NEW DELHI: India has brought home nearly 300 of its nationals who were lured to various southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, with fake job offers and made to engage in cybercrime and other fraudulent activities in scam compounds, the government said.
Thousands of people have been freed from cyber scam centers along the Thailand-Myanmar border this year as countries work together to crack down on the criminal networks.
China and Indonesia repatriated some of their citizens last month.
“Indian embassies in Myanmar and Thailand have coordinated with local authorities to secure the repatriation of 283 Indian nationals today by an IAF (Indian Air Force) aircraft from Mae Sot in Thailand,” India’s foreign ministry said late on Monday.
Thailand arrested 100 people last week as a part of its crackdown on the scam centers.
Criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people to the centers, which generate billions of dollars a year from illegal online schemes, according to the United Nations.
India also warned its citizens against the scams, advising them to “verify” the credentials of foreign employers and check the “antecedents” of recruiting agents and companies before taking up job offers.
India brings home nearly 300 citizens rescued from Southeast Asian scam centers
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India brings home nearly 300 citizens rescued from Southeast Asian scam centers
- Thousands of people have been freed from cyber scam centers
- Countries are working together to crack down on the criminal networks
Tearful relatives await news from Vietnam wreck rescue
- The Wonder Sea boat was carrying 48 passengers and five crew members
- Rescue workers saved 11 people, and recovered the dead near the site of the capsizing
HALONG BAY, Vietnam: Relatives anxiously sat beside ambulances on the wharf of one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist sites on Sunday, waiting for news of loved ones who were on a tourist boat that capsized killing dozens.
Fruits and flowers were laid on the coast for the at least 37 killed in the wreckage on Saturday in what some called Ha Long Bay’s worst-ever disaster.
As rescuers worked into Sunday morning to salvage the sunken boat, a handful of people were still missing.
The tourist vessel called “Wonder Sea” had been carrying 53 people, including more than 20 children, around the UNESCO World Heritage Site, according to state media.
Hoang Quang rushed from Hanoi to Quang Ninh province at 2:00 am on Sunday for news of his cousin and her family who were on the boat when it capsized.
The couple – a housewife and fruit seller married to a bus driver – had “tried their best” to afford the trip around the world-famous bay.
“They found the body of (the husband), not my cousin yet,” Hoang said.
He was “so shocked” when he heard news of the incident and immediately went to the wharf with other worried family members.
“Suddenly the victims were my relatives – anyone would be scared. We didn’t know what to do, except to keep waiting,” he said.
“We think that as we are all here, she knew and she would show up. We are all so anxious... We just wish and pray for her to come back here to us.”
At Ha Long city’s main funeral home, AFP journalists saw bodies wrapped in red cloth being carried in on stretchers, as friends and relatives cried in front of more than a dozen coffins.
A 68-year-old man, who asked not to be named, rushed to the scene at 3:00 am, only to discover that his relatives – a young family of four, including two boys – had died in the capsizing.
“We were all so shocked,” he said tearfully. “This was a very sudden accident. They were just taking the kids out to the bay for summer holidays and it ended up terrible.”
The bodies of the mother and children had been recovered, but he was awaiting news of the father to be able to cremate them together.
“We know there is no hope,” he said.
The friend of another victim, a firefighter who had taken the trip with colleagues, said they had known each other since university.
“He was still single. We brought his body back to (his hometown) for burial early this morning,” the friend said.
He praised the rescue efforts and said provincial authorities had given families 25 million dong ($955) for each victim.
By early Sunday, the wreckage had been towed into the wharf and 11 people had been taken to a nearby hospital, where one more died later in the day.
Security guard Nguyen Tuan Anh spent the night on the wharf where ambulances were waiting to carry the bodies away – a scene he described as “painful.”
“I don’t think I have experienced this scene before. This maybe the worst accident ever in Ha Long Bay,” he said, adding it had been “unpredictable and also I think unpreparable.”
“The whirlwind came so sudden and so big. The wind blew off the framework of a big stage for a grand music show nearby,” he said.
Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations, with millions of people visiting its blue-green waters and rainforest-topped limestone islands each year.
Several hundred rescuers including professional divers, soldiers, and firefighters joined the search for survivors through the night and heavy rain, state media said.
“The whirlwind came just so sudden,” a rescue worker, who asked not to be named, said on Saturday.
“As the boat turned upside down, several people were stuck inside the cabin. Me and other rescuers pulled up two bodies and rescued one,” he said.
“The accident was so devastating.”
Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba faces reckoning in upper house election
- Opinion polls suggest that Shigeru Ishiba’s governing coalition could lose its majority in the upper house
- He was humiliatingly forced into a minority government after the lower house elections in October
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba faces a reckoning from voters on Sunday with upper house elections that could end his premiership and see a right-wing populist party make inroads.
With many Japanese hurt by rising prices, especially for rice, opinion polls suggest that Ishiba’s governing coalition could lose its majority in the upper house.
This could be the final nail for Ishiba, having already been humiliatingly forced into a minority government after lower house elections in October.
“Ishiba may need to step down,” Toru Yoshida, a politics professor at Doshisha University, said.
Japan could “step into an unknown dimension of the ruling government being a minority in both the lower house and the upper house, which Japan has never experienced since World War II,” Yoshida said.
At one of Tokyo’s polling stations on Sunday, 54-year-old voter Atsushi Matsuura said “Commodity prices are going up, but I am more worried that salaries aren’t increasing.”
Another voter Hisayo Kojima, 65, expressed frustration that the amount of her pension “is being cut shorter and shorter.”
“We have paid a lot to support the pension system. This is the most pressing issue for me,” she said.
Ishiba’s center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, albeit with frequent changes of leader.
Ishiba, 68, a self-avowed defense “geek” and train enthusiast, reached the top of the greasy pole last September on his fifth attempt and immediately called elections.
But this backfired and the vote left the LDP and its small coalition partner Komeito needing support from opposition parties, stymying its legislative agenda.
“Energy prices have swung sharply in recent months, as the government has flip-flopped between removing aid for household energy bills and adding new supports,” said Stefan Angrick at Moody’s Analytics.
Out of 248 seats in the upper house, 125 are up for grabs on Sunday. The coalition needs 50 of these to keep a majority.
Not helping is lingering resentment about an LDP funding scandal, and US tariffs of 25 percent due to bite from August 1 if there is no trade deal with the United States.
Japan’s massive auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of the country’s jobs, is reeling from painful levies already in place.
Weak export data last week stoked fears that the world’s fourth-largest economy could tip into a technical recession.
Despite Ishiba securing an early meeting with US President Donald Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, there has been no accord.
Trump poured cold water on the prospects of an agreement last week, saying Japan won’t “open up their country.”
“We will not easily compromise,” Ishiba said this month.
Ishiba’s apparently maximalist strategy of insisting all tariffs are cut to zero – although this could change post-election – has also drawn criticism.
“How well his government is able to handle negotiations over US tariffs is extremely important, as it’s important for the LDP to increase trust among the public,” Masahisa Endo, politics professor at Waseda University, said.
The last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in 2007.
That was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years.
Today the opposition is fragmented, and chances are slim that the parties can form an alternative government.
One making inroads is the “Japanese-first” Sanseito, which opinion poll suggest could win more than 10 upper house seats, up from two now.
The party wants “stricter rules and limits” on immigration, opposes “globalism” and “radical” gender policies, and wants a re-think on decarbonization and vaccines.
Last week it was forced to deny any links to Moscow – which has backed populist parties elsewhere – after a candidate was interviewed by Russian state media.
“They put into words what I had been thinking about but couldn’t put into words for many years,” one voter said at a Sanseito rally.
With gavel in hand, Trump chisels away at the power of a compliant Congress
- Republicans in control of the House and Senate have shown an unusual willingness to give the president of their party what he wants, regardless of the potential risk to themselves, their constituents and Congress itself.
WASHINGTON: “Mr. President, this is the gavel used to enact the ‘big, beautiful bill,’” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a White House signing ceremony on the Fourth of July.
“I want you to have it,” he said.
Handing over the gavel delighted President Donald Trump who, seated behind a desk outdoors, immediately tested it out with a few quick thumps.
The moment left a memorable mark on a historic day. The gesture reflected a traditional nod of honor, from one leader to another, a milestone of the Republican Party’s priority legislation becoming law. But the imagery also underscored a symbolic transfer of political power, from Capitol Hill to the White House as a compliant Congress is ceding more and more of its prerogative to the presidency.
Congress gives Trump what he wants
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, and particularly in the past few weeks, Republicans in control of the House and Senate have shown an unusual willingness to give the president of their party what he wants, regardless of the potential risk to themselves, their constituents and Congress itself.
Republicans raced to put the big package of tax breaks and spending cuts on Trump’s desk by his Independence Day deadline. Senators had quickly confirmed almost all of Trump’s outsider Cabinet nominees despite grave reservations over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, Pete Hegseth as the Pentagon chief and others. House Republicans pursued Trump’s interest in investigating his perceived foes, including investigating Democratic President Joe Biden’suse of the autopen.
But at the same time, Congress hit the brakes on one of its own priorities, legislation imposing steep sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine, after Trump announced he was allowing President Vladimir Putin an additional 50 days to negotiate a peace deal, dashing hopes for a swifter end to the conflict.
This past week, Congress was tested anew, delivering on Trump’s request to rescind some $9 billion that lawmakers had approved but that the administration wanted to eliminate, including money for public broadcasting and overseas aid. It was a rare presidential request, a challenge to the legislative branch’s power of the purse, that has not been used in decades.
The pressure on Republicans is taking its toll
“We’re lawmakers. We should be legislating,” said a defiant Sen. Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, as she refused to support the White House’s demand to rescind money for National Public Radio and others.
“What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round,’” she said. “I don’t accept that.”
Congress, the branch of government the Founding Fathers placed first in the Constitution, is at a familiar crossroads. During the first Trump administration, Republicans frightened by Trump’s angry tweets of disapproval would keep their criticisms private. Those who did speak up — Liz Cheney of Wyoming in the House and Mitt Romney of Utah in the Senate, among others — are gone from Capitol Hill.
One former GOP senator, Jeff Flake of Arizona, who announced in 2017 during Trump’s first term that he would not seek reelection the next year, is imploring Republicans to find a better way.
“The fever still hasn’t broken,” he wrote recently in The New York Times. “In today’s Republican Party, voting your conscience is essentially disqualifying.”
Seeking a ‘normal’ Congress
But this time, the halls of Congress are filled with many Republicans who came of political age with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and owe their ascent to the president himself. Many are emulating his brand and style as they shape their own.
A new generation of GOP leaders, Johnson in the House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, have pulled closer to Trump. They are utilizing the power of the presidency in ways large and small — to broker deals, encourage wayward lawmakers to fall in line, even to set schedules.
Johnson, R-Louisiana, has openly pined for what he calls a “normal Congress.” But short of that, the speaker relies on Trump to help stay on track. When Republicans hit an impasse on cryptocurrency legislation, a Trump priority, it was the president who met with holdouts in the Oval Office late Tuesday night as Johnson called in by phone.
The result is a perceptible imbalance of power as the executive exerts greater authority while the legislative branch dims. The judicial branch has been left to do the heavy lift of checks and balances with the courts processing hundreds of lawsuits over the administration’s actions.
“The genius of our Constitution is the separation of power,” said Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, in an interview on SiriusXM’s “Mornings with Zerlina.”
“That the Republicans in Congress would be so ignoring of the institution that they represent, and that have just melted the power of the incredibly shrinking speakership” and Senate leadership positions, “to do all of these things, to cater to the executive branch,” she said.
Confronting Trump comes with costs
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., endured Trump’s criticism over his opposition to the tax and spending cuts bill. The senator raised concerns about steep cuts to hospitals, but the president threatened to campaign against him. Tillis announced he would not seek reelection in 2026.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against that bill and the rescissions package despite Trump’s threat to campaign against any dissenters.
One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, appears to be pressing on, unphased. He recently proposed legislation to force the administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, something the president had been reluctant to do.
“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that if the president wants something, you must do it,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, in a Senate speech. “We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to operate under the assumption that this man is uniquely so powerful.”
Renowned Kenyan human rights activist arrested
- “The police have come to our home and are taking my husband, talking of terrorism and arson!” his wife said
- Hussein Khalid, director of rights group Vocal Africa, confirmed the arrest on X
NAIROBI: Kenyan human rights campaigner Boniface Mwangi was arrested at his home in the east African country, the latest in a long series of arrests, his wife and an NGO said on Saturday.
The prominent activist and former photojournalist has been detained on many occasions, including in May when he was abducted in Tanzania and allegedly tortured by security forces over several days.
“The police have come to our home and are taking my husband, talking of terrorism and arson! They’ve taken his gadgets and said they are taking him to DCI HQ,” said his wife Njeri Mwangi on X, referring to the headquarters of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
The announcement of the arrest, with no clear accusations so far, quickly sparked a wave of condemnation on social media.
Hussein Khalid, director of rights group Vocal Africa, confirmed the arrest on X and said he was following the case “to understand the reasons” for the detention.
The hashtag #FreeBonifaceMwangi was circulating widely on social media.
On May 19, Mwangi was arrested along with award-winning Ugandan journalist and activist Agather Atuhaire in Tanzania’s economic capital, Dar es Salaam.
They were in the country to offer support to Tanzanian opposition figure Tundu Lissu, facing a potential death sentence in a treason trial, ahead of elections in October.
They were detained for several days and both accused police officers of acts of torture and sexual assault, and this week filed a case with the East African Court of Justice (EACJ).
Since the beginning of a large protest movement in Kenya in June 2024, President William Ruto has faced sharp criticism over a series of abductions and police violence.
Human rights organization allege that more than 100 people have been killed since the beginning of last year’s anti-government rallies, which were harshly suppressed.
Protests on July 7 were the deadliest in a year, with at least 38 deaths, including a 12-year-old girl.
UK government facing legal action over refusal to evacuate sick children from Gaza
- Lawsuit against Foreign Office, Home Office revolves around three children requiring treatment
- UK govt says that it already contributes significant sums to aid children in Gaza
LONDON: The UK government is facing a legal challenge over its decision not to medically evacuate critically ill Palestinian children from Gaza, amid mounting pressure from campaigners and humanitarian groups, it was reported on Saturday.
According to a report by The Guardian, the legal action, which has been brought by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of three young children, will argue that British ministers have failed to account for the dire lack of medical options in Gaza, where thousands remain in urgent need of life-saving treatment.
The UK government has already supported healthcare for over half a million people in the Palestinian territories, including through field hospitals and medical supplies, and has facilitated access to the UK for some children through privately funded initiatives.
However, the claimants argue that current arrangements fall short of addressing the humanitarian emergency.
“The UK government has explained its failure to facilitate medical evacuations from Gaza on the basis that it supports treatment options in Gaza and the surrounding region and that there are visas available for privately funded medical treatment in the UK. However, these mechanisms are profoundly inadequate to meet the urgent needs of children in Gaza,” said Carolin Ott, the Leigh Day lawyer leading the legal action.
The case has been filed against both the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and revolves around three children, one aged two, and two siblings aged five, who require urgent medical attention unavailable in Gaza.
The two-year-old, referred to as Child Y, suffers from an arteriovenous malformation in his cheek, which causes daily bleeding and has left him in critical condition.
The other two children, both known as Child S, have the chronic kidney condition cystinosis nephropathy that has already led to kidney failure. One of the siblings can no longer walk, according to The Guardian report.
Campaigners say the UK’s current approach contrasts strongly with its actions in other conflicts, notably its evacuation of children during the Bosnian war and, more recently, from Ukraine.
The government, however, points to its ongoing humanitarian contributions, including a £7.5 million ($10 million) medical support package announced in May, as well as its support for Project Pure Hope, a UK-based initiative that successfully arranged for two children from Gaza to receive treatment in Britain earlier this year.
“We have helped several children with complex paediatric conditions access privately funded medical care in the UK, supporting an initiative by Project Pure Hope,” a government spokesperson said.
Legal documents submitted as part of the action reportedly indicate that Project Pure Hope requested the establishment of a UK-funded evacuation route from Gaza for medical cases, but that request was declined.
A spokesperson for the government added: “We have been clear the situation in Gaza is intolerable and that there must be an immediate ceasefire. We urge Israel to let vital humanitarian aid in and allow Gazans to receive urgent healthcare, including allowing the sick and wounded to temporarily leave the Gaza Strip to receive treatment.”
According to health officials in Gaza, more than 17,000 of the 58,000 Palestinians killed since Oct. 7, 2023, have been children.
The World Health Organization estimates that up to 12,500 patients in Gaza require evacuation for treatment.
As of April 10, over 7,200 patients had been moved out of the territory to destinations including Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, the EU, and the US. Nearly 5,000 of those evacuated were children.
Dr. Hani Isleem, project coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has helped evacuate 22 patients, said that international reluctance to do more remained a serious obstacle.
“Some countries are reluctant to take in patients, fearing they might be perceived as facilitating ‘forced migration’ or as taking on the burden of the patients’ extended stay,” he said.
The UK government has until July 28 to respond to the legal pre-action letter, The Guardian’s report added.
