While taxi and car rental fraud accounts for nearly half of reported cases in Thailand’s capital and Phuket sees more hotel booking fraud, travel scams globally have soared by up to 28% during peak seasons Transactions in the Thai capital are more likely to encounter fraud compared to global cities like San Francisco, Dublin, Seoul, Budapest, and Edinburgh, which report notably lower rates, according to a new report from the Mastercard Economics Institute. The report, widely covered by CNBC, highlights the tourism industry as one of the sectors most vulnerable to fraudulent activities, with a substantial uptick in scams observed…
Author: Asia News Network
SINGAPORE – A police assistant superintendent with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) who had financial problems obtained monetary bribes totalling $47,700 from a man notorious for operating several illegal gambling dens across Singapore. In exchange, Koh Kian Tiong, alias Mark Koh, who is no longer a police officer, provided the man with information about CID operations that could affect the latter’s criminal activities. After almost 17 years on the run, Koh, 52, pleaded guilty on May 21 to five counts of graft involving cash totalling $31,000 and one count of desertion under the Police Force Act. Ten other graft charges…
SINGAPORE – TikTok’s Transparency and Accountability Center in Singapore on May 13, is a strangely quiet place for a platform that hosts the noise and energy of a billion users. Here, the chaos of global short-form content is filtered, analyzed and — when necessary — stopped before it reaches a single screen. And, increasingly, among the digital debris being swept away are AI-generated deepfake videos targeting K-pop idols. It is an issue whose urgency is increasing. In 2023, cybersecurity firm Security Hero published a report analyzing some 100,000 deepfake videos, the findings of which pointed squarely to South Korea. Women,…
HANOI – Immigration officers involved in a controversial incident at Phú Quốc International Airport last week, where an officer was reported to have torn a passenger’s boarding pass during exit procedures, have been suspended from work. The Immigration Department under Việt Nam’s Ministry of Public Security announced Monday that the decision of temporary suspension aims to facilitate a thorough investigation into the responsibility of the individuals involved. According to official sources, the incident occurred during the processing of exit procedures for a family of four from Taiwan (China) returning from the southern island Phú Quốc to Kaohsiung on May 13.…
TOKYO – The 31% support rate for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s Cabinet in a recent poll appears to reflect the public’s low expectations regarding this administration’s negotiations over U.S. tariffs and its dissatisfaction with the government’s failure to control rice prices. The support rate in this month’s Yomiuri Shimbun poll tied for the lowest level since the current Cabinet’s inauguration. Asked what kind of administration they preferred, 48% favored a shift to an opposition-led government, 12 percentage points more than those who preferred the continuation of a Cabinet centered on the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. A total of 72% said…
ISLAMABAD – China said on Tuesday it supports Pakistan in defending “national sovereignty and territorial integrity”, after a ceasefire ended four days of fighting with India over a deadly attack in occupied Kashmir. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said China welcomed the two countries “handling differences through dialogue” as he met Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar in Beijing. Wang called Pakistan an “ironclad friend” and vowed to deepen the “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership” between the two countries, a readout from China’s foreign ministry said. Likewise, Dar appreciated China for firmly supporting Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The…
SINGAPORE – South-east Asia is a developing region with a huge appetite for energy, and investors in China, South Korea and Japan are now finding promise in investing in renewable energy projects in Asean. A new report released on May 20 found that the number of international investment projects for renewable energy in Asean has increased by an average of about 15 per cent per year since 2020, with investments reaching US$43 billion (S$55.8 billion) in 2022. This growth rate is higher than the global average of 11 per cent, according to the report by climate and energy research group…
HCM CITY — Nguyễn Thúc Thùy Tiên, 26, former Miss Grand International 2021, was arrested on Monday by the Ministry of Public Security’s Police Investigation Agency over allegations of consumer deception linked to the controversial “Kera vegetable candy” scandal. Tiên is being investigated for “deceiving customers” under Clause 2, Article 198 of Việt Nam’s Penal Code. The case involves several high-profile individuals, including social media influencers and senior executives from Asia Life Corporation and Chị Em Rọt Company, who are accused of producing and falsely advertising substandard health food products. Investigators allege that Tiên held a 30 per cent stake…
SINGAPORE – What does a modern-day Mongolian or a Siberian have in common with a Quechua from Peru, living almost 20,000km away? They share a lot in their DNA, in fact, according to scientists from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) at Nanyang Technological University. Early Asians walked more than 20,000km from North Asia to South America, making the Asian and the South American closely related as the journey shaped the genetic landscape in the Americas from as far back as 14,000 years ago. Known as humanity’s longest prehistoric migration, the journey would have taken multiple generations…
PETALING JAYA – Economic hardship and growing online sale of wildlife through social media platforms are among key factors that have led to the increase in the smuggling of exotic animals. As a result, Malaysia has inadvertently been used as a place of transit. Referring to several latest cases, Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said the smuggling of exotic wildlife to India is driven by several factors such as a demand in certain regions in the country where wildlife is often kept as pets. “Malaysia is one of the countries with a supply of local…