UNITED STATES
Self-driving car pulled over
Google on Thursday playfully posted a photograph of a motorcycle police officer pulling over one of its self-driving cars for riding along at a cautious pace. “Driving too slowly?” the self-driving car team asked rhetorically in a message that accompanied a picture on its Google+ social network page. “Bet humans don’t get pulled over for that too often.” Police in Google’s home town of Mountain View in Silicon Valley explained in an online post that an officer noticed traffic backing up behind a self-driving car going 39kph on a street with a 56kph speed limit. “As the officer approached the slow-moving car he realized it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle,” the police department said. “In this case, it was lawful for the car to be traveling on the street.” California law allows self-driving cars to use roads with speed limits of 56kph or slower. Google caps the speed of its self-driving cars at 40kph for safety reasons.
UNITED STATES
Zombie apocalypse denied
Authorities on Wednesday said that a zombie apocalypse had not occurred in central Wisconsin, despite the discovery of an empty casket along a rural highway over the weekend. A driver alerted authorities after spotting the casket on Saturday on the side of a road in the city of Friendship, about 130km north of Madison, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office said. On Wednesday, an unidentified man came forward to claim the casket, telling authorities that it fell out of a boat he was pulling with his truck, according to a sheriff’s office Facebook post. “There was no sign that it was ever used for a burial,” Adams County Deputy Joe LeBreck said. “We had no concerns that we had a grave robbery or a zombie apocalypse here.”
UNITED STATES
White House officer arrested
A Secret Service officer assigned to the White House was arrested this week after he sent naked pictures of himself to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl, a criminal complaint said. Lee Robert Moore, 37, of Church Hill, Maryland, turned himself in to Maryland State Police on Monday and faces charges including solicitation of a minor, according to the complaint filed in District Court in Delaware. The complaint details a series of pornographic online chats starting in late August between Moore and a Delaware State Police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. Moore sent naked photographs of himself to the undercover officer and asked to meet in person to have sex, according to the complaint. In an interview with police, Moore admitted to communicating with the person while he was working at the White House, the complaint said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Male impersonator jailed
A woman on Thursday was jailed for eight years by a court after tricking a friend she met on Facebook into having sex with her by disguising herself as a man. Gayle Newland, 25, met the victim on the social network in 2011 using the profile name Kye Fortune and spoke to her on the telephone impersonating a man’s voice. They finally agreed to meet face-to-face in 2013. However, Newland insisted that the other woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wear a blindfold for the meeting, claiming to feel insecure after brain surgery. They subsequently spent more than 100 hours together in which the other woman always wore a blindfold during activities which included watching television together and sunbathing. Newland was sentenced for sexual assault at Chester Crown Court.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing