BAHRAIN
US star gets mixed reception
US television celebrity Kim Kardashian brought out screaming fans, angry Muslim hardliners and police throwing stun grenades on Saturday when she visited the country to launch a milkshake franchise, witnesses said. About 100 Sunni Salafists demonstrated with banners outside The Walk Bahrain, an upmarket mall in Manama, after some lawmakers tried to block the visit. Thousands of fans, who had paid up to 500 Bahraini dinars (US$1,360) for a ticket to the event, broke into hysterical screams as the 32-year-old celebrity launched the Millions of Milkshakes franchise. Kardashian stirred controversy even before she arrived in the country. Hardline Sunni Muslim lawmakers presented a motion to parliament calling her “an actress with an extremely bad reputation,” the English-language Gulf Daily News reported. The assembly did not vote on the motion, the newspaper said. Many Kardashian fans tweeted their displeasure, saying the “MPs should focus their time on solving key political, economic and social issues,” the newspaper said.
BELIZE
McAfee reportedly arrested
Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, wanted by authorities for his neighbor’s murder, has been captured after weeks on the run, his blog said on Saturday. “We have received an unconfirmed report that John McAfee has been captured at the border of Belize and Mexico,” his official blog whoismcafee.com said. The Web site, which McAfee launched to counter what he says are erroneous claims by the media or authorities about him, said it would provide more information as it became available. Police say they simply want to question the 67-year-old about the murder of fellow American Gregory Faull, a Florida native who was found dead at his home last month in a pool of blood on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye. McAfee has said he fears for his life and was fleeing authorities with whom he has been at odds ever since refusing to make a donation to a local politician’s campaign. A police spokesman in Carmelita, in the San Pedro area, said he had no information on a possible arrest.
UNITED STATES
Escaped ram eludes police
A shaggy brown ram successfully dodged police, his handlers and a few cars while trotting through downtown Des Moines, Iowa, after escaping from his trailer on Friday. However, the ram’s freedom only lasted about an hour before he was cornered and tackled by approximately a half dozen of his pursuers. The Navajo-Churro ram jumped from a trailer near the Iowa State Capitol building on Friday morning. He led police, Animal Rescue League officials and some capitol workers on a chase. Video from KCCI-TV shows the animal strolling along downtown sidewalks and streets, resembling a woolly ball of hair bouncing on tiny legs.
UNITED STATES
Deer beat horses to track
Spectators at a western Pennsylvania racetrack got a surprise last week when three deer got onto the course first and beat the horses to racing. According to KDKA-TV, a race was about to begin on Wednesday night at the Meadows Racetrack in Washington County when the deer jumped onto the track. Race announcer Roger Huston did not miss a beat. He began calling the race as it unfolded, saying things like: “As they race down the track, Bambi has the lead. Here comes Rudolph from the outside.” The deer ran fast, but kept changing directions. Several minutes into the show, the deer left the track to the horses. Huston said Bambi won the race.
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
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.
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