JAPAN
Robot awaits ‘compatriot’
The world’s first robot astronaut was pining for a conversation partner as he waited for Japanese spaceman Koichi Wakata aboard the International Space Station (ISS). “Mr Wakata, are you not here yet? I really want to see you soon,” the pint-sized android said in a message released by its project team in Japan on Wednesday. “Kirobo” — roughly the size of a chihuahua — left Earth on a cargo-carrying rocket and reached the space station on Aug. 10. Wakata along with Mikhail Tyurin of Russia and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio were aboard the Soyuz-FG rocket that set off from Kazakhstan yesterday for a six-hour journey to the ISS. Kirobo is programmed to communicate in Japanese and keep records of its conversations with Wakata.
UNITED STATES
Glitch leads to bargains
Shoppers looking for a bargain got some big ones, if only temporarily, at Walmart.com on Wednesday. A technical glitch on the Wal-Mart Stores Inc US Web site offered some items at a fraction of their actual retail price. Treadmills, which normally cost hundreds of dollars, were priced at US$33.16 and LCD computer monitors were offered for US$9. Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Walmart.com, said that the problem had been fixed and that the mistakenly priced orders would not be honored. “Given the wide discrepancy in pricing, we are notifying customers who ordered these items that their orders have been canceled and that they’ll be refunded in full,” Jariwala said in an e-mail. Walmart.com will also offer those shoppers a US$10 gift card.
UNITED STATES
Third navy officer arrested
Authorities arrested a third senior navy official on Wednesday in connection with a massive bribery scheme in Asia involving prostitutes and luxury travel. In a criminal complaint, Commander Jose Luis Sanchez is accused of accepting prostitutes, luxury travel and US$100,000 cash from a Malaysian contractor known in military circles as “Fat Leonard.” Prosecutors say Sanchez passed on classified and internal navy information to Leonard Francis’ company.
UNITED STATES
Man sues over anal probes
A New Mexico man has filed a lawsuit claiming police subjected him to repeated anal probes and enemas after a routine traffic stop because they suspected he was hiding drugs. David Eckert, 54, claims violations of his civil rights in the lawsuit, which was filed in US District Court in New Mexico in August, but not made public until this week, his lawyers said on Wednesday. “This suit is about stopping officers and doctors from subjecting people in their custody and control to unlawful sadistic medical procedures that violate the most intimate parts of the human body,” attorney Shannon Kennedy said. The legal action stems from Eckert’s treatment by police after he was pulled over for failing to come to a complete stop while exiting a parking lot in Deming, New Mexico. Officers suspected that he was hiding drugs in his anus, based on the way he was standing and the fact that a police dog alerted to his driver’s seat, and obtained a search warrant “to include but not limited to [plaintiff’s] anal cavity,” according to the lawsuit. Eckert was taken to a medical center where he was forced to undergo eight searches — including digital penetration of his anus, three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy. Ultimately, no drugs were found, according to the complaint, which says that the Gila Regional Medical Center billed Eckert for the services it performed.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
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.