■ China
Extra child costs a house
A court in Shenzhen has fined a couple 780,000 yuan (US$94,250) and sealed off their house for having more than one child, the Beijing Morning Post said yesterday. The pair were among nine couples who were fined "social fostering fees" for their extra children, the newspaper said. They had their first boy in 1997 and last year had twin boys, the newspaper said. The couple's house had been sealed up "according to the law," the paper said, or until they pay the fine which was unusually large. A house is sealed with a white paper bearing the stamp of a local court pasted across the front door.
■ India
God improves train safety
India's disaster-prone train network may be the world's largest employer, but the country's railways minister says he believes the credit for a respite in accidents lies with the Hindu god of machines. Laloo Prasad Yadav said the number of train accidents had declined since he installed a "bright new photo" of the god Vishwakarma in his New Delhi office. "Now I pray to Him daily," the maverick minister told reporters in Madras on Saturday. "`You direct me [in running the railways],' I tell Vishwa-karma, and so now there are no rail accidents," Yadav said. India has the world's busiest railway system, shuttling 13 million people daily on 108,700km of track.
■ Australia
Bird-smuggling ring broken
Customs officials said yes-terday they had severely disrupted an international wildlife trafficking ring linking Australia to Africa and Southeast Asia. More than 1,000 birds had been seized in raids across the country in what customs said was its biggest ever operation to identify and prosecute smugglers of wildlife. "This was a major operation aimed at dis-rupting an organized trade in wildlife between Australia, Africa and Southeast Asia in particular," customs official Richard Janeczko said. "These co-ordinated raids have sent a strong signal to anyone involved in the international wildlife trade that their actions are under heavy scrutiny."
■ India
`Right' prizes awarded
The Right Livelihood prize, dubbed the "alternative" to the Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded yesterday to human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger, an Argentinian anti-nuclear activist and a Rus-sian group documenting Soviet-era abuses. The prize, established in 1980, was announced in Hyderabad instead of the usual base of Sweden to stress it focuses on the developing world. The prize of two million Swedish kronor (US$268,000) will be shared among Jagger, Argentinian scientist Raul Montenegro and the Moscow-based Memorial society.
■ Sri Lanka
Coffin put before embassy
About 150 supporters of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) placed the coffin of a slain party leader in front of the Norwegian Embassy to protest some 115 murders, including 35 political assassinations, by Tamil rebels since Norway brokered a ceasefire between the rebels and the government. The protesters marched to the embassy with the coffin of Thambit-hurai Sivakumar, a regional party leader who was killed on Saturday in Puttalam, north of the Colombo. Sivakumar was out cycling with his eight-year-old daughter when the killing took place, his party said on its Web site.
■ Pakistan
Musharraf, Singh to meet
A much-anticipated first meeting between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be held on Friday in New York, a Pakistani official said yesterday. After sluggish progress in peace talks between the nuclear-armed foes in the past eight months, analysts are hoping the two leaders can inject some momentum into the process when they meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The meeting would take place two days later than initially envisaged, but the Pakistani foreign ministry official gave no reason for the delay until Friday.
■ Guatemala
Girl, 7, left in jungle
A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl survived 16 days alone in the jungle consuming only water after her drunk father forgot her, firefighters said on Sunday. Hunters found the girl on Saturday in a difficult-to-access area about 120km west of the Guatemalan capital. Her father left her stranded after a night of hard drinking in nearby Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa. "The family came to the fire station asking for her, because her father had forgotten her after drinking in a bar," said Manuel Tanti, a spokesman for the local Volunteer Firefighters. The girl, bruised, scratched and suffering from malnutrition, was receiving medical care, he said.
■ United Kingdom
Drunken yachtsmen arrested
Two Englishmen who took a yacht for a drunken trip into the English Channel and were then found drifting towards Belgium after running out of fuel were arrested after being helicoptered back to England, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. The international rescue effort involved four lifeboats, two helicopters, three coastguard teams and a spotter plane. The unnamed pair, aged 24 and 29, boarded the six-meter yacht in the southeast count of Kent on Friday night and sailed to the Isle of Sheppey some 25km away. But they ran out of fuel on the way back and drifted some 65km through some of the world's busiest shipping lanes before being found off Belgium.
■ Haiti
Storm death toll hits 50
At least 50 people lost their lives and 150 are missing in Haiti after tropical storm Jeanne swept across the island of Hispaniola, a UN spokesman said on Sunday. That death toll is likely to rise, according to Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, spokesman for UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. Eighty percent of the city of Gonaives, about 110km north of the Haitian capital, is flooded, he said. The UN, which made 12 helicopter flights over Gonaives on Sunday, was to transport water and medicine to the region yesterday.
■ United Kingdom
Personalized drugs studied
British scientists launched an investigation yesterday into the feasibility of designing medicines based on a patient's genetic make-up. The Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, will examine the potential of developing personalized medicines and how well equipped the country is to proceed with it. Personalized medicine and the sequencing of the human genome have paved the way for scientists and drug companies to match the right drug and dose to particular patients, which could reduce the risk of side effects and deaths and limit medical costs. Results of the study are due to be reported next summer.
■ Germany
Far right makes poll gains
East Germans gave a strong boost to far-right groups and the former communists in two state elections, punishing the country's biggest mainstream parties for the region's high unemployment and cuts in social programs. Though projections based on partial returns gave the fringe parties no share of power in Saxony or Brandenburg, the results were a fresh setback for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats -- and also for opposition conservatives. ` Franz Muentefering, head of the Social Democrats, called the 9.3 percent taken by the far-right National Democratic Party in Saxony -- almost on par with his own party's showing -- a "disaster," but insisted their political influence would remain small.
■ Nigeria
Oil tanker `disappears'
The disappearance of a Russian tanker laden with crude oil from the custody of Nigerian authorities is a national embarrassment, the head of the parliamentary committee investigating the case said Sunday. The MT African Pride was seized last October by the Nigerian navy along with 13 Russian sailors on suspicion of smuggling, but disappeared last month along with its cargo of 11,300 tonnes of crude oil. The disappearance of the ship is "to say the least, a national embarrassment," said Anthony Aziegbemi, chairman of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, in the Sunday Tribune. In the commission's hearings. the Nigerian navy and police have been trading blame for the ship's disappearance.
■ Turkey
Bomb explodes at concert
A bomb exploded under a police car at a pop concert in southern Turkey, injuring at least 14 people, the prime minister's office said. A hospital official, however, said that at least 17 people, including two police officers, were injured in Sunday's blast in the southern Turkish city of Mersin. Two of the injured were in serious condition, the hospital official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Television footage showed a young woman lying on the ground with blood next to her and splattered on her pants. A man could be seen helping another who was apparently injured in the leg. Young concertgoers carried several of the injured to ambulances as the show continued.
■ Serbia-Montenegro
Ruling coalition loses poll
Serbia's ruling conservative coalition appears to have suffered a severe blow in local elections. Two opposition groups -- pro-Western Democrats and hard-line allies of former President Slobodan Milosevic -- won the most votes, according to early projections based on partial results from Sunday's election. Candidates endorsed by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica lagged behind both the pro-Western Democratic Party and the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party in nearly all of Serbia's 148 municipalities. The ballot, whose importance has gone beyond municipal issues, could even trigger early general elections.
■ Germany
Anti-US radical deported
Berlin authorities have deported the main organizer of an Islamic conference planned in the German capital next month for his alleged radical anti-Israel and anti-US stance, authorities said. Fadi Madi, spokesman for the International Movement against American and Zionist Globalization and Supremacy, was deported to his home country of Lebanon on Saturday evening, the Berliner Morgenpost reported Sunday. A Berlin police spokesman confirmed Madi had been sent back to Beirut.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
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