Malaysia's school for pregnant teens opens

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's first 'School of Hope' for pregnant teenagers began its work Monday with five girls joining it. Four Malays and an ethnic Chinese students resumed their studies in Forms Four and Five at the school in Malacca state.

The teenagers, accompanied by their parents, were first required to make their formal application at the Malacca Islamic Religious Department before heading to the school.

The first to be seen was a young Chinese teenager who arrived with her parents at the school's dormitory, House of Hope.

On Sunday, Malacca Chief Minister Mohammed Ali Rustam said families of five pregnant teenagers had sought to enrol their daughters in the school here.

The five, aged between 16 and 17 years, were from Malacca, Johor, Negri Sembilan, Pahang states and Kuala Lumpur, the national capital.

Ali said the school could accommodate 40 students. He said the privacy of the students would be protected and requested the public and the media to adhere to the rule.

He had caused a furore when he announced the setting up of the school two months ago, The Star said.

He had defended the state's move, saying the school was to provide pregnant teenagers with a second chance and curb illicit sex and baby dumping.

Missing Iraqi antiquities located in PM Maliki's office

More than 600 antiquities have been returned to the Iraqi National Museum after they were found in boxes in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office.

The missing historical artefacts, some dating back thousands of years, had been smuggled out of Iraq at various times and ended up in the US.

They were moved back to Iraq in early 2009 but went missing after that.

Antiquities Minister Qahtan al-Jubouri blamed "inappropriate handover procedures" for their disappearance.

It is not clear exactly how the artefacts disappeared from view after being returned to Iraq.

But the 638 items were found on Sunday packed in cardboard boxes in a storage room for kitchen equipment in the offices of Prime Minister Maliki.

The objects include jewellery and clay tablets as well as bronze figurines.

"It's a very important collection," said Amira Eidan, the director of the Iraqi National Museum.

"Some [are] from the beginning of the Islamic era, others are from [the] Sumerian period, some [are] Babylonian, Hellenistic - different periods and different cities."

Tens of thousands of artefacts chronicling some 7,000 years of civilisation in Mesopotamia are believed to have been looted from Iraq in the chaos which followed the the US-led invasion in 2003.

Despite international efforts to track items down, fewer than half of the artefacts have so far been retrieved.

Extremist websites skyrocketing, says Interpol

The sharp growth in extremist websites is making recruitment much easier for al-Qaeda, according to Interpol head Ronald Noble.

"The threat is global, it is virtual and it is on our doorsteps," he said.

Mr Noble told a conference of police chiefs in Paris there were 12 sites in 1998 and 4,500 by 2006.

He said tackling radicalisation had been made far harder by the internet because many of the activities involved were not criminal.

Increasingly, he said, the individuals targeted were young and vulnerable and from middle-class backgrounds.

A researcher at the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation told the BBC that the number of radical websites was now far higher than the figure given by Interpol.

"It's well into the thousands in English alone," said Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens.

He added that governments had found the increase in radical websites impossible to stop.

"As soon as you knock out one, another pops up. It's like playing 'whack-a-mole'."

Last week, the head of British security service MI5, Jonathan Evans, expressed concern about the influence of Yemen-based radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose sermons feature in more than 5,000 videos on YouTube.