HUNGARY
Jobs to be immortalized
Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, will be immortalized in Budapest with a statue, Graphisoft, a Hungarian firm Jobs helped to prominence, said on Friday. “Graphisoft ... will erect a statue to commemorate Apple’s legendary founder” on Dec. 21, the company, known globally for its architectural design software ArchiCAD, said in a statement. Steve Jobs, who died on Oct. 5 following a long battle with cancer, “was the creator of technology with a human face,” it said. The statue will be erected in a science park that hosts several IT companies, including Graphisoft. Apple has supported the Hungarian firm since 1984, when Jobs saw it at the annual CEBIT expo in Germany, the company said.
ITALY
‘Blind’ woman outed
A woman claiming a disability allowance for blindness was remanded in custody on Friday for benefit fraud after police filmed her working as a hairdresser and cycling about town on her bicycle. The 62-year-old woman, who owns a hair salon in the town of Lugo in the north of the country, began claiming the benefit in 1986 because her vision was degenerating. By this year she claimed to be “totally blind,” according to a police statement. By 1997 her doctor said she had to be accompanied when she left the house and by 2008 she could only count the number of fingers held up in front of her if the hand was held a few centimeters away from her face. In double-checking a list of professions of those registered as blind, police stumbled across the salon and filmed the woman cutting clients’ hair, shopping for clothes and food and walking and cycling about the town. Her benefit — 43,000 euros (US$59,000) so far — has been suspended.
FRANCE
Sword-wielding man kills
A man armed with a Japanese samurai sword killed a policewoman and wounded two other people on Friday during an attack on a local government office in the central city of Bourges, police said. The 33-year-old man was shot in the leg and wounded during the attack, which took place at a local prefect’s office. Witnesses said that before the attack the man had been rejected for a gun license at the office. He returned with the 80cm sword and attacked police when they attempted to subdue him. The 30-year-old policewoman was seriously wounded and died shortly after the attack, the interior ministry said. A police officer shot and wounded the attacker, after which he was subdued and taken into custody, witnesses said.
SOUTH KOREA
Conman uses homeless
A man has been arrested for arranging sham marriages between homeless men and visa-seeking Vietnamese women, an immigration official said on Friday. The 40-year-old man was held on Wednesday by a special immigration investigation team for arranging the fake marriages, an official at Seoul’s immigration office said. Three other alleged marriage brokers are being investigated by prosecutors. The brokers contacted homeless men at Seoul railway stations and promised them a free trip to Vietnam and up to three million won (US$2,600) if they agreed to the fake marriages, the official said on condition of anonymity. Vietnamese brides, who were seeking the right to live and work in the country, paid between US$18,000 to US$20,000. The homeless men were flown to Vietnam to marry and the supposed couples then returned to South Korea for another wedding ceremony before the brides parted company with their spouses and disappeared.
UNITED STATES
NASA books Virgin flight
NASA has booked a charter suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic’s spaceport operations in southern New Mexico. Virgin Galactic announced on Thursday that the agreement calls for NASA to charter a full flight from the company, and it includes options for two additional flights. If all options are exercised, the contract is worth US$4.5 million. Virgin Galactic says each mission allows for up to 590kg of scientific experiment equipment. Earlier this week, Virgin Galactic announced it had hired former NASA executive Michael Moses as vice president of operations. Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Aabar Investments. It is on track to be the world’s first commercial spaceline and hopes to launch its first flight within the next year from Spaceport America, about 80km north of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
UNITED STATES
Pumpkin prices soar
A hurricane that drenched the northeast in August is having a knock-on effect on festivities months later, with pumpkin prices soaring after heavy rains ruined patches, officials said on Friday. The Department of Agriculture warned in a blogpost that in the wake of Hurricane Irene, prices for pumpkins large and small were higher than last year. However, pumpkins are grown “in nearly every state, so the supply is widely disbursed,” the department added, calling on lovers of the famous orange squash to send in photos of their creations. Pumpkins are often traditionally carved for the late October festivities of Halloween into scary, humorous or abstract shapes. A candle is placed inside the hollowed pumpkin left outside homes. The Wall Street Journal reported that prices for smaller pumpkins grown in Maryland and then sold in New York state are 60 times higher than a year ago.
HONDURAS
Six killed leaving airport
Police said six men were shot dead on Friday as they left an airport in the northern part of the country, which has one of the world’s highest homicide rates. The incident took place at the exit for the carpark at the airport in San Pedro Sula, 240km north of the capital, Tegucigalpa. On Thursday, the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras released a study indicating that the small Central American country of 8 million was on course to break world records with its murder rate. Authorities have blamed some of the violence on international drug cartels, which have used Central American countries as transit routes to export cocaine to the US.
GUATEMALA
Heavy rains threaten region
Central America was on maximum alert on Friday as heavy rains threatened to lash the region over the weekend, while the death toll rose to 37 from a storm system in the past week. The toll in neighboring Mexico rose to eight, with three more reported dead in the wake of Jova, which separately hit the Pacific coast as a hurricane on Tuesday before weakening to a tropical storm. Storm systems in Central America and Mexico triggered heavy flooding, blocked roads and caused electricity outages and mudslides. Many homes were destroyed and more than 70,000 people affected. Torrential rains carried away bridges in Guatemala, where 22 people were confirmed dead, according to local authorities and emergency services. President Alvaro Colom told reporters that two people were still missing, while the US offered four helicopters to help rescue efforts in isolated communities.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion