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
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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