CHINA
US ‘illegally’ sails sea: PLA
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command yesterday said that a US warship had illegally entered its territorial waters in the South China Sea. The command said in a statement that the USS Curtis Wilbur entered the waters near the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) — over which Taiwan, China and Vietnam all claim sovereignty — without permission, adding that its ships and planes followed the US vessel. The command said that Beijing opposed the US action, which it said violated China’s sovereignty, and undermined regional peace and stability.
ANTARCTICA
Largest iceberg takes float
A giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Mallorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of the continent into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday. The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted in satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the space agency said in a statement posted on its Web site with a photograph of the enormous, oblong ice sheet. Its surface area spans 4,320km2 and measures 175km long by 25km wide. By comparison, Spain’s Mallorca in the Mediterranean occupies 3,640km2.
GREECE
Villagers flee forest fires
Scores of villagers were early yesterday evacuated as a forest fire raged overnight around the protected wildlife habitat of Mount Geraneia, fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis told Skai TV. No injuries were immediately reported. Six villages and two monasteries were evacuated after the fire broke out on Wednesday evening near the village of Skinos on the Gulf of Corinth, he said. Fanned by strong winds, the “fire is burning over a large front,” he said. More than 180 firefighters with 62 fire engines were deployed to the area, backed by 17 planes and three helicopters, the fire department wrote on Twitter.
ITALY
Drained lake reveals village
The eerie image of a church bell tower emerging from Lake Resia became so famous that it inspired a book and a Netflix series. Now the remains of the surrounding village, which were under water for more than 70 years, have again been revealed. The village of Curon once had about 900 inhabitants living in 160 homes, but it was flooded in 1950 to create a hydroelectric plant. After leaks were found, the lake was temporarily drained for repair work. “It was strange for me to walk among the rubble of houses. I felt curiosity and sadness,” local resident Lucia Azzolini said. However, a power company started to release water back into the lake a week ago, so the village is soon to be once again submerged.
UNITED STATES
Teacher disarms student
When a student opened fire at an Idaho middle school, teacher Krista Gneiting directed children to safety, rushed to help a wounded victim and then calmly disarmed the sixth-grade shooter, hugging and consoling the girl until police arrived. Parents credited the math teacher’s display of compassion with saving lives. While two students and the school custodian were shot on May 6, all three survived, and the gunfire was over within minutes. Gneiting said that after she got the gun, she pulled the shooter into a hug: “I thought: ‘This little girl has a mom somewhere that doesn’t realize she’s having a breakdown and she’s hurting people.”
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
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
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