AUSTRALIA
Police hunt museum intruder
Police are hunting a man who took a late-night tour of a closed Sydney museum, posing for selfies with a dinosaur skull before making off with a cowboy hat and a picture. The intruder climbed up scaffolding into the Australian Museum at about 1am on Sunday last week and went on a leisurely wander through the empty building, local police said. “He was in there for about 40 minutes... He certainly enjoyed his night at the museum,” New South Wales Police Detective Chief Inspector Sean Heaney said on Friday. Security cameras caught the man taking photographs with displays, posing with his head inside the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull and searching cupboards. The man eventually left the museum with the hat and a picture from a wall, police said. The museum has been closed since last year for renovations and police believe that the refurbishment work made his entry easier.
UNITED KINGDOM
Scientists eye disease dogs
Dogs’ ability to sniff out whether people are infected with COVID-19 is to be put to the test by researchers, in a bid to develop a fast, noninvasive means of detecting the disease. The government yesterday said that it had given £500,000 (US$605,175) toward the research, which is to be conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Durham University and a local charity, Medical Detection Dogs. Six dogs — labradors and cocker spaniels — are to be given samples of the odor of COVID-19 patients from London hospitals, and taught to distinguish their smell from that of people who are not infected. If successful, an individual dog could check up to 250 people per hour and be used in public spaces and at airports.
UNITED STATES
Space Force gets own flag
The Space Force — the newest branch of the armed services — now has its own flag. Department of Defense officials presented President Donald Trump with the space force flag during a short Oval Office event on Friday. The dark blue and white flag includes elements intended to evoke the vast recesses of outer space. The space force, which was officially established in December last year, is the first new military service since the Air Force was established in 1947. The 16,000 airmen and civilians that make up the space force technically remain part of the air force, which previously oversaw offensive operations in space. However, Trump has made clear that he sees the newest service as critical to the future of the nation’s defense. The military is building a “super-duper missile” that can travel “17 times faster than what we have right now,” Trump said at the event.
UNITED STATES
Trump spins trucker protest
Trump on Friday said that the sound of truck horns just south of the White House is a “sign of love” for him from truckers, but the truckers were actually honking their opposition to low shipping rates. “They’re protesting in favor of President Trump,” the president claimed in the Rose Garden. The blaring of truck horns wafted across the Ellipse and into the sun-splashed garden. The drivers who have lined Constitution Avenue with their big rigs did not travel to Washington for Trump: They are in the nation’s capital to protest low shipping rates that they say could force many of them out of business. An initial flurry of freight shipments stemming from the pandemic has subsided. As a result, many truckers have found themselves without freight to haul or with offers to deliver goods at rates they have said are unsustainable.
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