JAPAN
Cycling on phone banned
Cyclists using a mobile phone while riding could face up to six months in jail under new rules that entered into force yesterday. Those who breach the revised road traffic law can be punished with a maximum of six months in prison or a fine of up to ￥100,000 (US$660). “Making a call with a smartphone in your hand while cycling, or watching the screen, is now banned and subject to punishment,” the National Police Agency said in a leaflet. Some accidents caused by cyclists watching screens have resulted in pedestrian deaths, the government said. Under the new rules, cycling while drunk can land the rider with up to three years in prison or a fine of up to ￥500,000. Those who offer alcoholic drinks to cyclists face up to two years in prison or a fine of up to ￥300,000.
Photo: AFP
NORTH KOREA
Media hail new ICBM
Pyongyang yesterday said that a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it test-launched is “the world’s strongest,” while experts said that it is too big to be useful in a war situation. The ICBM launched on Thursday flew higher and for a longer duration than any other weapon the nation has tested, but foreign experts say the test failed to show that Pyongyang has mastered some of the last remaining technological hurdles to possess functioning ICBMs that can strike the mainland US. The Korean Central News Agency identified the missile as a Hwasong-19 and called it “the world’s strongest strategic missile” and “the perfected weapon system.” Leader Kim Jong-un observed the launch, describing it as an expression of the nation’s resolve to respond to external threats to its security, it said. The color and shape of exhaust flames seen in media photographs of the launch suggest the missile uses preloaded solid fuel, which makes weapons more agile and harder to detect than liquid propellants that in general must be fueled beforehand. However, experts said the photos show that the ICBM and its launch vehicle are oversized, raising a serious question about their wartime mobility and survivability. “When missiles get bigger, what happens? The vehicles get larger, too. As the transporter-erector launchers get bigger, their mobility decreases,” said Lee Sang-min, an expert at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. The Hwasong-19 was estimated to be at least 28m long, while advanced US and Russian ICBMs are less than 20m long.
Photo: EPA-EFE
PAKISTAN
Explosion kills seven
A bomb targeting police guarding polio vaccinators yesterday killed seven people, including five children, police said. The bomb targeted officers in the city of Mastung in Balochistan Province as they were traveling in a van to guard medical workers participating in a nationwide vaccine campaign, police said. “Seven individuals: one police officer, five children and one shopkeeper” were those killed in the attack at the city’s main market, senior officer Abdul Fatah told reporters. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic and vaccination teams are frequently targeted by militants waging a campaign against security forces.
Photo: AP
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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