Tourists hurt in ATV rollover in Ketchikan
  • Dinner aboard the Hindenburg: Rare photos of the doomed German airship's lavish interior capture its splendour before its devastating crash in 1937
  • Not the Onion: German students demand retake of English exam due to Prince Harry’s ‘incomprehensible mumbling’
  • Officials criticize family for ‘reckless behavior’ after sea lion grabs girl
  • Villages to get multi-million-dollar payments from mine owner

Tourists hurt in ATV rollover in Ketchikan

Posted by Leila Kheiry

Two tourists were injured at about 11 a.m. on Sunday after an all-terrain-vehicle rollover accident off North Tongass Highway.

According to the online Alaska State Troopers dispatch report, a 50-year-old woman and a 48-year-old woman, both from Texas, were in an off-road 2-passenger ATV on a trail off North Tongass as part of a tour group.

Troopers report that the driver looked away from the roadway and struck a large boulder lining the road causing the vehicle to flip over and end up at the bottom of a 50-foot embankment. [From KRBD]
Non-life threatening injuries, but atleast the ladies now have a story to tell about Alaska!

Dinner aboard the Hindenburg: Rare photos of the doomed German airship's lavish interior capture its splendour before its devastating crash in 1937


But 81 years ago, before its catastrophic crash, the vast 804-ft-long Hindenburg was the very height in luxury for wealthy transatlantic travellers.

More like a flying cruise ship than anything remotely resembling a modern-day plane, the German Hindenburg - touted as a symbol of national strength by Nazi propagandists when it launched in 1936 - boasted 72 sleeping berths, a crew of 40 flight officers, as well as ten stewards and cooks.

Passengers enjoyed gourmet meals served on fine china around a table in the 47ft-long dining room, with other luxury amenities on-board including a cocktail bar and smoking lounge.

And though it might have seemed at the time like the future in air travel, the dream quite literally came crashing down when, on May 6, 1937, its tail exploded as the vast vessel came down to land over Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36. Incredibly, 62 passengers survived.

These fascinating images capture the Hindenburg's roomy interiors, and offer a glimpse into an ambitious concept that was ultimately doomed to fail. [Check out the pictures and article here]

Not the Onion: German students demand retake of English exam due to Prince Harry’s ‘incomprehensible mumbling’

May 18, some 100,000 tenth grade students in North Rhine Westphalia took an upper school leaving examination that makes up to 50 percent of their final mark in English and may eventually determine whether they are allowed to continue their education and go to a university.

However, this time, many high school students found some parts of the exam incredibly difficult. Many of them particularly complained about the task that involved listening to a speech of Prince Harry that was so “mumbled” that they literally could not “understand a word” of it.

Another task involved listening to a speech of a South African singer, Miriam Makeba, which had background music that, along with the singer’s “specific African slang,” made her speech extremely difficult to understand as well, the German Der Spiegel weekly reports.

However, students were not the only ones who found the speeches in the exam listening tasks indecipherable as many teachers were also unsatisfied with the exam.

“It was too difficult, it was beyond what you could have expected,” Brigitte Balbach, the head of the regional teachers’ association, Lehrer NRW, told the German media.

“[English] teachers, even native speakers, reported back that they themselves had big problems in understanding and solving the listening exercise,” she added.

Prince Harry's speech was delivered in 2015 when he opened two care homes for children in the Southern African country of Lesotho, according to the regional HNA media outlet. [Source]

Officials criticize family for ‘reckless behavior’ after sea lion grabs girl


By CBS News

Officials have criticized the family of a young girl after a viral video showed a sea lion pulling her into the water from a dock in Richmond, British Columbia.
Robert Kiesman, chair of the Steveston Harbour Authority, told Canada’s CBC News that there are several signs warning tourists not to feed wild sea mammals.

“You wouldn’t go up to a grizzly bear in the bush and hand him a ham sandwich, so you shouldn’t be handing a thousand-pound wild mammal in the water slices of bread,” Kiesman said.

He went on to say that the family displayed “totally reckless behavior” by allowing the young girl to sit on the ledge of the dock following the first time the sea lion snapped at her. [Source]

Villages to get multi-million-dollar payments from mine owner


By Associated Press

NOME, Alaska (AP) – Eleven villages in Alaska’s northwest arctic borough will soon get yearly multimillion-dollar payments from the operator of a mine in the region in lieu of paying taxes.
KNOM radio reports that the money will come from Teck Alaska, the operator of Red Dog Mine, where zinc and lead are gathered.

KNOM reports that this year, $11 million in profits from Red Dog Mine will be put into a Village Improvement Fund, as well as between $4 and 8 million annually for the next nine years.

Northwest Arctic Borough Chief of Staff Patrick Savok tells the radio station that assures that each community will have a say in how the money will be used. [Story]


Read More: Special POW Island Marathon Report Edition 2017!

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