Mexican authorities are warning about the dangers of a viral TikTok challenge that has left school students intoxicated after taking a controlled medication.
With the slogan “The last one to fall asleep wins,” the challenge consists of trying to stay awake after taking clonazepam, a drug used to treat seizures, panic attacks and anxiety.
A side effect of the drug is drowsiness.
Paramedics treated five intoxicated minors at a school in Mexico City, the capital’s public security department said on Thursday.
Authorities in the northern state of Nuevo Leon reported three cases there. None of the students became seriously ill.
“Unfortunately, challenges that spread through networks often put people’s health at risk,” Nuevo Leon health secretary Alma Rosa said.
Several videos have been posted on TikTok of people recording themselves taking the pills to observe the effects.
Other users have posted videos warning about the danger of the challenge, which has also been seen previously in Chile.
Separately, the EU’s digital policy chief warned TikTok’s boss on Thursday that the social media app will have to fall in line with tough new rules for online platforms set to take effect later this year.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton held a video call with Chew Shou Zi (周受資), chief executive officer of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app that is coming under increasing scrutiny from Western authorities over fears about data privacy, cybersecurity and misinformation.
The two discussed the company’s plans to comply with the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which is set to take effect for the biggest online companies in September. The act is a set of sweeping rules that will require platforms to reduce harmful online content and combat online risks.
“With younger audiences comes greater responsibility,” Breton said, according to a readout of the call. “It is not acceptable that behind seemingly fun and harmless features, it takes users seconds to access harmful and sometimes even life-threatening content.”
Breton added that, with millions of young users in Europe, TikTok has a “special responsibility” to ensure its content is safe.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained