UNITED STATES
Turing’s notes net US$1m
A handwritten notebook by British World War II code-breaking genius Alan Turing brought more than US$1 million at an auction in New York on Monday. The 56-page manuscript was written at the time the mathematician and computer science pioneer was working to break the seemingly unbreakable Enigma codes used by the Germans throughout the war. It contains his complex mathematical and computer science notations and is believed to be the only extensive Turing manuscript known to exist, Bonhams auction house said. The sale price was US$1,025,000. Turing’s notebook dates from 1942, when he and his team of cryptanalysts were at Britain’s World War II code and cypher school Bletchley Park.
UNITED STATES
Record surfboard coming
A Rhode Island engineering technology and manufacturing company has set out to build the world’s largest surfboard. WPRO-AM reports that Bristol-based mouldCAM is building the board for the Visit Huntington Beach campaign in California, which hopes to break the world record for the most people to catch a wave on a surfboard. MouldCAM says the board will be 13m long and 3.3m wide, and will hold 62 people. The board will be sent to California to be painted and finished before heading to Huntington Beach. Project manager Bob Steel says an aerospace engineer is working with the project to make sure the weight distribution is correct on the day of the ride in mid-June. Sixty-two people must stand on the board for 10 seconds to break the record.
UNITED STATES
Campus killer on the run
One person was shot dead on Monday on a community college campus in North Carolina, and the suspected gunman was still on the run, officials said. The victim was an employee of Wayne Community College in the town of Goldsboro, identified as Ron Lane, who was killed in the campus library, college spokeswoman Tara Humphries said. “There was never a hostage situation or a mass shooting, it was an isolated situation with one victim,” Humphries said. “Our hearts are heavy for the loss of a valued employee,” college president May Albertson told reporters. The campus was on lockdown for several hours before students and employees were sent home for the remainder of the day. Police have issued an alert for a white, 1.8m male suspect with a tattoo beneath one eye. The Wayne County sheriff’s office said the suspect was a former student who did not graduate, but no possible motives were given, local media reported.
MEXICO
Man killed by crocs
The body of a man has been found in a lagoon in the resort city of Cancun, after crocodiles apparently dragged him under water. Authorities said the man died over the weekend while swimming in an area marked with signs warning about crocodiles. The director of the city’s forensic examiner’s office said on Monday that the autopsy found crocodile bite marks on the man’s arms and shoulders. However, Jose Lugo said those bites were not fatal, and that the cause of death was drowning. The victim was identified as 31-year-old man from central Mexico who had recently arrived in Cancun, intending to live there. The Nichupte lagoon is just behind Cancun’s hotel strip. The lagoon is ringed by restaurants and docks, but swimming is discouraged.
CHINA
Emperor’s last sibling dies
Almost half a century after the death of China’s last emperor, his last surviving sibling, Jin Youzhi (金友之), died on Friday last week in Beijing. He was 96. Jia Yinghua (賈英華), a historian of China’s last imperial family, confirmed the death. Jin, a retired primary-school teacher, was the half brother of Pu Yi (溥儀), China’s last emperor. Their Manchu Dynasty ruled China for 268 years, until a republic was established in 1912. “His death marks the end of an era in Chinese history,” Jia said in an interview on Monday. Jin was a great-grandson of the Daoguang Emperor, who ruled China between 1820 and 1850, and a nephew of the Guangxu Emperor, who reigned from 1875 to 1908. He was born in Beijing on Aug. 17, 1918, six years after Pu abdicated. At the time, his family lived in a princely residence north of the Forbidden City and enjoyed privileges negotiated in an agreement with the young Chinese republic. The family moved to Tianjin shortly after Pu’s expulsion from the imperial residence in 1924, Jia said.
JAPAN
Mangoes sell for US$2,500
A deep-pocketed Japanese department store shelled out an eye-watering ¥300,000 (US$2,500) on Monday for a pair of mangoes, a record price for the second year in a row. After the hammer fell at an auction in Miyazaki, the successful bidder airlifted the fruit to its luxury shop in Fukuoka, where they went on sale for a bargain ¥210,000, according to the Miyazaki Agricultural Economic Federation. The mangoes — top of the range Taiyo no Tamago (Egg of the Sun) — were the first auctioned this year, an occasion that usually attracts inflated prices. To qualify as a Taiyo no Tamago mango, each fruit must weigh at least 350g and have a high sugar content. While US$2,500 is steep for a pair of mangoes, fruit is routinely expensive in Japan and it is not unusual for a single apple to cost upwards of US$3.
IRAN
Flights to Saudi suspended
The government has suspended flights to Saudi Arabia for the year-round Umrah Islamic pilgrimage after allegations that Saudi security officers sexually assaulted two Iranian boys, Culture Minister Ali Jannati said on Monday. The move is likely to deepen tensions between the two regional powers, who are at odds over the war in Yemen. The teenage boys alleged last week that the officers abused them while conducting a security search at Jeddah airport. “Until these guilty people are put on trial and punished, the Umrah will be stopped and Iranian flights will be suspended,” Iranian Students News Agency cited Jannati as saying.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Former soccer player jailed
A court sentenced a former Russian soccer player to two-and-a-half years in jail on Monday for starting a drunken brawl on board a 2006 flight that was forced to land in Prague, news agency CTK reported. The Prague City Court sentenced Yevgeny Rothshtein, formerly called Dogayev, for trying to get into the cockpit, threatening to blow up the Aeroflot plane and demanding to land in Cairo on the Moscow to Geneva flight, the news agency reported. The banker and former Dynamo Moscow player denied he had tried to take control of the plane, saying he was only very drunk and trying to sort out a problem with a stewardess. The judge agreed and rejected the state attorney’s demand that he be sentenced for hijacking. The judge said he was under the influence of pills and alcohol, and should not even have been allowed on board.
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