PARIS (AP) — The mystery French street artist known only as “Invader” has struck Paris again — this time to celebrate the Olympics.

Invader has been cementing his quirky mosaics to Paris walls since the 1990s, usually at night and without permission. He’s become France’s most international, invasive and intriguing contemporary street artist. His works dot all corners of the City of Light and his fans have a lot of fun hunting them down.

And now there’s a new, Olympic-themed one for them to find.

Invader cemented it to a wall on one of the River Seine’s embankments sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday. Using tiles to create the mosaic, it shows one of his signature Space Invader figures running. The work’s colors evoke the shades of blue that Paris Games organizers have used to decorate the city for the Olympics.

A representative for artist — who, like him, maintains anonymity — said by email to The Associated Press that “Invader told me to say that he wanted to celebrate the Olympics in Paris with this mosaic. The space invader is running and he wears some of the colors of the Olympics signage.”

The artist’s admirers can download his app, called “Flash Invaders,” and then use it to take photos of any of his works that they find.

When they do, the app awards them points. The more works they find and “flash,” the more points they get.

It’s addictive: The app has nearly 400,000 players.

The new mosaic is the 1,512th that Invader has glued up in Paris. Players get 50 points when they flash it with his app. Since the first catalogued mosaic of a blue Space Invader went up on a Paris street in 1998, numbered PA_01, Invader has colonized the world. There are now more than 4,000 of his mosaics in cities and towns on all continents except Antartica.

On Instagram, the artist posted a photo Wednesday of the new work and the words “Special Olympic Games Paris 2024,” with a jogger running past.

That and a video post by the artist alerted admirers that there was a new work for them to find.

A small group of them quickly tracked it down, took its photo with the app, got their points, and spent time together admiring the work.

Super fan André Lavigne, a 64-year-old retired chemical engineer, was among the first to find and flash it. He is currently ranked in the top 100 players on the app, having tracked down 2,718 of the artist’s works in France and overseas.

In just the first few hours, the work was already generated buzz.

“I’ve seen many people coming and flashing and asking, ‘It’s a new one?’ And I say, ‘Yes, it has been put (up) last night.’ (They reply) ‘Oh, well, that’s extraordinary,” Lavigne said.

Another admirer, Gema Calero, rolled up on her bike and celebrated with a fist pump when she got her 50 points.

“It’s all fresh, it still smells of glue,” she said.

She says searching high and low across Paris for the works has taught her lots about the city and the value of looking around.

“It allows you to look at life differently. You hunt around. You look up a little bit. Because normally when we walk we look at what’s in front of us,” she said. “It’s super.”

Like Banksy, the British street artist he is sometimes likened to, Invader is elusive, fiercely protective of his anonymity and operating on the margins of illegality. He comes, glues, and disappears into the night, leaving behind his signature pixelated mosaics made mostly with small ceramic and glass tiles.

Most resemble the aliens from the Space Invaders arcade game. Others are wonderfully elaborate, such as still lives of fruit or, in New York, portraits of Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Some reference pop culture — Spiderman, Star Wars, Bugs Bunny, Ninja Turtles, pizza and the like.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

A Polish man on Wednesday was sentenced to four months in jail for assaulting the Danish prime minister as well as separate sexual harassment charges. He will also be deported and banned from returning to Denmark for the next six years.

The unidentified 39-year-old man, held in pretrial custody since the assault, has been charged with punching Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s right shoulder with a clenched fist, causing her to lose her balance but not fall. Frederiksen suffered whiplash at the time.

DENMARK’S PRIME MINISTER FREDERIKSEN ASSAULTED IN COPENHAGEN, MAN ARRESTED

The Copenhagen District Court issued the sentencing, which the defendant didn’t appeal. The court said the assault “emphasized the nature of the violence and that the violence against the prime minister occurred in connection with her performance of her duties as prime minister.”

The man had also confessed before the court to other charges, including sexual harassment by exposing himself to passing people and groping a woman at a commuter train station, and fraud involving deposit-marked bottles and cans at two supermarkets.

Prosecutor Anders Larsson on Wednesday demanded four months in jail for assaulting the prime minister and for exposing his private parts to passersby, saying while his sexual acts were not gross, they “were certainly uncomfortable” for those seeing it, according to public broadcaster DR.

“His behavior and demeanor are far removed from a citizen who should be in our society,” Larsson said in court, according to DR.

Frederiksen was on a private break from the Social Democratic Party’s campaign for the elections to renew the European Parliament when the assault took place on a busy downtown Copenhagen plaza. The 46-year-old prime minister, who has been in office since 2019, had been campaigning for her party’s EU lead candidate, Christel Schaldemose, who was elected. The attack was not linked to the campaign event.

The assault happened as violence against politicians in Europe spread in the run-up to the European Union elections.

In May, a candidate from Germany’s center-left Social Democrats was beaten and seriously injured while campaigning.

In Slovakia, the campaign was overshadowed by an attempt to assassinate populist Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15, sending shockwaves through the nation and reverberating throughout Europe. Fico was shot in the abdomen and seriously wounded. The suspect was immediately arrested and faces terror charges.

Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting has advanced to the gold-medal bout in the women’s featherweight division, winning her third consecutive match while dealing with widespread scrutiny regarding misconceptions about her gender at the Paris Olympics.

One day after welterweight Imane Khelif of Algeria reached the women’s welterweight final with a third straight victory in Paris, Lin defeated Esra Yildiz Kahraman of Turkey 5:0 on Wednesday night for her third win.

Lin will fight for gold on Saturday, taking on Poland’s Julia Szeremeta.

Lin and Khelif both won every round in all three of their Olympic bouts despite the massive distractions created by the fallout from the Olympic-banished International Boxing Association’s decision last year to disqualify both fighters from the world championships for allegedly failing an eligibility test.

Both fighters have responded to this unwelcome spotlight by making two of the best tournament runs of their lengthy amateur careers. Just like Khelif, Lin has never been a dominant champion in her sport, but that hasn’t stopped many observers from casting both as unstoppable boxing machines during the Olympics because the IBA disqualified them last year.

In fact, the 28-year-old Lin is a veteran amateur boxer who won world championships in 2018 and 2022 during a solid decade at the top level of the sport.

She has received ample support from outside the Olympics, even from former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen – and when Lin thrust one glove in the air and walked to the ring for the opening bout on Court Philippe Chatrier, she received loud cheers from a huge crowd with pockets of roaring, flag-waving fans.

Both Lin and Khelif have been cheered constantly during their time in the Olympic boxing rings, first in suburban Villepinte and then at this famed clay-court tennis complex.

Battle for medal table top spot heats up between US and China

Meanwhile, China and the US keep battling for the top of the medal table of the Paris Olympics.

Team America won gold in women’s team pursuit and in the men’s 400 meters with an incredible comeback by Quincy Hall

China responded with victories in the men’s 61kg weightlifting by Li Fabin and in artistic swimming.

On the EU side of things, the Netherlands racked up a new gold in women’s dinghy to narrow the gap with Italy, although host France remains the most successful country of the bunch.

Find out more about the Paris 2024 medal table placements here.