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Indonesian authorities have detained more than 300 foreign nationals this week for allegedly running an online gambling ring in the capital Jakarta, police said Saturday.Gambling is illegal in the archipelago, with punishments extended to bookmakers, punters and those who promote gambling content online.Police raided a building in Jakarta on Thursday, where they found and detained 321 foreigners and seized phones, passports, laptops and computers.The majority of those detained, 228 people, were Vietnamese nationals. The group also included 57 from China, 11 from Laos, five from Thailand and three each from Cambodia and Malaysia, police official Wira Satya Triputra told a news conference.Some 275 people face charges of gambling and money laundering, Wira said, adding that authorities were still investigating the rest.”We caught the perpetrators red-handed, meaning they were conducting an online gambling operation,” he said.Preliminary investigations suggested that the ring, which started operations about two months ago, targeted victims outside Indonesia, Wira said, without specifying where.Police have previously said that many scammers had moved operations to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries following a crackdown in China.Elsewhere in Indonesia this week, immigration authorities raided an apartment building in Batam, in Riau Islands province, arresting 210 foreigners suspected of running an investment scam.In February, Police raided two villas on the resort island of Bali and arrested 39 Indian nationals for allegedly running an illegal gambling operation.Turnover linked to online gambling reached more than 280tn rupiah (about $16bn) last year, official data showed, with more than 12mn Indonesians estimated to be engaged in the illicit activity. Related Story Source link
Australia fast bowler Mitchell Starc remains driven by the competitive nature of cricket and hopes to extend his 16-year international career for a few more years, he said on Saturday, keeping the door open for a potential appearance at the 2027 World Cup.The 36-year-old left-armer, Australia’s third-highest wicket-taker with 759 across formats – behind only Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath – retired from Twenty20 internationals in September to prolong his career in tests and 50-over cricket.The next ODI World Cup is scheduled to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia in October-November 2027.”I’m pretty competitive, so I just enjoy that aspect of cricket,” Starc told reporters. “For Australia, I get to play with some of my best mates. I enjoy the hard work, but I also enjoy competing, and it’s still fun.”Starc, who has been managing elbow and shoulder niggles, said his body was holding up well despite the demands of international cricket.”There’s always something going on. I’ve had a bit of a niggle with my elbow and shoulder, which is still being managed, but there’s probably a little less impact in T20 cricket,” he said.”I’m still going okay after 16 years and hopefully there are a couple more left.”Starc, who made his Australia debut in 2010, is currently playing for Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League, in which they sit eighth in the 10-team table.He was named player of the series in Australia’s recent 4-1 Ashes victory over England.”It’s (2027 World Cup) a long way down the road, but I’ll hopefully be there. The World Cup is always a goal for every cricketer,” he added.”I’ve stepped away from T20 internationals, but I’m still enjoying my cricket. I don’t set timelines – I just see where the body is and where the cricket is.” Related Story Source link
Australian far-right populist party Pauline Hanson’s One Nation won its first seat in the country’s House of Representatives in a by-election Saturday, a preliminary vote count showed. The result is in line with a surge of electoral support for far-right populist parties globally. Britain’s ruling Labour party this week suffered a widespread loss of seats at council elections. David Farley, a former agribusiness executive, won the rural seat of Farrer, some 550km (340 miles) south of Sydney and 320km (200 miles) north of Melbourne, for the anti-immigration party with 59.3% of the vote, defeating the incumbent centre-right Liberal Party, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.One Nation’s first preference vote in the by-election was 42%, the ABC said, compared to the 6.6% first-preference vote it got at a federal election last May.”We’re like a mason with a chisel and we’re carving letters into Australia’s democracy,” Farley said at a televised election event. “One Nation has reached the end of its beginning.”The result is significant in that it marks the first time One Nation has won a lower-house seat since Hanson formed the party 30 years ago.But it does not affect the parliamentary majority of the ruling Labor Party, which holds 94 of 150 lower-house seats. The seat was left vacant when Liberals leader Sussan Ley resigned in February.The Labor Party did not run a candidate in the contest for the seat that has been held by the opposition conservatives since it was formed more than half a century ago.Party leader Pauline Hanson, a senator, standing beside Farley, said the result was “a win for Farrer but a bigger win for the nation”.She knew her party was favoured to win but when the first television station projected victory “I actually got a tear in my eye”, she said.”You really don’t understand the journey I’ve been on,” she added.Liberal leader Angus Taylor said at another televised event that the by-election was “always going to be a mountain to climb … and we have to take away some hard lessons from this”.Taylor said his party would focus on immigration rates. “For too long we have been a party of convenience, not of conviction, and that must change,” he added. Related Story Source link
Mohammad Abbas claimed five wickets to restrict Bangladesh to 413 before two debutant batsmen combined to put Pakistan in a strong position in the first Test Saturday.Opener Azan Awais hit an unbeaten 85 and Abdullah Fazal, also playing in his first Test, was 37 not out as Pakistan reached 179-1 at stumps on the second day in Dhaka.The visitors trail Bangladesh by 234 runs but veteran Pakistan seamer Abbas was the standout performer, claiming three wickets in the morning session after the home side resumed at 301-4.Abbas took two more wickets after lunch and finished with figures of 5-92 from 34 overs, the sixth five-wicket haul of his career.Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto laid a strong platform on the first day with 101. Mushfiqur Rahim, who was 48 not out overnight, then went on to make a gritty 71 off 179 balls,Mushfiqur celebrated his 39th birthday by equalling Tamim Iqbal’s record of 42 innings of 50 or more for Bangladesh in Test cricket.Bangladesh began day two well before 36-year-old Abbas dismantled their innings with disciplined bowling.Litton Das fell for 33 while attempting a pull shot, and Mehidy Hasan Miraz was out for 10 one ball after hitting a six.Taijul Islam edged a bouncer from Abbas for 17 before Shaheen Shah Afridi bowled Mushfiqur in the first over after lunch.Taskin Ahmed made a late cameo of 28 before falling to Afridi, who finished with 3-113.Senior assistant coach Mohammad Salahuddin lamented that Bangladesh was unable to post a bigger score and pinpointed slips catching as an area of concern after two chances were dropped.”I think if we could have scored another 50-60 runs it would have been much better for us,” he said.”Our slip catching needs a lot of improvement. It is a specialised area and we will talk about how to improve further.”Pakistan began their innings strongly, with Imam-ul-Haq and Azan adding 106 for the opening wicket before Mehidy trapped Imam lbw for 45.Imam praised Abbas and the two new batsmen.”Abbas bowled very well, everybody knows how good he is,” Imam said.”The way Azan batted, taking and absorbing all the pressure, the kid really held his composure. I am very happy to see both of them playing so well,” he said.BRIEF SCORES: Pakistan 179 for 1 (Awais 85*, Imam 45, Mehidy 1-37) trail Bangladesh 413 (Shanto 101, Mominul 91, Mushfiqur 71, Abbas 5-92) by 234 runs. Related Story Source link
Indonesian rescuers retrieved Saturday the body of one of three hikers killed in a volcanic eruption in a seismically active no-go zone, a rescue official said.Mount Dukono on Halmahera island erupted on Friday, sending an ash cloud 10km (6 miles) into the sky, with no towns or villages near enough to face any immediate threat.The eruption killed two hikers from Singapore and one from Indonesia, local police chief Erlichson Pasaribu said on Friday.Seventeen other climbers, including seven Singaporeans, had been brought down safely.Rescuers combing the area around the edge of the volcano’s crater found a woman’s body, local search and rescue agency head Iwan Ramdani said, without specifying her nationality.”The joint search and rescue team… found the dead victim at 2:30pm (0530 GMT) along with her backpack,” Iwan said in a statement.The body was transported to a local hospital for identification, he added.Images shared by the rescue agency showed a team carrying a black body bag on a makeshift stretcher down the mountain.The search for the remaining victims has been suspended due to rains and volcanic ash and will resume on Sunday, Iwan said.The volcano erupted again several times Saturday, once spewing an ash column about three kilometres (1.8 miles) high, according to the national Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation.Preliminary information suggested the two Singaporeans’ bodies were about 20-30m (65-100 feet) from the rim of the crater, national disaster mitigation agency spokesman Abdul Muhari said in a statement.Singaporean media quoted the foreign ministry saying it was working with the embassy in Jakarta to provide assistance to affected citizens and families.Dukono, one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, has been on level two of the country’s four-tiered alert system since 2008.Authorities have imposed a 4km (2.5-mile) exclusion zone around the crater since December 2024, according Lana Saria, the head of the government’s Geology Agency.The police’s Erlichson said on Friday that the hikers had ignored social media appeals and warning signs put up at the entrance of the trail to stay away.Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where tectonic plates collide.The Southeast Asian country has nearly 130 active volcanoes. Related Story Source link
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer named former premier Gordon Brown as his envoy on global finance Saturday, turning to a man credited with shoring up banks during the financial crisis to bolster his support after a crushing local elections defeat. Starmer is on the back foot after his Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his own lawmakers to call on him to quit.Aiming to reset his leadership and win back party support, Starmer’s office announced the appointment of two Labour grandees, Brown, 75, and Harriet Harman, also 75, to his team as advisers.Brown will seek to drive new investment and hone relations with the European Union, in a bid to boost economic performance and win back votes, while Harman will focus on tackling misogyny and violence against women and girls, creating economic opportunities.Amid fresh calls for him to resign Saturday from several of his own lawmakers, as the extent of the defeat emerged, Starmer repeated: “I’m not going to walk away from this.”He said he will respond to the message from voters by seeking to convince them their lives will improve, adding that his new hires, Brown and Harman, were part of the plan.”They’re vital to how we strengthen our country and take it forward and provide the opportunities that give people that hope for a better future,” he said.Brown, 75, will join as an adviser on global finance and cooperation, while former Labour deputy leader Harman, 75, will become the prime minister’s adviser on women and girls.Brown’s task will be to develop new international finance partnerships that can support defence and security investment, including measures that underpin Britain’s relationship with the European Union, a statement said.As Tony Blair’s finance minister, Brown was a key architect of the New Labour project which won the party three consecutive general elections from 1997.Serving as prime minister himself from 2007-2010, Brown was instrumental in nationalising major banks and stabilising the financial system during the global financial crisis.Just under two years after a Labour landslide national election victory, voters have turned against Starmer.Labour losses stood at 1,425 seats as the final votes were counted on Saturday, a bigger defeat than the 1,330 seats lost by former Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party in 2019. May quit three weeks after that result. Against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis compounded by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, Starmer’s government has been beset by policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and scandal over the appointment of another Blair-era veteran, Peter Mandelson, as Britain’s ambassador to the United States.”We made unnecessary mistakes,” Starmer said on Saturday, before insisting that the right thing now was to “rebuild and show the path forward”. While an immediate challenge to Starmer’s leadership does not look likely, there are growing calls for him to resign.More than 20 lawmakers publicly and privately have called on him to set out a timetable for his departure, with former minister Catherine West joining the fray on Saturday.”His approach is not cutting through, and the results over the past 48 hours are nothing short of disastrous,” West said of Starmer on X.”I know I speak for more Labour people than just myself in wanting him to step aside as our Leader.”Another Labour lawmaker, Clive Betts, told BBC Radio Saturday that he wanted Starmer to step down “in the not too distant future”. Related Story Source link
“Nuclear energy is at the intersection of energy demands, technological innovation, and the evolving security landscape. This creates a huge opportunity,” says Shota Kamishima, Senior Coordination…
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday released dozens of previously classified files on alleged UFO sightings and alien life to provide what they called “unprecedented transparency” to the American people. The disclosure of the long-sought documents and photos of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” will be followed by future releases as more materials are declassified, the US Defense Department said in a statement.Trump was the latest US president to release reports on UFOs that date back to the 1940s and were first disclosed in the late 1970s. Experts said the batch of around 160 files released on Friday contained new videos of known sightings but gave no conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life. The files include a 1947 report of “flying discs” as well as a photo of “unidentified phenomena” taken from the moon’s surface during the Apollo 12 lunar mission in 1969 and a transcript of the Apollo 17 crew describing unidentified objects seen from the moon in 1972.’BRIGHT PARTICLES’ DURING APOLLO 17Apollo 17 mission pilot Ronald Evans reported “a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver,” based on the transcript.”Roger. Understand,” mission control replied.”These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it’s time the American people see it for themselves,” Hegseth said in a statement.The records release is likely to fuel fresh debate over government secrecy and the possible existence of life in the cosmos.”Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” Trump said in a statement. “Have fun and enjoy!”The move was welcomed by US Representatives Tim Burchett and Anna Paulina Luna, both proponents of declassifying UFO files. Luna said an additional tranche of material was expected in around 30 days.”The files show that UAP are not simply a matter of speculation or public curiosity,” Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb said in an email to Reuters. “The government has collected records.”The images from Apollo 12 and 17 were fascinating but could be the result of asteroid impacts on the lunar surface, Loeb said. He added that more interesting material was likely still to come but would take longer to declassify.DISTRACTION FROM POLITICAL PROBLEMS?Some critics cast the UFO disclosures as a distraction from Trump’s political woes, including the unpopular US military campaign against Iran and public pressure to release further files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t. I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda,” former Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X.UAP investigator Mick West said the administration of former President Joe Biden disclosed much of the same information as Friday’s release. West, who produces software to analyze UAP videos, said the files provided no new evidence on the possible existence of alien life.”They’re evidence of us not being able to identify a small white dot that’s a long distance away,” said the Sacramento, California-based analyst, adding that shapes in UAP videos were often camera lens diffraction from bright light. Related Story Source link
Washington and Beijing are weighing the launch of official discussions about artificial intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.The White House and the Chinese government are considering putting AI on the agenda for a summit next week in Beijing between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the Journal said.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is leading the American side for the proposed AI discussions, while Beijing has not yet designated its counterpart, the report added.Reuters could not immediately verify the report.Trump said earlier this week he will remind Xi that the US is leading in artificial intelligence as the two sides navigate tensions over trade and technology. Related Story Source link
A cross-party delegation of British lawmakers will visit China this month for the first time since 2019, two sources familiar with the preparations said, in a sign of warming ties since a visit in January by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.The five-day trip by 12 Labour and Conservative MPs in mid-May is organised by the Great Britain-China Centre, an NGO funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to promote ties with China.Reuters could not determine the full list of participating MPs or details of their itinerary. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity as preparations for the visit are still underway.The Centre and the Foreign Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.In contrast, British lawmakers have made nine visits since 2022 to Taiwan, the democratically governed island that China claims as its own territory, although Taiwan rejects the claim.In 2021, China imposed sanctions on nine Britons, including Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party, accusing them of spreading ‘lies and disinformation’ about alleged human rights abuses in its western region of Xinjiang.Beijing then lifted sanctions on six serving lawmakers in January after Starmer met President Xi Jinping on his China trip, which both sides hailed as a ‘reset’ in ties.Until then, relations had soured by tension during the coronavirus pandemic over human rights and spying accusations.However, China has retained its Xinjiang-related sanctions on two British academics and lawyers, as well as four organisations based in Britain.The British MPs' visit follows one in March by nine European lawmakers, the first in eight years after China lifted sanctions on certain MEPs in 2025.The resumption in parliamentary exchanges marks a tentative reopening of diplomatic dialogue after years of frosty ties between China and Europe.However, issues around alleged Chinese spying and the controversial mega-embassy China plans to build in London continue to swirl.This week, a London court held two men guilty of spying on behalf of Hong Kong and China, targeting prominent pro-democracy dissidents now based in Britain.The men, both dual Chinese and British nationals, denied the accusations, while the Chinese embassy in London has accused Britain of fabricating the charges against them. Source link