High-wire holiday
Acrobats perform on a stretched wire rope above the tent of the Hungarian National Circus for World Circus Day, which is held on third Saturday of April in many countries to celebrate circus arts and culture. The Hungarian troupe was performing in Debrecen, about 140 miles east of Budapest.
of Kikai is in Kagoshima prefecture on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands.
She became the world’s oldest person seven months ago after the death in September of Violet Brown in Jamaica, also at the age of 117. Video shown on Japanese television showed Tajima moving her hands to the beat of music played on traditional Japanese instruments at a ceremony to mark the achievement.
The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group says that another Japanese woman, Chiyo Miyako, is now the world’s oldest person in its records. Yoshida lives south of Tokyo in Kanagawa prefecture, and is due to turn 117 in 10 days.
Guinness World Records certified 112-year-old Masazo Nonaka of northern Japan as the world’s oldest man earlier this month, and was planning to recognize Tajima as the world’s oldest person.
Statue honors firefighters killed in Arizona wildfire
A life-sized statue was unveiled Saturday honoring 19 members of a firefighting team known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots who died in a 2013 Arizona wildfire.
The statue was dedicated at a state memorial park established where all but one member of the team died in a canyon in mountains near Yarnell on June 30, 2013.
Matt Glenn of Provo, Utah-based Big Statues said the “Returning the Favor” television show hosted by Mike Rowe commissioned his team to make the bronze sculpture for the Wildland Firefighter Guardian Institute.
The institute, founded by survivors of two of the Hotshots, will formally turn over the 6-foot, 2-inch statue to the state during a May ceremony at the park
located 66 miles northwest of Phoenix.
The statue is located at the parking area where visitors can take a 3.5-mile trail to the site where the firefighters were trapped in a brush-choked canyon after shifting winds changed the direction of a lightningsparked fire that burned 127 homes in Yarnell and two nearby communities.
The sole survivor of the team was a member stationed elsewhere as a lookout.
2 dragon boats capsize in China, killing 17
Seventeen people were killed after two dragon boats capsized in southern China, authorities said Sunday.
The boats were practicing Saturday for a race in the Taohua River in the city of Guilin when the accident happened, said the fire department of the city of Guilin, capital of Guangxi
Cuba’s new leader meets with Venezuelan president
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro on Saturday in his first official act as the country’s leader.
Maduro is the first president to visit Diaz-Canel since he was selected by outgoing President Raul Castro to lead the island’s government earlier this week.
The Associated Press was told that Castro did not attend the welcome ceremony for the Venezuelan president at the Palace of the Revolution. But in a marked change from the past, Cuban first lady Lis Cuesta was in attendance along with Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores.
Cuba had no first lady during the nearly six decades that the Castro family was in power. Castro was a widower when he took office 12 years ago and his older brother Fidel carefully guarded his private life.
The Cuban government selected 58-year-old Diaz-Canel as the sole candidate to succeed Castro on Wednesday in a transition aimed at ensuring the continuity of the country’s single-party system. The 86-year-old Castro will remain head of the Communist Party, but it is not clear how much power he will wield.