Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Gangs forcing hundreds of thousands of people into cybercrime in south-east Asia, says UN

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Organised criminals use threats, torture and sexual violence to coerce victims to work in international scamming operations

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked and forced to work for online scamming operations in south-east Asia run by criminal gangs, according to a UN report.

Billions of dollars are being generated each year by gangs who coerce victims into cybercrime, where they are subject to threats, torture and sometimes sexual violence, said the report, published by the UN human rights office on Tuesday.

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FBI agents reportedly search for Uzbeks helped into US by smuggler with IS ties

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Episode reported by CNN required emergency memo to senior officials and suggests agency does not know migrants’ location

Federal agents are reportedly trailing a group of more than a dozen Uzbek nationals who entered the US as asylum seekers aided by a smuggler with ties to Isis.

The extraordinary episode, which multiple US officials confirmed to CNN on Tuesday, was considered so serious that it required an emergency intelligence report to senior Biden administration figures.

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Pakistan high court has suspended Imran Khan conviction, says lawyer

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Uncertainty over whether ex-PM will be released from jail due to other court orders allowing for his arrest

A Pakistani court has suspended the former prime minister Imran Khan’s recent conviction on corruption charges, his lawyer has said, though it is unclear whether this will lead to his release from jail.

The 70-year-old former cricketer has been at the centre of political turmoil in the crisis-ridden state since his ouster in a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022, and his relations with Pakistan’s powerful generals have deteriorated over the past year.

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‘Despair is settling in’: female suicides on rise in Taliban’s Afghanistan

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Unofficial figures point to a mental health crisis amid severe restrictions on Afghan women’s lives

First, her dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed by the Taliban’s ban on education. Then her family set up a forced marriage to her cousin, a heroin addict. Latifa* felt her future had been snatched away.

“I had two options: to marry an addict and live a life of misery or take my own life,” said the 18-year-old in a phone interview from her home in central Ghor province. “I chose the latter.”

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Monday briefing: The story of India’s space programme – and why it took off

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In today’s newsletter: The country’s lunar landing was a triumph. This is how it quietly built a successful mission

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Last week India became the fourth ever country to land a spacecraft on the moon, and the first to touch down successfully near its south pole. It was hailed as a success for “budget” missions, with the project costing £60m, less than half of the £131m it cost Christopher Nolan to make his 2014 space epic, Interstellar.

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Taliban ban women from national park in Afghanistan

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Minister says women visiting the lakes of Band-e-Amir have not been wearing their hijabs properly

The Taliban have banned women from visiting one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks, adding to a long list of restrictions aimed at shrinking women’s access to public places.

Thousands of people visit Band-e-Amir national park each year, taking in its stunning landscape of sapphire-blue lakes and towering cliffs in the country’s central Bamiyan province.

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India: nine people dead after fire breaks out in stationary train carriage

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Railway says smuggled-in gas cylinder caused blaze that burned for two hours at Madurai station in Tamil Nadu

Nine people have died after a fire broke out in a stationary train compartment at a railway station in southern India, officials said.

The blaze broke out at 5am on Saturday and burned for two hours before firefighters were able to put it out, authorities said.

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India birds report identifies 178 species as being of high conservation concern

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Large-scale study indicates population declines after collation of data from country’s conservation organisations and birdwatchers

A report on India’s bird population has painted a grim picture for many of the country’s species.

The State of India’s Birds (SoIB) report – published on Friday – showed worrisome declines, with 178 species of wild birds identified as needing immediate priority for conservation.

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Serious Fraud Office drops 10-year corruption inquiry into Kazakh miner ENRC

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UK agency also shuts other high-profile cases including Rio Tinto investigation

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has abandoned a criminal investigation into the Kazakh mining group ENRC, ending a decade-long corruption inquiry mired in controversy.

The SFO updated its website on Thursday with a notice that it had closed the case after concluding there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to prosecute the company.

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India’s rover takes walk on the moon after frenzied celebrations

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Solar-powered vehicle will spend two weeks roaming lunar surface to help scientists understand geology of moon

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has rolled its rover on to the moon’s surface after its successful landing at the lunar south pole.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced the rover had “ramped down from the lander and India took a walk on the moon”.

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Brics to more than double with admission of six new countries

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Major expansion as economic bloc that includes Russia and China attempts to provide counterweight to the US and western allies

The Brics group of big emerging economies has announced the admission of six new members, in an attempt to reshape the global world order and provide a counterweight to the US and its allies.

From the beginning of next year, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the UAE and Ethiopia will join the current five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – it was announced at a summit in Johannesburg on Thursday.

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India’s south pole moon landing is big business for global space race

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India has raised its spacefaring profile and will now be seen as low-cost provider for missions possible

For all the risks, for all that was riding on a successful landing, the descent to the moon’s surface was remarkably uneventful, if not exactly stress-free. The Vikram lander, part of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, dropped steadily on its thrusters to the rock below, slowed to a hover as it approached the ground, and finally came to a rest on the dusty terrain.

When confirmation came that the lander was down, anxiety in the control room gave way to cheers and applause. With the soft touchdown, India becomes the first country to land a probe at the moon’s south pole, a rugged region where deep craters lie in permanent shadow and where ice could provide water, oxygen and fuel for future missions. The first will be on the moon itself, and in lunar orbit, but they could also supply trips to Mars, with the benefit that the materials do not need to be lifted off the Earth’s surface at great cost. It is a region of key scientific interest.

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India lands spacecraft near south pole of moon in historic first

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Vikram lander touches down at lunar south pole shortly after 6pm India time

India has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon, in a historic moment that drew cheers at watching parties around the country.

“India is on the moon,” Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, the chair of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said as the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s Vikram lander touched down shortly after 6pm (1230 BST) near the little-explored lunar south pole in a world first for any space programme.

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Railway bridge collapse in India kills at least 26 workers

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Government-run railway opens inquiry after incident in north-eastern state of Mizoram

A railway bridge under construction in India has collapsed killing at least 26 workers and injuring two, police said, as the state-run railway authority opened an investigation.

The incident happened on Wednesday in the town of Sairang in the north-eastern state of Mizoram, its chief minister, Zoramthanga, said on the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

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All eight people rescued from cable car dangling above valley in Pakistan

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Cable car ordeal ends as authorities say everyone brought to safety after hours-long operation in Battagram

All eight people have been rescued from a stricken cable car high above a remote Pakistan valley, a spokesperson for the state-run emergency services said.

Pakistani authorities said army commandos, with the help of civilians, made the final rescues after an operation lasting hours. Floodlights were installed and a ground-based operation reached the remaining three people late on Tuesday more than 12 hours after their cable car snagged, leaving it hanging precariously at an angle.

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Brics group looks to expand at summit despite divisions among key members

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Experts say India concerned about expansion and any overt anti-west turn as leaders fly into South Africa

Leaders from developing countries representing almost half the world’s population including China and Russia are meeting in South Africa for a key summit aimed at reinforcing their alliance as a counterweight to the west.

The Brics grouping summit in Johannesburg is being hosted by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and brings together the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, as well the presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Indian writer says Amazon Prime series character seems to be based on her

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Yashica Dutt accuses makers of Made in Heaven of failing to acknowledge her contribution to story of bride from low caste

An Amazon Prime series on Indian wedding planners has been accused of failing to acknowledge the contribution of a Dalit journalist who says that the main character appears to be based on her own life, as recounted in a book she wrote.

Yashica Dutt, 37, has been based in New York for a few years but grew up in India amid the daily contempt to which people who belong to her caste are subjected.

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Pakistani opposition leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi detained

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Reason for arrest of former foreign minister and leader of PTI is not immediately clear, party says

The Pakistani opposition leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi was detained on Saturday, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said, just hours after he said it would challenge any delay to the country’s election in the courts.

Party spokesperson Zulfi Bukhari told Reuters the specific reason for the detention of Qureshi, twice Pakistan’s foreign minister, was not immediately clear. The caretaker information minister did not respond to a request for comment.

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India’s supreme court issues handbook against use of archaic terms for women

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Harmful language and stereotypes about women can lead to distortion of law, says chief justice of India

India’s supreme court has issued a handbook for judges urging them to shun words like seductress, vamp, spinster and harlot when talking about women.

Archaic terms that disparage women and perpetuate gender stereotypes can still be routinely heard in Indian courts long after falling into disuse in other countries. It is not unusual for a wife to be described as chaste or ladylike, and sexual harassment is routinely trivialised as “Eve-teasing”.

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Bindeshwar Pathak, ‘toilet man’ who revolutionised sanitation in India, dies at 80

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Sociologist made it his mission to install more than 1m toilets after being horrified by the work of manual scavengers

From the moment he reached adulthood until his death on Tuesday at 80, Bindeshwar Pathak poured his life and energy into making India a cleaner place by building public toilets and enabling Indians from across the social spectrum to have access to clean sanitation.

Over the years, he earned himself the name “Toilet Man”, horrifying his family and fellow Brahmins, the caste to which he belonged. His community was aghast at his obsession with setting up public toilets; for many, toilets were considered something unclean, never to be touched.

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