MEDITERRANEAN MESS: It appears cables north of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria have been cut, but bad weather is hampering efforts to get a repair crew to the site
Fallout spread yesterday from a cut in two undersea Internet cables off Egypt's coast, with India waking up to half of its bandwidth disrupted and widespread outages still hampering a wide swathe of the Middle East.

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China and Japan scrambled to ease public alarm yesterday as hundreds of Japanese reported feeling ill after eating Chinese-made dumplings, triggering an emergency Cabinet session in Tokyo.

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By Angelica Oung
The "food of the future" could be coming to a convenience store near you, literally.

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WHO'S A DESPOT? : The war on terror and dodgy elections are helping undermine human rights around the world, HRW claims in a new report
Authoritarian rulers are violating human rights around the world and getting away with it largely because the US, Europe and other established democracies accept their claims that holding elections makes them democratic, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its annual report yesterday.

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PROPAGANDA BARRAGE: Beijing has launched a media campaign to reassure people that the authorities can handle the weather crisis in a bid to douse any spark of unrest
A top agriculture official warned yesterday that snow battering central China has dealt an "extremely serious" blow to winter crops, raising the likelihood of shortages driving already surging inflation.

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