THAILAND
Chinese scammers handed over
Myanmar yesterday handed 111 Chinese scam center workers to be repatriated through Thailand, the third batch in a major crackdown on the illegal operations. Hundreds of foreigners are expected to be sent home from scam compounds in Myanmar over the coming weeks, with the first two batches already flown out on Thursday and Friday. The compounds are run by criminal gangs and staffed by foreigners, many of whom say they were trafficked and forced to swindle people around the world in protracted Internet scams.
Photo: EPA-EFE / XINHUA news agency
UNITED KINGDOM
Apple ends full encryption
Apple on Friday said it was ending full end-to-end encryption for British customers and iPhone users, following US media reports that the UK government had asked for global data access. “Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection [ADP] in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” it said in a statement. ADP means only account holders can view content such as photographs and documents stored online and in the cloud through what is known as end-to-end encryption. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the UK had issued “a secret government order” that Apple create a “back door” to enable the government to snoop on data uploaded by any Apple user around the world.
Photo: Reuters
GERMANY
Stabbing suspect arrested
Police arrested a suspect in the stabbing on Friday at about 6pm at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial that seriously injured a man two days before a watershed national election. Berlin Police gave no details on the identity of the suspect or his possible motive, but said an investigation was ongoing. The victim “was so seriously injured that he had to be taken by the fire brigade to hospital for emergency treatment,” police spokesman Florian Nath said. The victim was identified as a 30-year-old Spanish man.
Photo: EPA-EFE
UNITED STATES
AP sues White House aides
The Associated Press on Friday sued senior aides to President Donald Trump over a White House decision to restrict the news outlet’s access to the president and other officials for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage. The federal lawsuit alleges that the White House’s decision to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One violates the Constitution, including First Amendment protections for free speech, by trying to control the language that it uses to report the news. “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the complaint said.
Photo: AP
UNITED STATES
Woman held in romance scam
A woman used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, then drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “sinister” romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said on Friday. Three of the men died, authorities said. She has been charged in one of their deaths. Aurora Phelps, 43, who is in custody in Mexico, faces 21 counts including wire fraud, identity theft and one count of kidnapping resulting in death, Sue Fahami, the acting US attorney for the District of Nevada, told a news conference. “This is a romance scam on steroids,” said Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas division. One of the victims awoke from a coma after Phelps gave him prescription sedatives over the course of a week, he added.
Photo: AP
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
Flooding in Vietnam has killed at least 10 people this week as the water level of a major river near tourist landmarks reached a 60-year high, authorities said yesterday. Vietnam’s coastal provinces, home to UNESCO world heritage site Hoi An ancient town, have been pummeled by heavy rain since the weekend, with a record of up to 1.7m falling over 24 hours. At least 10 people have been killed, while eight others are missing, the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said. More than 128,000 houses in five central provinces have been inundated, with water 3m deep in some areas. People waded through
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