Top News Stories –

Traffic chaos on M74 ‘due to a dog taking control of a tractor’ –
A busy stretch of motorway was left in chaos on Wednesday “due to a dog taking control of a tractor”. The bizarre incident was reported by Traffic Scotland at J13 of the M74 near Abington in South Lanarkshire. The transport body tweeted it was “not joking” and a farmer and police were at the scene with the vehicle after it crashed into the central reservation. The dog – believed to be a sheepdog – was unhurt after reportedly leaning on the controls of the tractor, taking it from a field on to the road. [Daily Telegraph]

Traffic Scotland later tweeted that the dog was OK.
@Traffic Scotland on Twitter

Man shoots computer in Colorado Springs alley, gets revenge he wanted – and a citation –
When ctrl + alt + delete doesn’t work, just shoot the darn thing. That’s what one man did on Monday night, according to Colorado Springs police. Lucas Hinch, 37, was cited for discharging a weapon within city limits after he took the fight with his computer outside and got the revenge most of us only dream about. “He got tired of fighting with his computer for the last several months,” Lt. Jeff Strossner said. “He was having technology problems, so he took it out in the back alley and shot it.” Strossner tweeted Hinch “executed” his computer in an alley on the 2200 block of West Colorado Avenue. The penalty for the citation will be up to a judge, police said, adding that Hinch was good-natured about the citation and hadn’t realized he was breaking the law when he went Wild West on that useless piece of technology. Hinch shot it eight times, Strossner said, “effectively disabling it.” The computer is not expected to recover. [The Gazette]
The shot computer – Image from the Colorado Gazette

Google launches Project Fi mobile phone network –
Google has detailed its plan to run a mobile phone network in the US. The firm will rent voice and data capacity from two existing operators – Sprint and T-Mobile – and use existing wi-fi hotspots, rather than build new infrastructure from scratch. Initially, Project Fi will only be offered to Nexus 6 handset owners. Sundar Pichai, chief of Google’s Android platform, first mentioned the company’s plan to create a phone network in February, but provided little detail at the time. The company has now revealed that its subscribers will be automatically switched between 4G signals provided by Sprint and T-Mobile, depending on whichever is stronger at the time. They will also be able to make calls over wi-fi without having to use a special app, similar in nature to the Wi-fi Calling facility recently introduced by EE in the UK. [BBC]
Sundar Pichai

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• A tribal fight in Papua New Guinea‘s Hela Province between the Wapiago and Tapamu clans claims the lives of ten people, mostly children. (ABC News Australia)
• War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
  • The Taliban announces the start of its annual spring offensive warning it would attack foreign embassies as well as military targets. (Reuters via Daily Mail)
• Syrian Civil War
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that Syrian government air strikes on areas controlled by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant kills 32 people. The air strikes hit a hospital in Dayr Hafir killing at least 21 people. (AP via ABC News America)

Business and economy

• The European Union opens an antitrust case against Russian gas giant Gazprom which supplies most of Central and eastern Europe with supplies of natural gas. (AP via Daily Mail)
• Google announces a new wireless network in the United States called Project Fi with a pay as you go data rate. (Venture Beat)

Disasters and accidents

• Australian east coast low
  • The storm in Australia‘s New South Wales is declared a “catastrophe” with four deaths, heavy flooding and disruption of transport to the state’s largest cities Sydney and Newcastle. (The Australian), (WA Today)
  • Twelve areas of NSW are declared as disaster zones including Dungog, Maitland, Cessnock Gosford, Great Lakes Council, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, Pittwater Council, Port Stephens , Singleton, Warringah and Wyong. (WA Today)
• Sinking of the MV Sewol
  • South Korea approves plans to recover the MV Sewol which sank last year with the loss of 300 people. (AP)
• The Calbuco volcano erupts in southern Chile. (Reuters via Yahoo! Canada)

Law and crime

• The Senate of the United States unanimously passes a bill to combat human trafficking after a long delay caused by a dispute over abortion funding. (New York Times)

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