CHINA
Bomber in development
The air force said that it is developing a new type of strategic bomber. People’s Liberation Army Air Force chief Lieutenant General Ma Xiaotian (馬曉天) told state media at an open-day event on Thursday that the bomber would significantly increase the nation’s long-range strike ability. He gave no other details about the aircraft or when it would be introduced, saying only that “you will see it in the future.”
CHINA
Online maps scrutinized
Beijing is tightening its regulation of online maps to clarify its territorial claims. The Xinhua news agency said yesterday that the government has noticed some maps were inaccurate and it would increase checks and order corrections to protect “national sovereignty and interests.” It cited incorrect drawing of national boundary lines, saying some “territorial islands were mistakenly left out” — an apparent reference to waters and islands China claims in the South and East China seas. Xinhua said such practices have harmed China’s territorial sovereignty, national security and interests and may impair the international community’s understanding of the position and claims of the Chinese government. Taiwan also has claims in the area.
UNITED NATIONS
Cards aim to combat abuse
An official said that the world body will begin providing peacekeeping troops with “no excuses” cards — part of a plan to combat sexual abuse in the organization’s international stabilization operations. Jane Holl Lute, special coordinator on improving the agency’s response to sexual exploitation and abuse, said the cards would make clear the organization’s standards of behavior during deployment.
UNITED STATES
Student, 12, starts at Cornell
While most kids his age are attending middle school, 12-year-old Jeremy Shuler has just started his first semester at Cornell University. He is the youngest student on record to attend the Ivy League institution. Jeremy’s parents, who are both aerospace engineers, moved from Texas, to Ithaca, New York, so he could live with them while pursuing his engineering degree. Cornell Engineering Dean Lance Collins said Jeremy is definitely ready for college intellectually, but still needs the support of his family. Jeremy, who was home-schooled, was reading books in English and Korean by age two and studying calculus at six. He aced SATs and Advanced Placement tests at 10, earning college credit in seven subjects. He plans a career in academia. Collins envisions a bright future for the young prodigy.
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.