Etrog

World News

A Wrong Turn Turns into 600 Kilometer Diversion

An Australian 81-year-old grandfather became an accidental adventurer when he took a wrong turn while going for a drive to get the morning paper on Monday morning, and ended up 600km (370 miles) off course on an epic road trip across Australia. Eric Steward, 81, was visiting friends in Yass, in south-eastern New South Wales, when he went for a short drive to the neighborhood grocery, but took a wrong turn down a highway and ended up across the border in Geelong, just north of Melbourne in the southern state of Victoria. It was a 600km (370 miles), nine-hour diversion. "I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful quiet drive. I didn't know where I was going but I knew it was somewhere, and with a bit of luck I would eventually find my wife again," Mr. Steward, who suffers from slight dementia, said earlier today, still wondering what all the fuss was about. The former navy seaman eventually realized his mistake when he began to run out of gas. He saw Victorian police officer Clayton Smith, who had stopped at a petrol station near Geelong for a drink break with another officer near Geelong on Monday afternoon, and asked for directions to Yass. “I was stretching my legs, waiting for (his partner) Tom to come back to the car when this little old man came up to me saying he was lost,” Leading Senior Constable Clayton Smith recalled. "He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife." Reunited yesterday, the couple cracked jokes about the adventure. "He's a good driver. Very focused, I knew that much," she said. "It's a lot of fuss isn't it?" Mr Steward said, grinning behind the wheel, as he happily posed for the media in his car today. "When you get to 80 and beyond it doesn't matter much. He's out there waiting for us and you just got to wait your turn." Mr. Steward shrugged off suggestions he invest in a Global Positioning System (GPS) for his car. "Why would you want one of those? You can't get lost. There is no fun in that," he said. http://www.tog.co. il/en/TorahNew.asp x?id=2426  (Thursday Nov 19 | post #1)

World News

White House: Israeli housing plans in Jerusalem dismaying, make...

Netanyahu's Solution for the Housing Shortage: Building Permits on the Spot read more http://www.tog.co. il/en/default.aspx  (Thursday Nov 19 | post #15)

World News

USA Holocaust Education

Dozens of leaders of Torah institutions will gather tonight for a special meeting on behalf of the organization "Adut Neemenah," established a few months ago with the encouragement of maranan v’rabbanan, the gedolei hador shlit’a of American Jewry. How to teach new generations about the Holocaust. read more http://www.tog.co. il/en/TorahNew.asp x?id=2265  (Wednesday Nov 11 | post #1)

Outdoor Recreation

Stuck on Ice Chunk while Hunting

not bad enough? how about being stuck on an ice chunk in the Artic Ocean with 3 polars bears as stowaways? Canada: A Teen Went for Help and Ended Up Drifting with Bears A teen was rescued by the Canadian Air Force after drifting on a floating chunk of ice with ... three polar bears. He and his 67-year-old uncle had gone for help after the snowmobile they were riding broke down. Eitan Fried 10/11/2009 12:30 An unusual rescue operation was performed by the Canadian Air Force: Canadian troops rescued last night (Monday, local time) a 17-year-old teen Eskimo who was adrift on a floe of ice, which to his unfortunate luck was hosting another three guests – a mother polar bear and her two cubs. The bear did not survive the encounter with him, but the cubs did. The Eskimo teen needed to be rescued after being stuck during a hunting trip with his uncle, aged 67. Their snowmobile broke down, and they went for help, but they were separated when the glacier he was walking on broke away and carried him away to the Arctic Ocean. Sometime between Saturday and Sunday, the teen, who was armed with a rifle, encountered three bears, an adult and two older cubs, on the same large ice pan. He was forced to shoot the mother bear that threatened him to protect her cubs. Jean-Pierre Sharp, an official with the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Canadian Forces Base Trenton in Ontario, said an aerial search was launched Sunday morning. A pilot on a small plane chartered by a government search-and-rescue agency spotted the teen Sunday afternoon and also saw the carcass of a bear down below. The crew on board dropped a plastic container of chocolate bars and candy to the stranded boy. However, they lost contact with him after dark, and next to the two remaining polar bears the boy passed the night in the freezing cold of twenty degrees below zero. The two cubs remained with the adult carcass and the teen managed to position himself as far away as he could from the remaining animals. Meanwhile, the floe of ice, which was about 45 feet long drifted away to about 20 miles from where the snowmobile broke down. On Monday morning, the crew on board the military search-and-rescue aircraft again spotted the youth, Sharp said. Two rescuers parachuted to a larger ice floe a short distance away to mount their rescue attempt. The two remaining bears were still in the area when the rescuers arrived. The teen was taken to hospital in Churchill, Manitoba, to be treated for hypothermia and frostbite. And the bear cubs? Ynet news website cites reports that they were extracted from the wandering ice floe and were taken to safety soon after. Etrog News http://www.tog.co. il/en/TorahNew.asp x?id=2239  (Tuesday Nov 10 | post #1)