Rolls-Royce seized as part of scam crackdown

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Myanmar woman arrested and other assets seized during 29 raids by cyber police

PUBLISHED : 17 Aug 2023 at 15:28

Rolls-Royce seized as part of scam crackdown
Police display some of the 4.4 million baht in cash and other items seized during a raid on a room at a luxury condominium in the Asok-Rama IX area of Bangkok, one of 29 locations they searched on Thursday. (Capture from TV)

Police say they have seized a Rolls-Royce as part of a crackdown on online scams and cryptocurrency fraud during raids on 29 locations in Bangkok and two other provinces.

A woman from Myanmar was also arrested for fraud and money laundering and her assets seized as part of the operation.

Police from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) raided the 29 venues in Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Chon Buri provinces at around 6am on Thursday.

In Bangkok, the team searched three locations, including a room at a luxury condominium in the Asok-Rama IX area. There they arrested Moe Moe Aye, 24, a Myanmar national, on charges of colluding in fraud, inputting false information into a computer system, laundering money and related offences.

Seized from the room were 4.4 million baht in cash, 17 bank passbooks and 16 ATM cards. The raids on the two other premises in the capital found nothing illegal. The venues had been linked to a phone scam gang in which a member posed as a police chief in Tak province to dupe victims into transferring money.

In Chon Buri, a Rolls-Royce worth about 36 million baht was seized at one location, said a police source.

Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) police examine seized evidence at a condominium in Bangkok, one of 29 locations they raided on Thursday. (Capture from TV)

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Whistleblower asks police to probe PM candidate’s ex-company

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Chuvit keeps up pressure on developer Sansiri and former boss days before PM vote

PUBLISHED : 17 Aug 2023 at 15:23

Whistleblower asks police to probe PM candidate's ex-company
In happier times: Whistleblower Chuvit Kamolvisit, left, meets Pheu Thai prime ministerial candidate Srettha Thavisin in early May, days before the May 14 election. (Photo: Pattarapong Chatpattarasill)

Whistleblower Chuvit Kamolvisit on Thursday asked police to investigate two land purchases by the property developer Sansiri Plc when it was run by Srettha Thavisin, the prime ministerial candidate of the Pheu Thai Party.

The former massage parlour tycoon brought his complaint directly to Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, the deputy national chief, at the Royal Thai Police Club. Mr Chuvit said he wanted investigators to look into Sansiri’s purchases of two land plots on Sarasin and Thong Lor roads.

In the Sarasin Road case, he has alleged that Mr Srettha and the company were complicit in tax evasion by 12 sellers, who divided the plot up and made separate transfers over 12 days.

In the Thong Lor case, he accused the company of using a housekeeper and two security guards as nominees to acquire land for a luxury condominium and misstating the price it paid.

Sansiri, which is listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), has denied both allegations. Mr Srettha has already filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr Chuvit over the Sarasin case.

Pol Gen Surachate said he would conduct an investigation and that he intended to find facts for the sake of the public interest.

Sansiri told the SET on Wednesday that it had purchased the Thong Lor plot directly from N&N Assets Co, and that the housekeeper and security guards were with the selling company, not with Sansiri.

Mr Chuvit has been highlighting what he says are questions about the ethical conduct of Mr Srettha as the Pheu Thai Party prepares to nominate the former Sansiri boss for prime minister. The vote in parliament is expected to take place next Tuesday.

Pheu Thai is still trying to put the finishing touches on a new coalition after withdrawing from an eight-party alliance led by the Move Forward Party, which won the May 14 election.

Pheu Thai came second in the general election with 141 seats while Move Forward has 151 seats in the 500-seat House.

Mr Srettha quit as chief executive officer and president of Sansiri (SIRI) in April. Earlier he transferred his shares in the company to his daughter.

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Country Garden: How bad is China’s property crisis?

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Local government could tighten more the escrow accounts where presale funds are kept in order to ensure homes can be completed and delivered – a top priority set by Beijing. These would in turn squeeze the sector more and lead to additional defaults even among state-backed developers. How is thisContinue Reading

CNA Explains: What is altitude sickness, and why it can be deadly

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SINGAPORE: Reaching the world’s highest peaks is a challenge that brings many climbers to countries such as Nepal and Tanzania every year.

However, such extreme environments also present increased risks to the human body.

Barometic pressures – or air pressures – fall as the altitude increases. This causes a corresponding drop in the partial oxygen pressure, resulting in hypobaric hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen in the air.

For example, the air at 3,000m contains only about 69 per cent as much oxygen compared with at sea level, and drops even further as you ascend.

At the peak of Mount Everest, the world’s highest, there is only about 33 per cent as much oxygen in the air. The mountain’s “death zone”, located above 8,000m, is also notorious for its difficult terrain.

Aside from altitude sickness, climbers are also susceptible to conditions such as frostbite and eye damage.

Last week, a travel agency said a Singaporean man died from health complications due to altitude sickness while attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

He died of asphyxia, a condition that occurs when the body is deprived of oxygen, and high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), an altitude illness that can turn fatal.

In May, another Singaporean climber went missing after reaching the summit of Mount Everest. According to his wife, he developed high altitude cerebral edema (HACE) and “could not make it down”.

WHAT IS HIGH-ALTITUDE SICKNESS?

High altitude sickness occurs when people travel to high altitudes without giving their bodies enough time to adjust. This usually affects those who ascend to altitudes at least 2,500m above sea level but can also be seen at lower elevations.

There are three types of altitude sickness: Acute mountain sickness (AMS), HACE and HAPE.

Of these, acute mountain sickness is the most common, and is often benign. However, if left undiagnosed, it can lead to the other two types, which are more serious and potentially life-threatening.

HACE occurs when pressure builds up in the brain, resulting in fluid breach and swelling. HAPE, on the other hand, affects the lungs – the fluid build-up interferes with the effective exchange of oxygen to the blood.

How badly people are affected by the lack of oxygen depends on how high they are, the rate of ascent, and how long they stayed at high altitudes.

WHAT SYMPTOMS SHOULD CLIMBERS LOOK OUT FOR?

AMS begins with mild symptoms such as headache and nausea. 

Other symptoms include dizziness, vomiting, fatigue and loss of energy, shortness of breath, sleeping problems and loss of appetite.

According to outdoor travel website SGTrek, symptoms usually set in within 12 to 24 hours of reaching higher elevation, and then get better within a day or two as the body adjusts to the change in altitude.

If left untreated, however, AMS can progress to HAPE and HACE.

Symptoms of HAPE include tightening of the chest, extreme fatigue, breathlessness even when at rest, coughing that may produce a white or pink frothy fluid and fever. People may also experience cyanosis, a condition where the skin, nails or whites of their eyes start to turn blue.

HACE symptoms include headache, loss of coordination, weakness, disorientation, memory loss and hallucinations. It can also cause changes in normal behaviour and ability to think, as well as coma in advanced cases.

An article on Harvard Health’s website noted that symptoms of HACE may not be noticed immediately as the illness can begin during the night. “Because this low-oxygen injury affects the brain and thought process, a person with HACE may not understand that symptoms have become more severe until a travelling companion notices unusual behaviour,” the article read.

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ShopBack fined S,400 over leak of more than 1.4 million customers’ personal data

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1.45 MILLION USERS’ EMAIL ADDRESSES LEAKED

On Sep 9, 2020, a malicious threat actor accessed ShopBack’s AWS environment using the key and exfiltrated data from the customer storage servers.

These included the email addresses of about 1.45 million users; 840,000 names; 450,000 mobile numbers; 140,000 addresses, 10,000 National Registration Identity Card numbers; and 300,000 bank account numbers.

The partial credit card information of about 380,000 users was also stolen. The details included partial credit card numbers, month and year of expiry, and the issuing bank.

A week later during a routine security review, Shopback discovered what had happened. It then engaged a private forensic expert for further investigations.

The PDPC noted that ShopBack put immediate remedial measures in place, such as reversing all changes made by the hacker and triggering a forced logout and password reset of all customers’ accounts.

To prevent the incident from happening again, it also stepped up monitoring of logs to ensure any unauthorised access would be detected, among other measures.

PDPC found that ShopBack lacked sufficiently robust processes to manage its AWS keys. It rejected ShopBack’s argument that the compromise of the key arose from human error, not from any systemic issue with its security practices.

PDPC reiterated a previous judgment that an organisation cannot place sole reliance on their employees to perform their duties properly as a security arrangement to protect personal data.

ShopBack also failed to conduct periodic security reviews, which could have detected whether the AWS keys had been properly rotated or deleted, said PDPC.

After the discovery of the incident, ShopBack took 15 days to conduct a key rotation. PDPC said it should review its processes to determine if this amount of time was reasonable to deal with the compromise of an access key with full administrative privileges.

In determining what financial penalty to impose, PDPC considered the “long period” in which the key was exposed for, but noted that it took prompt remedial actions and acknowledged its failure.

In October last year, the maximum amount that a company can be fined for a data breach was increased to either 10 per cent of its annual turnover in Singapore or S$1 million, whichever is higher.

Previously, organisations that violate the Personal Data Protection Act would face a financial penalty of up to S$1 million.

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Woman admits beating 6-year-old son over 100 times with a belt, kicking and slapping him

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SINGAPORE: Unhappy that her son was misbehaving, a mother of several children punched the six-year-old boy and made him do a handstand.

She then stuck him more than 100 times with a belt.

The next day, she took him to a doctor and lied that her boyfriend had beaten her son.

The 32-year-old woman pleaded guilty on Thursday (Aug 17) to one count under the Children and Young Persons Act of ill-treating a child in her care.

A second charge of giving false information to a public servant will be considered in sentencing.

All parties in this case cannot be named due to gag orders protecting the victim.

The court heard that the accused lived with her then-boyfriend along with her children and other relatives at the time of the offences in 2020.

Around noon on May 11 that year, she was in her bedroom with several of her children, including the victim.

She punched her six-year-old son for misbehaving and asked him to do a handstand, but the boy could not maintain the pose.

She later struck him with a belt over a period of about 10 minutes and kicked and slapped him.

The boy cried out in pain but his mother ignored his pleas for her to stop.

In total, she beat him more than 100 times with the belt, using both the strap and the buckle, all over his body including his face. The acts were captured by a closed-circuit television camera in the flat.

Footage of the beating was played in court, but the public and media were told to leave the courtroom while it was being played. Still, the cries of the boy were audible enough to be heard from outside.

The day after hurting the boy, the woman took her son to a neighbourhood police centre and lied that her boyfriend had beaten him. There were bruises on his body and scratches on his face.

A doctor who examined the boy noted that he had sustained more than 50 bruises and abrasions.

The woman was later seen by a doctor from the Institute of Mental Health. She was diagnosed with adjustment disorder with depressed mood.

The prosecution and defence differ on whether this condition contributed to the woman’s offence.

The case has been adjourned to November for a Newton hearing, which is called to settle issues the defence and prosecution are unable to agree on before mitigation and sentencing are carried out.

For ill-treating a child in her care, the woman could be jailed for up to eight years, fined up to S$8,000, or both.

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3.3-magnitude quake felt in Chiang Mai

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PUBLISHED : 17 Aug 2023 at 13:33

3.3-magnitude quake felt in Chiang Mai
The Google map on the website of the Earthquake Observation Division shows the epicenter of the 3.3-magnitude earthquake in Phrao district in the northern province of Chiang Mai at 9.26am on Thursday.

CHIANG MAI: An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.3 on the Richter scale was sensed by locals in Phrao district of this northern province late Thursday morning.

The Earthquake Observation Division of the Meteorological Department reported that the quake was detected four kilometres underground in tambon Mae Pang at 9.26am. Locals in tambon Mae Pang also felt the tremor on the ground.

Some residents said that they also felt the tremor on the ground as if heavy trucks were passing by.

The quake was caused by the active north-south Mae Tha faults, which lie under Phrao and Doi Saket districts of Chiang Mai, according to the Meteorological Department.

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Chandrayaan-3: Indian lunar mission inches closer to Moon

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An image released by Isro of the Moon's surface taken by Chandrayaan-3Isro
By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Delhi

India’s third lunar mission is inching closer to the Moon’s little-explored south pole where it aims to set down a lander and rover on 23 August.

On Thursday, the lander will detach from the propulsion module, which carried it close to the Moon, and “they will begin their separate journeys”.

Chandrayaan-3, however, may not be the first to land on the south pole if it’s beaten by a new Russian mission.

Luna-25, launched last week, is expected to land a day or two earlier.

If the Russian spacecraft – its first Moon mission after nearly half a century, when Russia was part of the Soviet Union – is successful in making a soft landing on 21st or 22nd August as planned, Chandrayaan-3 will have to settle for being a close second.

India, however, will still be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

Russia launched Luna-25 on 10 August, but propelled by the much more powerful Soyuz rocket, it escaped the Earth’s gravity in no time and reached lunar orbit on Wednesday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July, but it went around the Earth a few times before entering the lunar orbit on 5 August. The spacecraft has been orbiting the Moon since then, while preparing for the landing.

The two missions aiming for the Moon are being described by many as a “mini space race”.

The Indian Space Research Agency (Isro), however, told the BBC it’s not a race and the two nations will have a new ‘meeting point’ on the Moon.

“Isro has never been in any race right from the day one of its inception in 1960s,” an Isro spokesman told me.

“We planned the mission based on the readiness of the spacecraft and the available technical window to reach the far side of the Moon. Luna-25 is also a mission planned long time ago. They also must have some technical considerations, which we don’t know precisely,” he said.

Graphic showing how the Chandrayaan-3 will get to the Moon, from take off, to orbiting the Earth in phases until it reaches the Moon's orbit, when the lander will separate from the propulsion module before landing near the Moon's south pole

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Chandrayaan-3, the third in India’s programme of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.

It comes 13 years after the country’s first Moon mission in 2008, which discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime.

Chandrayaan-2 – which also comprised an orbiter, a lander and a rover – was launched in July 2019 but it was only partially successful. Its orbiter continues to circle and study the Moon even today, but the lander-rover failed to make a soft landing and crashed during touchdown.

Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath has said India’s space agency had carefully studied the data from its crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches in Chandrayaan-3, which weighs 3,900kg and cost 6.1bn rupees ($75m; £58m).

The lander module (called Vikram, after the founder of Isro) weighs about 1,500kg and carries within its belly the 26kg rover which is named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

Once the craft entered the Moon’s orbit, scientists gradually reduced the rocket’s speed to bring it to a point which will allow a soft landing for Vikram.

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Chief of India’s first Moon mission Mylswamy Annadurai told the BBC that after Thursday’s separation from the propulsion module, the lander module will do two manoeuvres over the next few days, getting closer to the Moon with each one, and will reach an orbit of 30km by 100km a day before it lands.

Once it lands, he says, it will take a few hours for the dust to settle after which the six-wheeled rover will crawl out and roam around the rocks and craters on the Moon’s surface, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

The rover is carrying instruments which will focus on finding out about the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface.

The south pole of the Moon is still largely unexplored – the surface area that remains in shadow there is much larger than that of the Moon’s north pole, and scientists say it means there is a possibility of water in areas that are permanently shadowed.

One of the major goals of both Chandrayaan-3 and Luna-25 is to hunt for water ice which, scientists say, could support human habitation on the Moon in future. It could also be used for supplying propellant for spacecraft headed to Mars and other distant destinations.

Graphic showing the LVM3 launch rocket, with three engine phases, and where the Chandrayaan-3 will be while it it carried into orbit

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Nakhon Phanom paddy fields flooded as Mekong River overflows

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PUBLISHED : 17 Aug 2023 at 12:22

Nakhon Phanom paddy fields flooded as Mekong River overflows
Vast areas of paddy fields in Nakhon Phanom province are flooded due to the overflow from the Mekong River. (Photo: Pattanapong Sripiachai)

NAKHON PHANOM: About 40,000 rai of paddy fields in this northeastern province remain inundated due to the overflow from the Mekong River, resulting in the declaration of 12 districts as disaster zones.

Although the rain had stopped a few days ago, the water level in the Mekong River remains high, measuring 10.50 metres on Thursday, which is 1.50m below the spill-over level of 12m. The water has been receding at a rate of 10-20 centimetres per day.

Northern runoff had flowed into Nam Oun and Nam Songkhram, causing these two tributaries of the Mekong to breach their banks and flood numerous agricultural and grazing areas. Nearly 40,000 rai of paddy fields have been submerged.

The Nakhon Phanom irrigation office has expedited the drainage of water from the two tributaries back into the Mekong. 

On Thursday, authorities issued a warning to residents living in districts along the river – Ban Phaeng, Tha Uthen, Muang and That Phanom – advising to brace themselves for a new round of heavy downpours.

Nakhon Phanom governor Wanchai Chanporn recently declared 12 districts as disaster zones, enabling the allocation of funds to aid affected residents. Initially, each flood-hit district was provided with 500,000 baht.

Officials will survey damage to agricultural areas to provide financial assistance to affected farmers.

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After McDonald’s, Burger King India drops tomatoes from its menu

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Inside Parel High Street Phoenix mall Burger King fast food restaurant front entranceGetty Images

Burger King says it has removed tomatoes from its food in Indian outlets after a sharp rise in prices.

The fast food chain said it made the decision because of “unpredictable conditions on the quality and supply of tomato crops”.

The burger chain is the second in the country after McDonald’s to drop the ingredient from its menu.

Experts say crop damage due to bad weather conditions have caused a shortage in the market.

Earlier this week, US sandwich chain Subway also removed tomatoes from menus as India’s food inflation hit its highest since January 2020, reports Reuters.

It even cancelled the free cheese slices the restaurant offered with the sandwich for years.

Prices of essentials have skyrocketed in India in recent months, with the tomato hitting a peak of 250 rupees ($3; £2.37) per kilo in July as monsoon rains disrupted crop and supply chains.

Tomato prices have since come down but earlier this month, India began importing it from neighbouring Nepal to manage the supply crisis.

These are being sold at 50 rupees per kilo in capital Delhi and the northern states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

On Wednesday, Burger King added a new section to its official website in India called, “Why are there no tomatoes in my burgers?”

The food chain said its Indian franchisee followed “very high standards of quality” and that tomatoes will be back soon on the menu.

“Till then we request your patience and understanding,” it said.

Last month, McDonald’s also dropped tomatoes from most of its outlets in northern and eastern India.

The fast food giant attributed the decision to quality concerns and not the surge in prices.

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