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.
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