Tsunami stories: Natural catastrophes threaten megacities

Natural disasters could kill millions in the world's teeming megacities, says the United Nations point man on emergency relief.

Jan Egeland, the UN Director of Disaster Relief, said many of the world's megacities, cities with a population of more than 10 million, were vulnerable to natural disasters and the poor were most at risk from a lack of investment and planning.

He was speaking at the first day of a disaster prevention conference in the Japanese city of Kobe, where an earthquake killed nearly 6500 people a decade ago.

The five-day conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the Kobe quake also aims to draw lessons from last month's Asian tsunami disaster.

Hackers plumb depths

Malicious hackers have sunk to a new low with a new virus spreading across the internet.

The W32/VBSun-A is a mass-mailing worm masquerading as a plea for donations to help with the tsunami disaster. But instead of bringing help to disaster victims, the email takes over the target computers to launch a denial-of-service attack against a German hacker website.

Computer security experts said the attack could stem from a rivalry between hacker groups.

The virus arrives as an e-mail with the subject line "Tsunami Donation, Please Help!" and comes with an attachment, tsunami.exe, which launches the malicious software.

Iran helps out Myanmar

Iran has airlifted tonnes of tsunami aid relief to military-ruled Myanmar, say reports as the United Nations said it had sent teams to the isolated nation to assess damage there.

China also sent emergency aid and relief from the Netherlands was expected to arrive in the coming days, it was reported.

A UN official said its representatives had visited parts of Myanmar's coastline and found only minor damage.

- AGENCIES