New Hampshire man says iPhone’s Siri a real life-saver
WILMOT, N.H. — A New Hampshire man who was injured in a house explosion is thanking Siri for saving his life.
Christopher Beaucher says he was checking on his mother’s vacant cottage in Wilmot on May 1 when he saw something suspicious and went inside.
He tells WMUR-TV when he switched on a light, the house exploded.
“The whole place caught fire,” Beaucher said. “Part of it collapsed while I was in it during the initial explosion, so I couldn’t really tell where I was.”
Beaucher’s face and hands were badly burned. He grabbed his cellphone but was unable to dial because of his injuries. He says he somehow asked his iPhone’s voice-controlled virtual assistant Siri to call 911, believing he was going into shock
A spokeswoman for Apple said Monday that statistics on Siri being used for emergencies weren’t available, but noted some recent emergencies in which it was used. Those include three boaters off the Florida coast in April who used the waterresistant phone when their craft capsized; a 4-year-old boy from London who used his mother’s thumb to unlock her iPhone and called Siri after she collapsed at home in March; and a man in Vancouver who collapsed, became paralyzed, and was able to use his tongue to use Siri.
Beaucher is undergoing treatment for his injuries and says he hopes to return to his job as a cook and tend to his farm.
WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump announced Monday that her son, Barron, will attend a private Episcopal school in Maryland, beginning this fall.
The announcement answered one of the lingering questions surrounding the first family’s unusual living arrangement. Mrs. Trump and 11-year-old Barron have been living at Trump Tower in New York since Donald Trump took office in January, while the president has lived at the White House.
Trump has said his wife and youngest child will relocate to the White House after the current school year ends, which meant finding a local school for Barron.
Mrs. Trump said Monday that they have chosen St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, for their son.
“It is known for its diverse community and commitment to academic excellence,” she said in a statement. “The mission of St. Andrew’s is ‘to know and inspire each child in an inclusive community dedicated to exceptional teaching, learning, and service,’ all of which appealed to our family.”
Annual tuition ranges from more than $23,000 for pre-K to more than $40,000 for students in grades 9-12.
“We look forward to the coming school years at St. Andrew’s,” Mrs. Trump said.
Powers Boothe, an actor best known for playing dark characters on television shows like “Deadwood” and in movies like “Sin City,” died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 68.
The death was confirmed by his publicist, Karen Samfilippo. She did not specify the cause.
Boothe lent his burly frame and Texas drawl to numerous TV series beginning in the late 1970s. In addition to the acclaimed HBO series “Deadwood,” he was seen on shows including “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Nashville” and “24,” on which he played the vice president of the United States. Among the movies in which he appeared were “Red Dawn” (1984), “Marvel’s The Avengers” (2012) and Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” (1995), in which he played Alexander Haig.
He won an Emmy in 1980 for outstanding lead actor in a limited series or special for his performance as the leader of the Jonestown cult in the miniseries “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones.”
He crossed a picket line during an actors’ strike to accept the award. “This may be either the bravest moment of my career or the dumbest,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Powers Allen Boothe was born June 1, 1948, and grew up on a cotton farm in West Texas, where “we didn’t have anything to do in my little town except drive fast cars, play pool and go to the bootlegger, the drive in, and a lot of places I shouldn’t have been in,” he told The New York Times in 1979.
In his senior year of high school, he recalled, he surprised people in his hometown by quitting football to focus on acting.
“I decided I was not going to make my living beating my head against someone else,” he said in the 1979 interview. “I got a lot of flak; in Texas, football is not only the social thing you must do, but you do it also to prove your manhood. They all couldn’t conceive of why I’d want to stop to do “The Importance of Being Earnest.”