PAKISTAN
Taliban attack kills six
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack yesterday on an army census team that killed at least six people and wounded 18 in Lahore. Punjab government spokesman Malik Ahmed Khan said the blast, which hit an army vehicle taking part in the nation’s first census in nearly two decades, killed four soldiers and two civilians. TV footage showed security personnel blocking off the street around the site of the explosion, close to an elite police training school that was the site of a Pakistani Taliban attack in 2009. The army has been closely involved in the census, with soldiers accompanying civilian enumerators, a move authorities say is needed to prevent collectors being intimidated by local political figures trying to slant sensitive population data in their areas. Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said the census would be completed “at any cost.” Muhammad Khurassani, a spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, issued a statement claiming responsibility.
IRAN
Two killed in 6.1 quake
At least two people died when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck near the holy city of Mashhad yesterday, local media reported. The quake struck at 10:39am about 80km southeast of the nation’s second-largest city, in an area called Sepidsang. Two people have been reported dead and four injured, local officials told state television, with four villages said to have been badly damaged. Rescue teams have been sent to affected areas, where about 20 aftershocks have been reported. “It was horrible. It made a lot of noise. Everything was shaking,” a Mashhad resident said by telephone. Iran lies on a major fault line and has frequent earthquakes.
AUSTRALIA
Record meth haul seized
Police have seized 903kg of crystal methamphetamine that was smuggled from China inside boxes of hollow floorboards — the largest ever haul of the illicit drug in the nation, officials said yesterday. Law enforcement agencies valued the seizure, mostly found in a Melbourne warehouse in February, at almost A$900 million (US$680 million). Two Australian men, aged 53 and 36, had been charged with commercial drug trafficking and face a potential life prison sentence if convicted, police said, adding that they are searching for another two suspects in Melbourne.
FINLAND
Xi Jinping visits Finland
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinisto, in Helsinki, saying there was “great potential” for future bilateral trade ties. Xi’s visit marks the first by a Chinese leader since 1995. “Over the past 67 years of diplomatic ties, the China-Finland relationship has enjoyed steady and sound growth despite the changing international landscape,” Xi said in a statement late on Tuesday after arriving in Helsinki. China is Finland’s fifth-largest trading partner and Xi said he saw “great space and potential for further economic cooperation and trade.” Ahead of Xi’s and Niinisto’s official encounter yesterday, Finns were hoping Xi would make Finland the next destination for Beijing’s famed “panda diplomacy.” Finnish and Chinese officials have been in lengthy talks over China leasing a pair of giant pandas to Ahtari zoo in central Finland, where the construction of a new panda cage costing more than 8 million euros (US$8.5 million) is well under way.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
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
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
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