SOUTH KOREA
‘Victory’ banner offends
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the Russian embassy in Seoul to take down a large banner reading “Victory will be ours,” ahead of the fourth anniversary this week of the start of the war in Ukraine. The ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it had conveyed its concerns to the embassy without clarifying whether it had received a response. As of yesterday, the roughly 15m banner remained in place. In its statement, the ministry reiterated Seoul’s position that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal. It also said that military cooperation between Russia and North Korea should stop, describing it as a grave threat to South Korea’s security and a violation of the UN Charter and UN Security Council resolutions.
MALAYSIA
PM term limits mulled
The government yesterday introduced new legislation to restrict the prime minister’s tenure to a maximum of two terms, a move aimed at boosting accountability and curbing the overreach of executive powers. Former leader Mahathir Mohamad held office for 24 years across two stints — from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim last month announced a push for a two-term limit amid renewed calls for him to tackle corruption and improve governance. Anwar last week said that if the law is implemented, it would apply to him first. He added that a 10-year period was sufficient for those in office to carry out their responsibilities effectively. The proposed change requires approval from at least two-thirds of lawmakers, or 148 out of the 222 seats in the lower house, to pass. Currently, there is no formal constitutional limit on how long a prime minister may serve, provided the individual commands majority support in parliament.
VENEZUELA
Hundreds on hunger strike
More than 200 political prisoners have launched a hunger strike to demand their release, family members said on Sunday, after a new mass amnesty law was enacted following the ouster of former president Nicolas Maduro. The strike began on Friday night at the Rodeo I prison on the outskirts of Caracas, with the inmates complaining the law excludes many of them because they are accused of terrorism. “Approximately 214 people in total, including Venezuelans and foreigners, are on hunger strike,” said Yalitza Garcia, mother-in-law of a prisoner named Nahuel Agustin Gallo, an Argentine police officer accused of terrorism. Not all the inmates at the prison are joining the hunger strike, the relatives said. More than 1,500 political prisoners have applied for amnesty under the new law, the head of the legislature said on Saturday. Opposition figures have criticized the new legislation, which appears to include carve-outs for some offenses previously used by authorities to target Maduro’s political opponents.
NEPAL
Bus crash kills 19 people
A packed bus on its way to Kathmandu drove off a mountain highway early yesterday, killing 19 people, including a British national, and leaving another 25 wounded. There were dozens of people on board the bus, which was heading from the resort city of Pokhara to Kathmandu when it drove off the Prithvi highway after midnight, police said. The bus rolled down a mountain slope and landed on the banks of Trishuli river near Benighat, about 80km west of the capital. Among those who died was a 24-year-old British national, a statement from the Dhading district police office said. Only nine bodies have been identified.
The injured included a Chinese national, who is being treated at the National Trauma Center in Kathmandu, and a 27-year-old woman from New Zealand who received minor injuries and was being treated at a local hospital. China’s Xinhua news agency, citing the Chinese embassy in Nepal, reported earlier that one other Chinese national was missing. Rescuers reached the accident site soon after the accident, and the injured were pulled out of the wreckage and driven to hospitals for treatment, government administrator Mohan Prasad Neupane said. Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
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
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
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
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