UNITED STATES
Autistic driver defended
An Alaska restaurant is being overwhelmed with goodwill after its owner defended an autistic delivery driver who was berated by a customer. The customer called Little Italy Restaurante in Anchorage to loudly complain after the delivery employee mixed up an order, claiming the driver was using drugs. Owner P.J. Gialopsos’ daughter answered the phone, and assured the customer the driver was not impaired, but is autistic. Gialopsos told the Alaska Dispatch News that it was not the first time there have been complaints. The driver returned to the restaurant upset after the encounter. It was at that point Gialopsos decided to terminate the relationship — with the customer. She instructed her staff to never again take an order from that person.
CANADA
Drink-driving mom exposed
A young boy on Wednesday called police to alert them that his mother was illegally driving under the influence of alcohol with him in the vehicle. York Regional Police said in a statement on Friday that they charged “a 52-year-old woman after receiving a 911 call from her son advising that his mother was drinking and driving with him in the car.” Authorities received an emergency call from a mobile phone, but nobody spoke on the other end. Police called back and the boy riding in a van answered. “The boy sounded scared, but was able to tell the call taker his name, that he was nine, where he was, the description of the van and where he lives,” police said. Police quickly located and stopped the vehicle in the town of Newmarket, north of Toronto, arrested and charged the mother with impaired driving after a test showed her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and turned the boy over to his father.
UNITED STATES
Polar bear cub ‘healthy’
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium says a polar bear gave birth to a pair of cubs, and though only one survived, staff are “cautiously optimistic” about its health. The zoo in central Ohio on Friday said that staff started hand-rearing the week-old female cub after her mother, Aurora, began taking breaks from caring for her. Zoo staff initially had opted not to intervene in caring for the cubs after talking with staff at other polar bear breeding facilities. Polar bears have the lowest reproductive rates of all mammals. The zoo says one in two cubs typically survives. The zoo says the 0.68kg cub is healthy, feeding regularly and receiving around-the-clock care. Aurora and her eight-year-old twin, Anana, arrived at the zoo in 2010. Both mated with a 28-year-old bear.
CUBA
Official touts trade ties
The agricultural sector can act as “a bridge” to the US, a visiting top US official said on Friday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is the third member of US President Barack Obama’s cabinet to visit the communist-run island after Secretary of State John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. The trip is designed to speed up efforts at normalizing trade ties between Washington and Havana, after the neighbors agreed to restore relations in December after more than 50 years of highly tense ties including the Cuban missile crisis. “I strongly believe that agriculture can act as a bridge between two peoples,” Vilsack told a press conference. “I’ll be travelling back to Washington with the hopes to figure out over time how we, the United States, might have a more permanent presence here in Cuba.”
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
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.