■ 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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
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