Indonesia develops AI system to help diagnose malaria

Special Indonesia develops AI system to help diagnose malaria
Health workers look over data of malaria cases in Indonesia at Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital. (RSPAD Gatot Soebroto)
Short Url
Updated 14 May 2025
Follow

Indonesia develops AI system to help diagnose malaria

Indonesia develops AI system to help diagnose malaria
  • Indonesia’s malaria cases may be as high as 1.1m in 2024, WHO estimates show
  • AI-powered system could help reach patients in remote areas, Indonesian researchers say

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency is developing an artificial intelligence-powered system to help diagnose malaria under the country’s efforts to eliminate the disease by 2030.

Indonesia recorded over half a million malaria cases in 2024, but due to the lack of testing, the World Health Organization estimates that the actual number was at least twice higher.

“Our main goal is to create a computer-aided diagnosis system that can automatically recognize malaria status from blood smear images,” Anto Satriyo Nugroho, head of AI and cyber security at Indonesia’s national research agency, or BRIN, said in a statement.

Such a system would speed up confirmation of malaria, which to date is mostly done through microscopic examination.

“We are optimistic that sustainable AI research and development will create an important tool for diagnosis that will contribute significantly to eliminating malaria in Indonesia,” Nugroho added.

AI applications are rapidly gaining in popularity, including in medical care to improve disease diagnosis, treatment selection and clinical laboratory testing.

In 2020, a study published in Nature showed researchers from Google Health, and universities in the US and UK, reporting on an AI model that reads mammograms with fewer false positives and false negatives than human experts.

That algorithm has since been released for commercial use globally.

In Indonesia, BRIN researchers have been working with various local and foreign universities, the WHO as well as other UN agencies to speed up the country’s efforts in eliminating malaria.

An AI-powered system also opens up possibilities for remote diagnostics, which would enable healthcare workers to reach and assess patients in outlying areas.

Malaria is endemic in eastern parts of Indonesia, with around 90 percent of cases reported from the easternmost province of Papua, where healthcare access remains low due to challenging terrain and limited resources. 

“With the massive potential to increase accuracy in diagnosis and improve efficiency in healthcare services in endemic areas, BRIN is optimistic that AI technology will become a strategic partner in managing malaria cases nationally,” BRIN stated.

“AI cannot work on its own. Collaboration between tech experts and biomedical researchers is an absolute requirement for this technology to be reliable.”


French ex-PM Fillon given suspended sentence over wife’s fake job

French ex-PM Fillon given suspended sentence over wife’s fake job
Updated 9 sec ago
Follow

French ex-PM Fillon given suspended sentence over wife’s fake job

French ex-PM Fillon given suspended sentence over wife’s fake job
  • Francois Fillon, 71, had been found guilty in 2022 on appeal of embezzlement for providing a fake parliamentary assistant job to his wife
  • The Paris appeals court also ordered him to pay a fine of $433,000 and barred him from seeking elected office for five years

PARIS: Former French prime minister Francois Fillon was on Tuesday given a four-year suspended prison sentence over a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 presidential bid.
Fillon, 71, had been found guilty in 2022 on appeal of embezzlement for providing a fake parliamentary assistant job to his wife, Penelope Fillon, that saw her being paid from public funds although the court found that she never did any work in the National Assembly.
The Paris appeals court also ordered him to pay a fine of 375,000 euros ($433,000) and barred him from seeking elected office for five years.
The sentence was milder than the one handed down in 2022, when he had been ordered to spend one year behind bars without any suspension.
But France’s highest appeals court, the Court of Cassation, overruled that decision and ordered a new sentencing trial.
No change was made to the punishment for Penelope Fillon, who is British, and who was handed a two-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay the same fine as her husband.
The couple has always insisted that Penelope Fillon had done genuine constituency work.
Neither was present in court for the sentencing.
Fillon, a conservative, earlier this year called the ban on seeking public office a “moral wound.”
The scandal, dubbed “PenelopeGate” by the French press, hurt Fillon’s popularity and contributed to his first-round elimination in France’s 2017 presidential election that was won by current President Emmanuel Macron.
“The treatment I received was somewhat unusual and nobody will convince me otherwise,” Fillon said. “Perhaps there was a link with me being a candidate in the presidential election.”
Sarkozy and Le Pen
Fillon claimed that fake parliamentary jobs were common between 1981 and 2021, saying that “a large majority” of lawmakers had been in a “perfectly similar situation” to his during that time.
His wife’s fake contract ran from 2012 to 2013.
“It is the appreciation of the court that there is no proof of any salaried work in the case,” the court said in its ruling.
Fillon’s lawyer, Antonin Levy, welcomed the decision to spare his client time in prison.
“Francois Fillon is a free man,” he said.
In another recent high-profile case involving French politicians, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, also a conservative, was stripped of his Legion d’Honneur distinction following his conviction for graft.
Sarkozy, 70, had been wearing an electronic ankle tag until last month after France’s highest appeals court upheld his conviction last December of trying to illegally secure favors from a judge.
Sarkozy is currently on trial in a separate case on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
Another case involves far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who was convicted in an embezzlement trial over fake European Parliament jobs, and is appealing the verdict.
As well as being given a partly suspended jail term and a fine, she was banned from taking part in elections for five years, which would — if confirmed — scupper her ambition of standing for the presidency in 2027.


Which countries currently have nuclear weapons?

Which countries currently have nuclear weapons?
Updated 18 min 35 sec ago
Follow

Which countries currently have nuclear weapons?

Which countries currently have nuclear weapons?
  • Russia, US, China, France, UK, India, Pakistan and North Korea possess nuclear weapons
  • Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons but is widely believed to have them

Nine countries currently either say they have nuclear weapons or are believed to possess them.

The first to have nuclear arms were the five original nuclear weapons states — the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.

All five are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which commits countries that don’t have nuclear arms not to build or obtain them, and those that do to “pursue negotiations in good faith” aimed at nuclear disarmament.

Rivals India and Pakistan, which haven’t signed the NPT, have built up their nuclear arsenals over the years. India was the first to conduct a nuclear test in 1974, followed by another in 1998. Pakistan followed with its own nuclear tests just a few weeks later.

Israel, which also hasn’t signed the NPT, has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons but is widely believed to.

North Korea joined the NPT in 1985 but announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003, citing what it called US aggression. Since 2006, it has conducted a string of nuclear tests.

Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and US intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing the bomb now. But it has in recent years been enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.

In an annual assessment released this week, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that the nine countries had the following stockpiles of military nuclear warheads as of January:

Russia: 4,309
United States: 3,700
China: 600
France: 290
United Kingdom: 225
India: 180
Pakistan: 170
Israel: 90
North Korea: 50


Ukraine appoints new prosecutor general

Ukraine appoints new prosecutor general
Updated 45 min 41 sec ago
Follow

Ukraine appoints new prosecutor general

Ukraine appoints new prosecutor general
  • Kravchenko, 35, is now head of the state tax administration
  • The prosecutor general’s post has remained vacant since October

KYIV: Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday appointed Ruslan Kravchenko, one of the key investigators of alleged Russian war crimes during the occupation of the Kyiv region in 2022, as prosecutor general.

Kravchenko, 35, is now head of the state tax administration, and before that chaired the Kyiv region military administration.

He was involved in the recording and prosecuting of alleged Russian atrocities in the town of Bucha, which was occupied for 33 days in the early stages of Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Russia denies accusations of numerous executions, rapes and torture during the occupation.

Kravсhenko was also a prosecutor in Ukraine’s ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s treason case.

The prosecutor general’s post has remained vacant since October, after Andriy Kostin resigned following a scandal around officials receiving fake disability status and avoiding military service.


Pope Leo to escape Rome’s summer heat with July stay at Castel Gandolfo

Pope Leo to escape Rome’s summer heat with July stay at Castel Gandolfo
Updated 52 min 55 sec ago
Follow

Pope Leo to escape Rome’s summer heat with July stay at Castel Gandolfo

Pope Leo to escape Rome’s summer heat with July stay at Castel Gandolfo
  • The pontiff will spend July 6 to 20 about an hour’s drive south in Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican said
  • All of Leo’s public and private audiences have been suspended from July 2 through July 23

VATICAN CITY: As temperatures in Rome swelter this month, reaching more than 35 degrees Celsius (95°F) under the hot Mediterranean sun, Pope Leo has decided to leave town.

The pontiff will spend July 6 to 20 about an hour’s drive south in Castel Gandolfo, a small hamlet on Lake Albano, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

Leo, elected pope on May 8 to replace the late Pope Francis, will also return to the lakeshore for at least one weekend in August, it said.

All of Leo’s public and private audiences have been suspended from July 2 through July 23, the Vatican said, as was usual under Francis, to allow the pontiff a period of rest. They will restart on July 30.

By going to Castel Gandolfo, Leo is restarting a summer tradition that was broken by Francis.

Dozens of popes over centuries have spent the summer months at Lake Albano, where temperatures are usually about ten degrees cooler than Rome, but Francis preferred to stay in his air-conditioned Vatican residence.

The Vatican has owned a papal palace and surrounding grounds in Castel Gandolfo since 1596. Spanning 55 hectares, the property includes official apartments, elaborate Renaissance-style gardens, a forest and a working dairy farm.

Francis, who shunned most of the trappings of the papacy, had the official papal palace turned into a museum.

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told Reuters the pope would not stay at the palace, which will remain a museum, and will instead stay on another Vatican property.

Leo will return to Castel Gandolfo for the weekend of August 15 to 17.

August 15, a Catholic feast day to celebrate Mary, the Mother of God, is an Italian public holiday. Many Italians spend that day, and much of August, at the beach.


Black boxes from India plane crash under study to ascertain cause of the disaster that killed 270

Black boxes from India plane crash under study to ascertain cause of the disaster that killed 270
Updated 17 June 2025
Follow

Black boxes from India plane crash under study to ascertain cause of the disaster that killed 270

Black boxes from India plane crash under study to ascertain cause of the disaster that killed 270
  • A former pilot and an aviation expert said the recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or black boxes, are crucial to piece together the sequence of events

NEW DELHI: Investigators in India are studying the black boxes of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner after recovering them from the aircraft wreckage to ascertain the cause of last week’s plane crash that left at least 270 people dead.
The black boxes will provide cockpit conversations and data related to the plane’s engine and control settings to investigators and help them in determining the cause of the crash.
The London-bound Air India aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, crashed on a medical college hostel soon after taking off from the western city of Ahmedabad. Only one passenger survived the crash, while 241 people on board and 29 on the ground were killed in one of India’s worst aviation disaster in decades.
Experts from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau are probing the crash with assistance from the UK, the US and officials from Boeing.
Black box data is crucial
Amit Singh, a former pilot and an aviation expert, said the recovery of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, or black boxes, are crucial to piece together the sequence of events.
The cockpit voice recorder records pilots’ conversation, emergency alarms and any distress signal made before a crash. The plane’s digital flight data recorder stores information related to engine and control settings. Both devices are designed to survive a crash.
“The data will reveal everything,” Singh said, adding that the technical details could be corroborated by the cockpit voice recorder that would help investigators know of any communication between air traffic control and the pilots.
India’s aviation regulatory body has said the aircraft made a mayday call before the crash.
Singh said the investigating authorities will scan CCTV footage of the nearby area and speak with witnesses to get to the root cause of the crash.
Additionally, Singh said, the investigators will also study the pilot training records, total load of the aircraft, thrust issues related to the plane’s engine, as well as its worthiness in terms of past performances and any previously reported issues.
Investigation into the crash could take time
Aurobindo Handa, former director general of India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, said the investigators across the world follow a standard UN-prescribed Manual of Accident Investigation, also called “DOC 9756,” which outlines detailed procedures to arrive at the most probable cause of a crash.
Handa said the investigation into last week’s crash would likely be a long process as the aircraft was badly charred. He added that ascertaining the condition of the black boxes recovered from the crash site was vital as the heat generated from the crash could be possibly higher than the bearable threshold of the device.
The Indian government has set up a separate, high-level committee to examine the causes leading to the crash and formulate procedures to prevent and handle aircraft emergencies in the future. The committee is expected to file a preliminary report within three months.
Authorities have also begun inspecting and carrying out additional maintenance and checks of Air India’s entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners to prevent any future incident. Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.
The plane that crashed was 12 years old. Boeing planes have been plagued by safety issues on other types of aircraft. There are currently around 1,200 of the 787 Dreamliner aircraft worldwide and this was the first deadly crash in 16 years of operation, according to experts.