In the news
Eila Campbell of Williamsport, Pa., figured she might not “make it for another year” when she decided to celebrate her 94th birthday by skydiving, taking a 10,000-foot plunge accompanied by her granddaughter and great-granddaughter.
Richard Thorns, 53, a British writer who has spent about $20,000 on previous fruitless trips, is making a seventh foray into the wilds of Burma to search for the possibly extinct pink-headed duck, which hasn’t been seen alive since 1949, and that was in India.
Brad Gobright, 29, and climbing partner Jim Reynolds set a new speed record for ascending the Nose route of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, racing up the nearly 90-degree, 2,900-foot precipice in 2 hours and 19 minutes.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said that his dog, Nemo, “was doing something quite exceptional” when the black Labrador-Griffon cross was recorded by a TV crew relieving himself on a fireplace inside a gilded and chandeliered room at the Elysee Palace.
Isabella King, 10, who found two dollar bills on a sidewalk in Pequannock, N.J., first tried to find their rightful owner by taking the bills to police but will instead use the money to donate a box of Girl Scout nuts to the military, her mother said.
Terry Campbell, 59, of Green City, Mo., donated to a historical society a wooden box that had been in his family for more than 130 years and was reportedly made from the stump of a walnut tree on which Abraham Lincoln in 1832 delivered one of his first political speeches in Rochester, Ill.
Michael Fallon, Britain’s defense secretary, said his country is giving to Canada the two shipwrecks of British explorer John Franklin, who perished with his crew when the ships got trapped in ice trying to chart the Northwest Passage through the Arctic in the 1840s.
Taoufik Moalla said he will fight a $149 ticket for screaming in a public place he was given by Montreal police for belting out a 1991 dance hit, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” while stopped on a downtown street inside his car.
Kara Joy McKee of the Oklahoma Policy Institute said lawmakers and others are deluding themselves by thinking the state spends too much after people dressed as “anti-tax zombies” staged an event at the state Capitol supporting calls for tax rises to prevent cuts to health, education and other state services.