SHANGHAI – A man in Shanghai lost nearly US$28 000 after being tricked into a long-distance “relationship” with an AI-generated girlfriend, Chinese state media reported yesterday. Scammers used generative artificial intelligence software to create realistic video and still images of a young woman to pose as the fictional “Ms. Jiao”, according to state broadcaster CCTV. ...
JOHANNESBURG – South African troops seriously wounded in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have returned home for treatment, the military said yesterday. Rwanda-backed M23 fighters have captured swathes of eastern DRC despite military support provided by several countries, including South Africa, to the Congolese army. The wounded troops were part of...
Mauritanian prosecutors asked an appeals court Monday to sentence ex-president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz to 20 years in prison for abuse of office and embezzlement, seeking to increase the original five-year sentence he is appealing. Aziz, who led Mauritania from 2008 to 2019, was convicted in 2023 of using his power to amass a fortune....
LONDON – Grammy-winning US singer Roberta Flack has died aged 88, her publicist has confirmed. She was known for songs including ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, originally by Ewan MacColl, and ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’, written by Lori Lieberman and Norman Gimbel. Publicist Elaine Schock told the PA news agency:...
PARIS – A French court on Friday fined a preschool teacher for having beaten a three-year-old child in class, a case that sparked nationwide anger and a shocked response from the then-education minister. Video footage of the incident, filmed by a parent at the school in central Paris, went viral after it was posted online....
JOHANNESBURG – Former Democratic Republic of Congo leader Joseph Kabila said on Sunday the bad governance of his successor, president Felix Tshisekedi, had a leading role in intensifying the conflict in the east of the country. The unrest could not solely be blamed on the advances of the Rwanda-backed M23 armed movement or tensions between...
WASHINGTON – French president Emmanuel Macron met with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Washington yesterday, saying he will present “proposals for action” to counter the “Russian threat” in Europe and ensure peace in Ukraine. Macron is hoping to persuade Trump when the two leaders met on the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine...
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis is hospitalised in a critical condition with pneumonia in both lungs, the Vatican said yesterday. The 88-year-old leader of the worldwide Catholic Church since 2013, was admitted on 14 February with breathing difficulties. “The night passed well, the pope slept and is resting,” the Vatican said. This is the longest...
INDONESIA – A court in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province found two men guilty of sexual relations yesterday, and sentenced them to be publicly flogged, an official said. While gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, it is illegal in Aceh province, which imposes sharia, the Islamic law code. ...
NAIROBI – Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allies have agreed to set up a parallel government, sources said yesterday, despite warnings such a move could further fragment the war-ravaged country. “It’s done,” a source close to the organisers of the signing ceremony in Nairobi told AFP. The signatories said the charter paves the...