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China crackdown on cyber scams in Southeast Asia nets thousands but leaves networks intact

Tens of thousands of people, many of them Chinese, have been caught up in cyber scams based in Southeast Asia BANGKOK -- Zhang Hongliang, a former restaurant manager in central China, took various gigs in and outside China to support his family after losing his job during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, a job offer to teach Chinese cooking at a restaurant led him into a cyber scam compound in Myanmar, where he was instead ordered to lure Chinese into giving up their savings for fake investment schemes via social media platforms. Zhang is one of tens of thousands of people, mostly but not all Chinese, who have become ensnared in cyber scam networks run by powerful Chinese criminal syndicates in Southeast Asia. Regional and Chinese authorities have netted thousands of people in a crackdown, but experts say they are failing to root out the local elites and criminal networks that are bound to keep running the schemes. When scam operations are shut down in one place they often just resurfa...

Mounds of rubble and a future of grief are what's left after Afghanistan earthquake killed thousands

People are digging through the rubble from the quake in western Afghanistan ZINDA JAN, Afghanistan -- People dug through the rubble of the quake in western Afghanistan for their few possessions but the material losses seemed unimportant. Saturday’s 6.3 magnitude quake killed and injured thousands when it leveled an untold number of homes in Herat province. Picking through the rubble on Monday, Asadullah Khan paused to think about a future marred by grief. Khan lost three daughters, his mother and his sister-in-law. Five members of his uncle’s family have died. His neighbors are grief -stricken, too. “We have lost 23 people in this village,” Khan said. Mounds of rubble flank the road winding through Zinda Jan district. Some door frames remain standing. There were few people in sight on Monday. The Taliban-appointed deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and his team visited the quake-affected region Monday to deliver “immediate relief assistance” and ensure “eq...