UNITED STATES
Pentagon bans ‘Pokemon’
Department of Defense officials on Friday said employees should not download Pokemon Go onto their government-issued smartphones. “You can imagine a number of reasons [why] that wouldn’t necessarily be a prudent thing to do,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Gordon Trowbridge told reporters. “Aside from any security concerns, I think taxpayers would appreciate government phones being used for government business.” Trowbridge jokingly said he could not confirm reports a Pokemon “gym” — a virtual battle arena — has been placed in the courtyard in the middle of the vast Pentagon building.
BRAZIL
Rousseff’s judgement to begin
The final judgement phase in the impeachment of suspended president Dilma Rousseff is to start on Aug. 25, just four days after the Rio de Janeiro Olympics end, the senate news service said on Friday. “The judgment session for Dilma Rousseff will start on the 25th at 9am. The notice has been delivered to Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the suspended president’s lawyer,” the official news outlet said. Rousseff is accused of breaking budget laws in taking unauthorized government loans to mask the depth of economic difficulties during her 2014 re-election. Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, says her impeachment is a coup in disguise. The senate must vote by a two-thirds majority at the end of the judgement session, which could take several days, to remove her from office. If that happens, interim president Michel Temer would stay on until scheduled elections in 2018.
CUBA
Fidel Castro turns 90
Thousands partied along Havana’s Malecon seafront into the early hours of yesterday, celebrating retired Cuban president Fidel Castro turning 90 to the tune of Latin beats as an electric storm in the distance lit up the night sky. On the strike of midnight, a live band played Happy Birthday in honor of the iconic leftist revolutionary on the “Anti-imperialist Tribune,” a plaza located outside the newly opened US embassy, while fireworks exploded on the other side of the bay. Colorful floats carrying dancers and salsa bands stretched for kilometers down the Malecon, as Havana’s annual carnival was combined this year with Castro’s birthday concert. “This is the best gift we can give him, this party,” said dancer Leydis Campos, 25, decked in a skimpy limegreen outfit, her eyelids caked in glitter. “To 90 years past, and to 90 more.” Tributes have ranged from the conventional, such as photograph exhibits about his life, to the outlandish, with one cigar maker rolling the longest smoke in the world, measuring 90m, in Castro’s honor.
UNITED STATES
‘Criminal Minds’ star fired
Thomas Gibson, the star of Criminal Minds on CBS, has been fired from the show after an altercation with a producer. The actor, who has played investigator Aaron Hotchner on the crime procedural since its debut in 2005, was suspended earlier this week for kicking a producer in what the actor later described as the result of creative differences, according to news reports. However, the producers of the show, ABC Studios and CBS Television Studios, on Friday said that the separation would be made permanent, saying in a statement that “Thomas Gibson has been dismissed from Criminal Minds.”
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.