■ India
Young people depressed
A disturbing 48 percent of school and college students in India's capital suffer from depression, 9 percent attempted suicide in the past year and 7 percent carry weapons including guns, a survey by doctors has found. The study by Sahyog, an adolescent health guidance centre, and aided by the WHO and the federal health ministry, showed about 480 of the 859 adolescents surveyed "remained sad for more than two weeks in the past 12 months." While about 15 percent of the respondents said they had thought of committing suicide in the past year, 9 percent had attempted suicide once while 2 percent had tried to end their lives more than once.
■ China
Group slams Internet rules
A Paris-based media rights group yesterday slammed new Chinese regulations aimed at policing the Internet. "Reporters Without Borders condemned the latest Chinese effort to gag the Internet by means of directives to portals that have discussion groups," the group said in a statement. "... We fear these latest measures will just make Internet users censor themselves even more." China's cultural minister, Sun Jiazheng, last week called for tighter controls on the Internet, including 24-hour surveillance, and urged users to join the government effort to police the Web.
■ Australia
Man's hand reattached
A team of microsurgeons reattached a man's hand after it was severed in a brawl overnight, a hospital spokesman said yesterday. The man arrived at Melbourne's St. Vincent's Hospital without his left hand after he was involved in a fight along with about 40 other people in suburban East Melbourne late Saturday, spokesman Mike Griffin said. Police returned to the park where the fight occurred, found a weapon and the man's hand, and rushed the severed limb to the hospital. Police would only say that a "bladed weapon" was used, and would not elaborate.
■ India
In-vitro fertilization growing
Foreign babies are growing in Indian petri dishes as a growing number of couples from the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Africa flock to India for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a newspaper reported yesterday. "IVF treatment in Bombay [Mumbai] is above the standards of private Kenyan hospitals and costs one-third what I would pay in London," said Stella, 36, a Kenyan citizen and London resident. She arrived in Mumbai for a four-week treatment schedule, the Indian Express newspaper reported. "I wanted to go to someplace where good doctors are always accessible," she said.
■ Pakistan
Troops kill 11 people
Pakistani troops hunting for terrorists in a remote tribal region along the border with Afghanistan killed 11 people who were riding in a minibus that did not stop at a rural checkpoint, an army spokesman said. General Shaukat Sultan said troops opened fire on the minibus after someone fired on the paramilitary forces at a roadblock in Zeri Noor, a village just outside of Wana, the main town in tribal South Waziristan. Counterterrorism operations there earlier this week netted 25 suspects. Sixteen people were arrested. The deaths were sure to raise the anger of fiercely independent tribal leaders already enraged by the presence of troops in their territory. Residents said they were outraged by the shootings, and disputed government claims that someone in the bus fired first.
■ Macedonia
President died instantly
An investigation into the death of Macedonia's former president Boris Trajkovski found Saturday that the leader and eight others died instantly when their plane crashed in the mountains of southern Bosnia. Forensic experts in Bosnia also began carrying out a DNA analysis on the remains Saturday to positively identify the bodies, six of which were burned beyond recognition in Thursday's crash. In the Macedonian capital, officials were awaiting the final forensic findings before setting a date for elections to choose a successor to Trajkovski, a 47-year-old moderate leader credited with helping defuse an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001.
■ Sudan
Rebels kill 50 soldiers
Rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region said on Saturday that they have killed more than 50 soldiers and pro-government militiamen in response to an army offensive. "Our forces have won a victory against government forces and their allied militias in repelling an offensive against villages in the Karnei region," a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) told reporters. The Karnei region is 90km from Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state. SLM spokesman Hassan Ibrahim said "more than 50 soldiers and members of pro-government militias were killed" and that the SLM had snatched arms and munitions during the military raid with air support from Antonov planes.
■ United Kingdom
Couple wed in supermarket
Instead of walking down the aisle, the bride -- and her 11 bridesmaids -- glided up a supermarket escalator. Scores of shoppers filling up their grocery trolleys in a store in York, northern England, paused to watch on Saturday as Jill Piggott, 42, and Pete Freeman, 54, tied the knot. The couple, who became the first Britons to officially marry in a supermarket, chose the location where they met when Freeman was shopping and Piggott was working the checkout till. "People get talking at the checkouts, it's often the same regular faces," said Asda spokesman Ed Watson. "With Jill and Pete they got talking over the baked beans and they took it from there."
■ United States
Viagra won't work for women
Pfizer Inc is ending research on whether the anti-impotency drug Viagra can be used to treat female sexual problems because studies on women were inconclusive, the company said. The results of several clinical studies involving about 3,000 women did not support a regulatory filing, Pfizer said on Friday. Experts agree that female sexuality is more complex than male sexuality, involving psychological and physical factors.
■ Serbia
Villagers make 2km sausage
Organizers of an annual sausage festival in the Serbian village of Turija said on Saturday that they had made the world's longest sausage. Twelve butchers used the meat of 28 pigs, 40kg paprika, 50kg salt, 2kg pepper and 5kg garlic to make a sausage 2.02km long. They prepared the sausage for four days but "unfortunately, the representatives of the Guinness Book of World Records did not come to register the new world record for the longest sausage," media reports said. The Kobasicijada -- sausage festival -- was held this weekend for the 20th time despite protests by a local chapter of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as the event came during Lent, the 40-day fast ahead of Easter.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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