UNITED KINGDOM
Prince shows up at event
Britain’s Prince William returned to public duty on Wednesday following his wife Kate’s surgery and the revelation King Charles had cancer, with the heir to the throne set to take on a more prominent role in his father’s absence. William postponed all his planned engagements to look after his three children after Kate, 42, underwent planned abdominal surgery on Jan. 16. Since then, his father has undergone treatment at the same hospital as Kate for an enlarged prostate, before Buckingham Palace announced on Monday that subsequent tests on the 75-year-old monarch had revealed he had a form of cancer. On Wednesday, William, 41, made his first official public appearance since the series of health blows to the royals when he carried out an investiture — a ceremony to hand out state honors — at Windsor Castle.
UNITED STATES
AI institute head appointed
The Biden administration on Wednesday named a top White House aide as the director of the newly established safety institute for artificial intelligence (AI). Elizabeth Kelly is to lead the AI Safety Institute at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which is part of the Department of Commerce. Currently an economic policy adviser for President Joe Biden, Kelly played an integral role in drafting the executive order signed at the end of October last year that established the institute, the Department of Commerce said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Crew missing after crash
A missing military helicopter was found on Wednesday in California but the search for the five service members who were aboard it is still ongoing, the US Marine Corps said. The five Marines were flying on a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in southern California when “the aircraft was reported overdue” on Tuesday, the service said in a statement on Facebook. “The aircraft was located by civil authorities in Pine Valley, California” the following day, the statement said. “The 3rd Marine Aircraft wing is managing the search and rescue efforts” and is “using ground and aviation assets to locate the aircrew in coordination with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and multiple federal, state and local agencies,” it said. The Marine Corps made no mention of remains being found with the helicopter, indicating that those aboard may have survived.
ITALY
Man arrested for ‘sextortion’
An Italian man suspected of obtaining sexual photos of dozens of underage girls after threatening them online has been arrested in Iceland, Italian police said on Wednesday. Over a period of three years, the 48-year-old suspect contacted female minors on social networks and messaging platforms “to obtain sexually explicit images through threats and blackmail,” Italy’s police division charged with fighting cybercrime said. The FBI said last month of the growing threat of so-called “sextortion,” which involves “an offender coercing a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or videos.” The offender then “threatens to release that compromising material unless the victim produces more,” the FBI said. Europol recommends that the phenomenon be called the “online sexual coercion and extortion of children.” Tracking the Italian living in Iceland was difficult because he used numerous nicknames and foreign telephone numbers, Italian police said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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