₦airaland Forum

Two arrested after scam victim reports suspicious phone calls
https://www.oxfordeagle.com/2024/09/06/two-arrested-after-scam-victim-reports-suspicious-phone-calls/

Chaturali Alauidin Roy and Nasruddin Bhai Nooruddin
https://www.oxfordeagle.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2024/09/Chaturali-Alauidin-Roy-467x350.jpg
https://www.oxfordeagle.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2024/09/Nasruddin-Bhai-Nooruddin-467x350.jpg

Serial scammer with 16 convictions accused of not delivering beef in Hurricane
https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/arrests/serial-scammer-with-16-convictions-accused-of-not-delivering-beef-in-hurricane/article_37a248c0-7f75-11ef-bad4-0739f35629ab.html

Shandon Gale Young
https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/stgeorgeutah.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/d9/ed941502-801d-11ef-bd07-6bf381ca7574/66fc371caf078.image.jpg

Two arrested after scamming Grand Island woman out of nearly $700,000, NSP says
https://www.1011now.com/2024/09/10/two-arrested-after-scamming-grand-island-woman-out-nearly-700000-nsp-says/

Xiuya Li and Lobsang Choedak
https://gray-ksnb-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/https%3A%2F%2Fdo0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net%2F09-11-2024%2Ft_d3cff5f869dd4970bc9e8f0634f31a91_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg

Man arrested for alleged contractor scams in the wake of Hurricane Helene
https://www.nbc-2.com/article/man-arrested-alleged-contractor-scams-hurricane-helene/62512215

Nelson Jeovany Hernandez Gonzalez
https://kubrick.htvapps.com/htv-prod-media.s3.amazonaws.com/images/mugs-2024-10-04t105738-131-6700026c0ea7e.png

Credit card skimming scam targets ATMs in Phoenix and Scottsdale, 3 arrested
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/3-men-arrested-credit-card-skimming-scam-targeted-atms-phoenix-scottsdale

Fernando Cojocaru, Robert Oletanu and Filon Petrican
https://gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com/resizer/v2/Q3UOWXAECVHC7MUFEWDILVRGCE.png

Kenya's Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua on Thursday filed a petition to the high court in Nairobi seeking to halt an impeachment process launched against him by lawmakers earlier this week, documents showed.

Allies of Kenyan President William Ruto tabled a motion in parliament on Tuesday to impeach Gachagua, accusing him of stirring ethnic hatred, undermining the government and amassing a large and unexplained property portfolio.

Gachagua says he has been sidelined and has denied accusations by Ruto allies that he was behind violent anti-government protests earlier this year.

Gachagua said the impeachment motion was based on falsehoods that constituted a "choreographed political lynching designed to defeat the sovereign will of the Kenyan people expressed at the presidential election held August 2022", according to the petition documents seen by Reuters.

Hailing from the populous Mount Kenya region, Gachagua helped mobilise a large voting bloc that helped Ruto win power, but the two have reportedly since fallen out.

The deputy president has become less influential since Ruto nominated members of the main opposition coalition to his government after protests in June and July against planned tax hikes in which more than 50 people were killed.

Ruto has not commented publicly on the impeachment proceedings and calls to his office this week were not answered.

The impeachment process begins with a programme of public participation on Friday. Gachagua will be allowed to respond to the impeachment allegations in the lower chamber of parliament on Oct. 8.

Gachagua said that asking the public to make oral and written submissions before he could defend himself violated his rights to a fair hearing.

"I have a cogent basis that demolishes each and every of the 11 alleged grounds set out in the (impeachment) motion which will not be considered by the public if the public participation exercise... proceeds," Gachagua wrote in the documents.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/kenyas-deputy-president-asks-court-halt-his-impeachment-local-media-report-2024-10-03/

“If CO2 fertilization was the determining factor in regreening here, it would happen everywhere in a region, but it does not,” he says. Instead, the greening stops abruptly at the border with Nigeria, where farmers show little interest in nurturing trees.

Evans agrees that the exceptional greening his study found in southern Niger is probably related to farmer regeneration of trees. And he says that Indian farmers too have played an important role. In arid states such as Gujarat, they are pumping underground water to irrigate crops on once-barren land. The resulting increase in soil moisture shows up as greening, Indra Tripathi, a water-resource engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, concluded in a study published in March.

So is this all good news? Far from it, ecologists warn. Most obviously, the greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can play havoc with scarce water reserves and obliterate valuable arid-land ecosystems

And there are downsides to the greening of natural ecosystems too. “Save the deserts” may not be a popular environmental message, but arid ecosystems matter. They are important habitats for species uniquely adapted to scarce water, whether plants that can survive decades without rainfall or desert beetles that have evolved novel geometry on their bodies to harvest fog moisture.

Such specialist species could lose out as the environments they have evolved to exploit change. Outsiders may move in. Indeed, the greening of ecosystems itself may be a sign of invasions by fast-growing alien plants better adapted to making the most of elevated CO2 levels, growing fast and wiping out the locals.

Long-term studies by University of California, Riverside in the Sonoran Desert show that shorter shrubs better adapted to less rainfall and higher temperatures are moving in at the expense of native plants, creating an impression of greening that marks an ecological breakdown.

In some places, extra vegetation in arid environments is also increasing the risk of bushfires. Four years ago, flames ripped through southeast Australia, consuming an area the size of South Carolina. Foresters blamed the conflagrations on a combination of drought, high temperatures, and an accumulation of combustible woody vegetation, which analysis suggests was in part the result of CO2 fertilization. The poster child of greening went up in flames.

The world was wrong to expect that climate change would trigger rapid and widespread desertification in the world’s arid lands. In fact, the reverse is happening. But it could be a similar folly to imagine that the dramatic greening now visible in satellite images across many of those same regions is a reason to declare their troubles over.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/greening-drylands-carbon-dioxide-climate-change

Last year, Ziwei Liu, a hydrology modeler at Tsinghau University in Beijing, concluded that, taking account of the impact of CO2 fertilization on aridity, drylands will expand by only 5 percent by the end of this century, but vegetation productivity will increase by around 50 percent.

And last month, Burrell, Evans, and Xinyue Zhang, also of the University of New South Wales, found the same thing in the most detailed modeling to date. The new projections “show continued increases in aridity due to climate change,” but “less than 4 percent of dryland areas [will] desertify,” they concluded. The exact extent of future greening will depend on how much CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, says Evans. But under all scenarios, their modeling forecasts that most drylands will be greener.


The effects of this greening are already profound. The woodlands of eastern Australia have seen “repeated record-breaking droughts and heat waves” over the past four decades, says Sami Rifai, now at the University of Adelaide. Yet during that time “CO2 fertilization has outpaced growing aridity to drive greening of Australian woody ecosystems.”

Some researchers argue that other factors, such as how farmers use the land, could be locally important. Poor land use can often cause desertification, such as when trees are chopped down for firewood, bad crop practices cause soil erosion, or too many livestock are put on the grasslands that comprise much of utilized arid lands. But farmers also sometimes “green” barren land by growing irrigated crops or nurturing trees in their fields. In some of the most dramatic areas of greening, many forces may be at play.

A study in 2019 by Myneni and others concluded that land-use management “is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth,’ accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area.”

Take the Sahel region on the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert. Vegetation growth there has benefitted from the extra CO2 found in the atmosphere everywhere. But the region has also seen the return of rains after the devastating droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. And in some places, farmers have changed the way they farm, nurturing the natural regeneration of trees in their fields to provide shade and nutrients for their crops.

Geographer Chris Reij of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. has tracked this trend among farmers in Niger. He estimates that there are now some 200 million more trees across some 12.5 million acres of previously almost treeless land in the south of the country.

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The extra CO2 uptake by faster-growing plants is moderating the build-up of the gas in the atmosphere, says Keenan. “It’s not stopping climate change by any means, but it is helping us slow it down.”

This global greening is seen most dramatically — and with the greatest impact on ecosystems and the lives of people dependent on them — in drylands. It is not happening in all arid regions. Some places are browning. But not many.

A 2020 assessment by Evans and Arden Burrell, a remote-sensing researcher at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, found that about 6 percent of drylands had experienced desertification since 1982, only a quarter as much as previous estimates based on meteorological conditions. These areas included much of the U.S. Southwest, drought-prone northeast Brazil, and parts of Central Asia.

But Evans and Burrell found that significant greening was much more extensive than previously acknowledged — and more than three times greater than desertification. It encompassed 41 percent of the world’s drylands, from India to the African Sahel and northern China to southeastern Australia.

Last year, Guolong Zhang and colleagues at Lanzhou University in China reported finding a global divergence between aridity and leaf area in drylands during the past three decades. Zhang says the reason for the “decoupling” lies in “the fertilization effect of CO2.”

Why did past predictions of rampant desertification prove so wrong? One reason, says Evans, is that researchers came to believe that their standard measure of the dryness of the atmosphere, the aridity index, would reliably predict the potential for vegetation to grow.

The aridity index is the ratio between precipitation and potential moisture loss through evaporation. The lower the ratio, the more arid the conditions. When global CO2 concentrations are unchanging, the read-across to vegetation works fine; but with rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, plants use moisture more efficiently and their growth no longer reflects the meteorology. If rising CO2 levels have a bigger effect than declining precipitation, then aridity is accompanied by greening.

Water is not the only potential limiting factor in plant growth in arid lands. The availability of nutrients, particularly nitrogen, is another. That raises questions about whether the benefits of CO2 fertilization will continue to increase. But recent climate modeling suggests that the greening of drylands is unlikely to slow before mid-century and may speed up.

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Photosynthesis is the process by which plants grow by absorbing CO2 through stomata in their leaves and converting it into plant matter. That process requires water, which in arid regions is often the limiting factor for plant growth. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the air both allow easier photosynthesis and enable plants to use less water in the process.

Agricultural scientists have long known about the benefits of additional CO2 for plant growth. Farmers sometimes dose the enclosed atmospheres of greenhouses with the gas to boost yields. In effect, we are now doing the same thing to the entire atmosphere.

The negative impacts of hotter, drier climates have not gone away; but in most arid lands this CO2 fertilization effect is proving more powerful. This supercharging of plant growth seems unlikely to be short-lived if fossil-fuel burning causes atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to continue rising. A new modeling study published last month found that it will, if anything, become more marked in the coming decades. “Most of the global drylands are projected to see an increase in vegetation productivity,” says Evans, a coauthor of the study.

This unexpected upside to CO2 will have implications for the pace of climate change itself. Instead of desiccating ecosystems and causing the release of their CO2, thus accelerating climate change, anthropogenic releases of the gas into the atmosphere are allowing vegetation to increase its capture of carbon — helping, if only modestly, to reduce it.

For some time, there has been growing evidence of global greening in all biomes, not just arid lands. Back in 2016, remote-sensing specialist Ranga Myneni of Boston University, with a team of 32 others from eight countries, studied NASA satellite images to discern trends in vegetation. They concluded that between a quarter and a half of the planet’s vegetated areas had since 1980 shown an increase in their leaf area index, a standard measure of the abundance of vegetation.

Myneni’s subsequent statistical analysis suggested that some 70 percent of this global greening could be attributed to CO2 fertilization. Other factors included local changes in nitrogen deposition from air pollution, rainfall, and land cover.

The findings appeared to be confirmed by a 2021 study at University of California, Berkeley assessing the rate of photosynthesis in a range of ecosystems worldwide. Using a network of “flux towers” that measure the exchange of gases between vegetation and the air above, carbon-cycle researcher Trevor Keenan and colleagues concluded that since 1982 there had been a 12 percent increase in photosynthesis, with CO2 fertilization again the primary cause.

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Southeast Australia has been getting hotter and drier. Droughts have lengthened, and temperatures regularly soar above 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). Bush fires abound. But somehow, its woodlands keep growing. One of the more extreme and volatile ecosystems on the planet is defying meteorology and becoming greener.

And Australia is far from alone. From Africa’s Sahel to arid western India, and the deserts of northern China to southern Africa, the story is the same. “Greening is happening in most of the drylands globally, despite increasing aridity,” says Jason Evans, a water-cycle researcher at the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

What is going on? The primary reason, most recent studies conclude, is the 50-percent rise in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere since preindustrial times. This increased C02 is not just driving climate change, but also fast-tracking photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places.

As we pump yet more CO2 into the air, arid-land greening seems set to continue, according to two recent modeling studies. But ecologists warn that, despite appearances, going green may have downsides for arid ecosystems and for the people who depend on them. Desert plants and animals will often lose out, and the extra vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.

Drylands cover roughly 40 percent of the planet’s land surface. The deserts at their core are surrounded by wide expanses of savanna grass, dry woodlands, and sometimes irrigated fields. They are home to more than a third of the world’s population and are among the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the international organization for conservation scientists.

Over the past half-century, most drylands have been experiencing a decline in rainfall, along with higher temperatures and greater rates of evaporation. Many have also been degraded by poor farming practices and overgrazing of livestock. Climate scientists and ecologists alike have until recently presumed that this combination of growing meteorological aridity and pressure from human activities would lead to less vegetation. They have routinely warned of widespread desertification, which U.N. officials have called “the greatest environmental challenge of our time.”

Yet in most drylands, this anticipated desertification has not happened. Rather than shriveling and dying, vegetation is usually growing faster and expanding its terrain, while deserts are retreating. This, researchers of the world’s carbon and water cycles say, is largely due to the extra CO2 in the atmosphere.

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TheWinterBird:
Is this too much to spend on groceries?

How much are y'all spending on groceries?

If you can comfortably afford that, it's not too much. If you're looking to reduce costs, here's a few things to consider:

1.) Do you really need a particular brand? With some products, like certain cooking sauces, the flavor is like night and day, so you want that brand. Furthermore, that's a product that will last weeks or months, so it's worth it. But generic is often fine.

2.) If you can afford it, you should pay more for certain items because they're more nutritious or healthier. Even if you can't, you don't have to throw your health out the window. You have a lot of options.

3.) Buy in bulk.

4.) Don't buy everything from one store, or from the more expensive store. You can get better deals on a lot of essentials (like spices) from certain places. And you won't sacrifice quality or health.

5.) There are tons of cheap vegetables, fruits, and carbs. A good way to save on veggies is getting big bags of frozen veggies. You can get whole wheat pasta and parboiled rice (10lb or more sacks) pretty cheap. Beans are super cheap and one of the most healthy and satisfying things you can eat.

6.) If you can, invest in a deep freezer. That way you can really buy in bulk, and you can also take advantage of sales.

7.) Try to connect with farmers who butcher. You can get a ton of fresh healthy meat at a better price and pop it in your deep freeze. But make sure that person is compliant with health codes and etc.

8.) You can meal plan to get more out of your dollar. Soup, stew, and 1-pot rice or pasta dishes. And there's a ton of wonderful different dishes you can make. Definitely look for stuff to try.

9.) Save by buying whole chickens, ground meat, and certain cheap, but healthy cuts. Also, go to supermarkets early to get deals. You may have to put it in your freezer or use it that day, but it's a huge savings.

10.) If you're in the UK, you can get wild markdowns on fresh food. Take advantage of that. You can get some amazing things for less than a pound.

11.) Farmer's markets (real ones not supermarkets selling stuff) have great, healthy deals. Also, if you live in or near a rural area, you can get your weight in fruit and veggies cheap. Take advantage.

12.) Your recipes don't require every single ingredient you think. There are viable, cheaper substitutes that don't sacrifice flavor. Maybe experiment with that and ask around to discover what you really need, or what you don't mind. You can save a ton of money this way.

13.) Making stuff from scratch saves. It may cost you X amount for a bag of something, but you can spend the same and get buckets if you make it from scratch. Take time to think about stuff that's not a big deal to do from scratch. Maybe buy some inexpensive kitchen tools and gadgets to make that easier.

14.) Buy stuff that's versatile instead of stuff that's super specific. Like, get ingredients you can use in a bunch of different stuff.

I'll post some more later.

Speciality Flatbreads’ director Andrew Charalambous did not respond to written requests for comment, but in a phone call from the BBC said he had supported the police and prosecution, adding that the company had been “thoroughly audited by top law firms” and “everything we were doing was legal”.

He added: “From our perspective we didn’t break the law in any way, having said that, yes, maybe you’re right in that maybe there were certain telltale signs or things like that, but that would have been for the HR department who were dealing with it on the front line.”

The Modern Slavery Act requires larger companies - including McDonald’s and the supermarkets, but not the factory - to publish annual statements outlining what they will do to tackle the issue.

Former Prime Minister Baroness Theresa May, who introduced the act as home secretary in 2015, accepted the law failed to protect victims in this case, and believes it needs to be “beefed up”.

The former PM - who now leads the Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking - said the case was “frankly shocking” and shows “large companies not properly looking into their supply chains”.

She said the global commission was reviewing what new laws are needed “to ensure action is being taken by companies”.

Responding to the case, the government said it would “set out next steps on the issue of modern slavery in due course”.

It said it was “committed to tackling all forms of modern slavery” and would “pursue gangs and employers with every lever at our disposal while ensuring that victims are provided with the support they need”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo

Like most McDonald’s, the Caxton outlet - on the A428 - is a franchise, which means an independent business pays the fast-food giant to allow it to run the restaurant. While victims worked there between 2015 and 2019, it was run by two different franchise-holders. We contacted both, but they did not respond.

McDonald’s UK declined our offer of an interview, but provided a statement on behalf of the corporation and its franchisees. It said the current franchisee - Ahmet Mustafa - had only been “exposed to the full depth of these horrific, complex and sophisticated crimes” in the course of his co-operating with police and the prosecution. The company said it cares “deeply” about all employees and promised that - working with franchisees - it would “play our part alongside government, NGOs [Non-governmental organisations] and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery”. It also said it commissioned an independent review in October 2023 and had taken action to improve its ability to “detect and deter potential risks, such as: shared bank accounts, excessive working hours, and reviewing the use of interpreters in interviews”.

The bakery company - Speciality Flatbread Ltd - ceased trading and went into administration in 2022. None of the supermarkets detected the slavery while victims worked at the factory between 2012 and 2019. Dame Sara said she would have expected the retailers to be doing “pretty thorough due diligence”, adding that they normally “take much greater care about their own brand products because that’s their reputation that’s on the line”. Sainsbury’s said it stopped using the company as an own-brand supplier in 2016. The others only stopped sometime after police rescued the victims in 2019. Asda told the BBC it was “disappointed that a historic case has been found in our supply chain”, adding that it would “review every case identified and act upon the learnings”. It said it had made three site visits, but focused solely on food safety, and had stopped using the factory in 2020. Tesco said inspections - supported by information from anti-slavery charity Unseen - “revealed concerning working practices” and the company “ceased all orders from the supplier” in 2020. Waitrose said it pulled out in 2021 after its audits led to “concerns about factory standards and working conditions”. The Co-op said it made “a number” of unannounced inspections, including worker interviews, but found no signs of modern slavery, adding that the company “actively work to tackle the shocking issue… both in the UK and abroad”. M&S said it suspended and delisted the company in 2020 after it “became aware of potential breaches of ethical labour standards via the modern slavery helpline”. The British Retail Consortium said workers’ welfare was “fundamental” to retailers, who it said acted quickly when concerns are raised. “Nonetheless, it is important that the retail industry learns from cases like this to continually strengthen due diligence,” it said.

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“It really concerns me that so many red flags were missed, and that maybe the companies didn’t do enough to protect vulnerable workers,” said Dame Sara Thornton, the former independent anti-slavery commissioner, who reviewed the BBC’s findings.

Det Sgt Chris Acourt, who led the Cambridgeshire Police investigation, said there were “massive opportunities” that were missed to detect the slavery and alert authorities sooner. “Ultimately, we could have been in a situation to end that exploitation much earlier had we been made aware,” he said. Like many of the victims, Pavel - who has waived his legal right to anonymity - was homeless in the Czech Republic when he was approached by the gang in 2016. He says he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK, where he could at the time work legally. But the reality of what he experienced has left lasting scars, he said.

“You can’t undo the damage to my mental health, it will always live with me.”

He was given just a few pounds a day in cash by his exploiters, despite working 70-hour weeks at the McDonald’s branch, he said.

The gang - led by brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak - confiscated the passports of all their victims and controlled them through fear and violence, police found. “We were afraid,” Pavel said. “If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.”

The gang “treated their victims like livestock” feeding them just enough “to keep them going”, according to the Met’s Det Insp Melanie Lillywhite. She said victims were controlled by “invisible handcuffs” - monitored by CCTV, prevented from using phones or the internet and unable to speak English. “They really were cut off from the outside world,” she said.

While the gang has been convicted in court, Pavel believes McDonald’s also shares some responsibility. “I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act,” he said. “I thought if I was working for McDonalds, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.” Two former colleagues told the BBC the extreme hours the men worked - and the impact it had on them - was plain to see.

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Signs that modern slavery victims were being forced to work at a McDonald’s branch and a factory supplying bread products to major supermarkets were missed for years, the BBC has found.

A gang forced 16 victims to work at either the fast-food restaurant or the factory - which supplied Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. Well-established signs of slavery, including paying the wages of four men into one bank account, were missed while the victims from the Czech Republic were exploited over more than four years. McDonald’s UK said it had improved systems for spotting “potential risks”, while the British Retail Consortium said its members would learn from the case.

Six members of a family-run human trafficking network from the Czech Republic have been convicted in two criminal trials, which were delayed by the Covid pandemic. Reporting restrictions have prevented coverage of much of the case, but BBC England can now reveal the full scale of the gang’s crimes - and the missed opportunities to stop them. Nine victims were forced to work at the McDonald’s branch in Caxton, Cambridgeshire. Nine worked at the pitta bread company, with factories in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and Tottenham in north London, which made supermarket own-brand products. There were 16 victims in total across both sites, as two worked at both McDonald’s and the factory. The victims - who were all vulnerable, most having experienced homelessness or addiction - earned at least the legal minimum wage, but nearly all of their pay was stolen by the gang. While they lived on a few pounds a day in cramped accommodation - including a leaking shed and an unheated caravan - police discovered their work was funding luxury cars, gold jewellery and a property in the Czech Republic for the gang.

On several occasions, victims escaped and fled home only to be tracked down and trafficked back to the UK. The exploitation ended in October 2019 after victims contacted police in the Czech Republic, who then tipped off their British counterparts. But warning signs had been missed for at least four years, the BBC has discovered by reviewing legal documents from the gang’s trial and interviewing three victims.

The undetected red flags include:
-Victims’ wages were paid into bank accounts in other people’s names. At the McDonald’s, at least four victims’ wages - totalling £215,000 - were being paid into one account, controlled by the gang
-Victims were unable to speak English, and job applications were completed by a gang member, who was even able to sit-in on job interviews as a translator
-Victims worked extreme hours at the McDonald’s - up to 70 to 100 a week. One victim worked a 30-hour shift. The UN’s International Labour --Organization says excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour
-Multiple employees had the same registered address. Nine victims lived in the same terraced home in Enfield in north London while working at the bakery

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An award-winning Cambodian freelance journalist - known for his reporting on human trafficking in the cyber scam industry - was arrested on Monday, according to the independent Cambodian Journalists Alliance Association (CamboJA).

Last year, the US State Department honoured Mech Dara as a 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero for his work exposing the problem. The activity involves tricking people into signing up for what they believe are legitimate jobs in Cambodia, only to be confined to compounds where they target people online around the world. US law enforcement have recently heightened their focus on scam operations in Cambodia due to the high numbers of Americans who have lost millions of dollars.

Authorities made the arrest after stopping a car he was travelling in along with his family, CamboJA said in a statement. Mr Dara reportedly managed to send a text message to the rights group Licadho saying military police were arresting him before his phone was seized. A day before his arrest, Dara posted images on social media that were meant to show a revered tourist site demolished to make way for a quarry in the province of Prey Veng. Local authorities labelled the now-deleted images as "fake news".

On Monday, the Prey Veng provincial administration issued a statement rejecting his post and accused him of "wanting to cause social disorder or confusion," which can be prosecuted as a criminal offence. The province also called on the Ministry of Information to take legal action against him.

In an update on social media, CamboJA posted that according to Phnom Penh Municipal Court spokesperson Y Rin, Mr Dara was charged with "incitement to disturb social security". The journalist has since been placed in pre-trial detention at Kandal provincial prison. Mr Dara's arrest has raised concern among human rights activists. Mr Dara has used social media to highlight the spread of "scam farms" which dupe people across the world into parting with huge sums of money and drive human trafficking across the region. In its latest report, the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders ranked Cambodia 151st out of 180 in its international press freedom index.

https://news.sky.com/story/mech-dara-reporter-who-exposed-human-trafficking-in-cyber-scamming-arrested-in-cambodia-rights-groups-say-13225652

SarakiBukola:
Whites, Yellows and Browns see us Blacks as...Simply because we...

There's no way you're a black man. But I'll pretend you are for a second.

1.) It's not a view. You're trying to apply logic to people who are subhuman. They're mentally ill and depraved, that's why they behave and think the way they do. It has nothing to do with reality.

2.) It's especially wrong to try to pretend that West Asians are normal. The things they do to their own people, especially women, prove they're not.

3.) The state of the continent is engineered. Oyinbos invest a lot of resources into neocolonialism. Not just throughout Africa, but also in South/Central America and West/Central/South/East Asia.

Whites used to discriminate against Yellows & Brown's.

They still do, along with engaging in neocolonialism in their countries. Some of the reasons why some of these behaviors have cooled are:

(a) Asian and "Latin" countries are a major source of manufacturing slave labor
(b) Asians and "Latinos" have no self-respect and constantly kiss oyinbo ass (they do this regardless of education, achievements, or wealth)
(c) Asian and "Latin" countries allow oyinbos to engage in sex tourism/trafficking
(d) Asian and "Latin" countries do not pose any military threat
(e) women generally do not find Asian men attractive
(f) much of Asian and "Latin" culture is considered a punchline
(g) oyinbos love hard drugs and Asian and "Latin" countries are consistent producers and traffickers
(h) Asian and "Latin" countries are a steady supply of the slave labor/trafficking oyinbos want in their country
(i) Asian and "Latin" countries allow oyinbos to traffick wives
(j) like oyinbos, Asian and "Latin" people think depraved sex is normal
(k) like oyinbos, Asians and "Latinos" think human trafficking is normal

Those ones now have money 💰, control their own resources. They have something to negotiate with. So they are polite with them.

1.) The only one of them with any real leverage is China, and that's only because it was handed to them on a silver platter by oyinbos in exchange for permanent slave labor conditions. Now that China is improving worker salaries, oyinbos are trying to go elsewhere.

2.) All the other markets are heavily manipulated by oyinbos.

3.) Read these:

abbey621:
You didn't present anything credible, you used isolated events to justify your bias!

You're delusional.

I countered your argument with evidence of peeping toms (Heterosexual males) peeping inside women's bathroom and dressing rooms.

Strawman.

These are heterosexual men o, should heterosexual men be hated? Should we see them as a danger to society?

This is a shit argument. First of all, these crossdressing idiots are not gays. Being gay has nothing to do with a damn dress. Trans are just degenerates in a dress. Second, heterosexual men (including those in a dress) are already seen as a danger to society. Every woman walking alone at night is watching for men. Every country has miles of laws that exist purely because of the various horrible crimes that are almost exclusively committed by men.

How many women are raped by heterosexual men in a year? How many of them are transgender? Less than 0.1%, so according to your logic, a woman should be more worried about a 0.1% chance of danger than a 25% chance?

I'm sure those statistics are very comforting to a woman or small girl (and their parent) walking into an isolated place that's supposed to be for females, and seeing a grown man naked.

Nonsense.

I'm a stat guy and I earned my Ph.D arguing public policies in the USA, when you're ready to use real stats instead of isolated incidences, let me know!

You're lying. You're being paid to post this bullshit about trannies.

Also, if I sound passionate or like I'm doing too much, I do not care. This stuff is wrong. This isn't dress up. This is damaging people's physical and mental health. This is child abuse. This is misogynist.

And again, this isn't about gay/lesbian. Gay and lesbian people just want to live, work, and go about their business. They're not hurting anyone or trying to force anything on anyone. This trans shit is just evil.

abbey621:
Typical Naiaralander, when substance is lacking in your argument you turn around and attack the person........I won't play that game with you kid.....Goodluck!

I presented facts on how sex offenders are using this nonsense to commit sex crimes, r--ing women, even in a hospital, and how grown men are cheating women out of opportunities (money, education) and causing/risking serious injuries in sports. And you actually dismissed that to say some utter nonsense about "wHaT aBoUt YoU pErSoNaLLy." Don't even try to turn this around on me.

I didn't even get into the physical harm this crap does to the vulnerable children, teens, and adults they brainwash. There are deformed people walking around who never went through puberty, mutilated people, and people pumped full of drugs that no healthy person should be taking. Some of these people are sterile. They will never get their normal, healthy body back. They will have health problems for the rest of their life, physical and mental. Some of them will have health problems in their 20s and 30s that most people encounter in their 80s.

I don't care who you are, if you defend this shit, you're sick.

This isn't about gays and lesbians. This is about corporate greed going so far as to disable people from childhood. This is about degenerates finding new ways to harm women. And people like you are a part of that. And why? Because you're disgusting and want to have sex with Bobrisky? Because some disgusting oyinbo cut you a check?

Wake up.

Rukevwe999:
Many people with gender dysphoria are more likely to fall into chronic depression and finally self delete.

^This bullshit argument is consistently used by the paid shills of this fake movement. And it's absolutely not true.

Yes, they pay people to do this. It's just like any other industry (in this case pharma companies) that wants to manipulate law and society.

abbey621:
Notice how you skipped the part about YOU? Do you want me to show you the hundreds of articles about peeping toms and so on, normal male peeping into women's dressing rooms or following them into the bathroom to assault them? These are NORMAL males, nothing to do with transgender o.......So stop the bullshit already!

You're a loser that either wants to sleep with these creatures, or you're being paid to defend them. Either way, you're worthless.

NewDea4:
Yet another vacuous engagement to keep the citizens insensate whilst their patrimony is plundered by career criminals and druggies

I have no more empathy for Nigerians

You don't think Nigerians can chew gum and walk at the same time? Relaaax, bro.

abbey621:
I don't see transgenderism any different from women who put on dead human hair, those who bleach their skin, men taking steroids just to stay buff and so on

That's a great point. But you know what the difference is? A woman who puts a wig on, a man who uses steroids, and even the horror of someone bleaching doesn't impact the rights and safety of others.

1.) The modern version of this exists because of how insanely greedy oyinbos are. This is just a way to sell more medication and surgery because it creates lifelong patients. They are lifelong patients because what they're attempting to do is incredibly unhealthy, unsafe, and impossible. The pharmaceutical industry has invested A LOT of money into making this "movement" happen. It's not real at all.

2.) The old version of this exists because of (a) an abuser who people somehow took seriously and (b) mentally ill homophobes. Some people refuse to understand/accept homosexuality exists, and insist the person wants to be the other gender, to the point of referring to them as such and basically trying to indoctrinate them with this idea. With others, it's basically a different form of anti-gay violence; they're giving these people a choice between being ----ed or being a eunuch, which comes in part from men fearing that gay men will do to them what they do to women.

3.) People, mainly minors, who become victims of this ideology (whether modern or old) are vulnerable, easily-manipulated people: SA survivors, gays/lesbians, people with untreated/strong mental health issues, and etc.

He has some valid points.

Also, in the US:

Owner of used car business in Swansea wanted by police on ‘multiple arrest warrants’ for fraud
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/owner-used-car-business-swansea-wanted-by-police-multiple-arrest-warrants-fraud/4ZTZ64XNMFABNKQRS2LZJS7G3Q/

Edward Cicciu
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/hG00K0jJ/image.jpg[/img]

State Police Arrest Pair for Home Improvement Fraud in Newark
https://dsp.delaware.gov/2024/08/01/state-police-arrest-pair-for-home-improvement-fraud-in-newark/

Dinetta Kerfoot and Thomas Kerfoot
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/HxZ4ysbd/image.jpg[/img]

Detectives Arrest Man for Home Improvement Fraud
https://dsp.delaware.gov/2024/08/21/detectives-arrest-man-for-home-improvement-fraud/

Jeremey Bowen
[img]https://dsp.delaware.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/118/2024/08/Jeremy-Bowen.png[/img]

Also, in the US:

Branford police arrest suspect in text message scam, warn residents of danger
https://www.newportdispatch.com/2024/09/28/branford-police-arrest-suspect-in-text-message-scam-warn-residents-of-danger/

Wenjie He
https://www.newportdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/10-09-28-24.jpg

Quincy police arrest men accused of stealing $120K from elderly resident
https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2024/09/26/police-arrest-scammers-accused-stealing-120k-from-elderly-resident/

Shaoquin Liu and Shiwang Ning
[img]https://img.hoodline.com/2024/9/brooklyn-men-charged-in-sophisticated-scam-that-cost-quincy-senior-dollar120k-2.webp[/img]

Multi-state fraud suspect arrested in Kentucky
https://www.wkyt.com/2024/09/25/multi-state-fraud-suspect-arrested-kentucky/

Roberta Padgett
https://www.wtvq.com/content/uploads/2024/09/f/k/roberta-padgett.jpg