Runoff set in Czech election for president
Compiled from news services
PRAGUE — Czech President Milos Zeman failed to win re-election during the first round of a presidential election Saturday and will face a runoff in two weeks against the former head of the country’s Academy of Sciences.
Mr. Zeman and Jiri Drahos advanced to a second round of voting because none of the nine candidates seeking the Czech Republic’s largely ceremonial presidency received a majority of votes in the first round held Friday and Saturday.
However, with almost all ballots counted by the Czech Statistics Office, Mr. Zeman had 38.6 percent of the vote, a commanding lead over Mr. Drahos’ 26.6 percent.
A former diplomat, Pavel Fischer, was a distant third with 10.2 percent. Songwriter Michal Horacek finished fourth with 9.2 percent, ahead of physician Marek Hilser, who had 8.8 percent.
Rivals could team up
Sliders from North Korea and South Korea may share a four-man sled at next month’s games, with coaching provided by top international officials from Italy and the United States. The sled wouldn’t be part of the actual Olympic competition, but one of the forerunning sleds sent down to test conditions before racing begins.
The plan hasn’t been finalized, and more talks are likely in the coming week at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Switzerland.
International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation President and IOC member Ivo Ferriani of Italy initially presented the idea.
The rival Koreas would each get two spots in the sled, and the team would be trained in the days leading up to the four-man competition by Ferriani and fellow IBSF official Darrin Steele — the CEO of USA Bobsled and Skeleton.
India monument search
NEWDELHI — The ancient temple of Kutumbari stood for centuries in Dwarahat in north India. Then one day in the 1960s, officials realized it had vanished from records — and later discovered it had disappeared altogether.
The Kutumbari is one of 24 monuments on a list of now “untraceable” protected monuments in India. Some have gone missing because of inadequate or antiquated record-keeping; others have physically disappeared, destroyed by natural disasters or by humans.
This week, after repeated calls by Indian parliamentarians to locate lost monuments, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the government agency responsible for the conservation of heritage buildings and artifacts, instructed its local affiliates to redouble efforts to find a cache of missing antiquities.
Lobster-boiling ban
Lobsters may be one of the most popular crustaceans in the culinary arts. But when it comes to killing them, there’s a long and unresolved debate about how to do it humanely.
The Swiss Federal Council issued an order this week banning cooks in Switzerland from placing live lobsters into pots of boiling water.
The new measure stipulates that beginning March 1, lobsters must be knocked out — either by electric shock or “mechanical destruction” of the brain — before boiling them.