![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6863597.1714161309!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
Human trafficking-fuelled fraud is exploding in Southeast Asia with organized crime rings raking in close to US$3 trillion in illicit revenue annually, the head of Interpol has said in comments that reveal the huge profits being earned by cartels.
One international organized crime group makes $50 billion a year, according to Interpol secretary-general Jurgen Stock, adding that $2 trillion to $3 trillion of illicit money flows through the global financial system annually. To compare, France’s economy is worth $3.1 trillion according to the International Monetary Fund.
While drug trafficking contributes around 40% to 70% of organized crime income, criminal groups are also using those smuggling networks to illegally move humans, arms and stolen products among other things, Stock said.
“Driven by online anonymity, inspired by new business models and accelerated by COVID, these organized crime groups are now working at a scale that was unimaginable a decade ago,” Stock told a briefing at the global police co-ordination body’s Singapore office on Wednesday.
“Today, a bank – or indeed anyone – is less likely to be robbed at gunpoint than via a keyboard by someone on the other side of the world.
“What began as a regional crime threat in Southeast Asia has become a global human trafficking crisis, with millions of victims, both in the cyber scam centers and as targets.”
Interpol says its operations in Asia have led to nearly 3,500 arrests and the seizure of $300 million in illegally earned assets across 34 countries since 2021.
Survivor testimonies, NGO campaigning and media reporting over the past three years have increasingly exposed an explosion in online fraud gangs operating in Southeast Asia, many using de facto slave labor to target people across the globe, including the United States.
Victims from across Asia are often duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.
Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked into online criminality across the region, according to a United Nations report last year.
The UN estimated that up to 120,000 people could be held in compounds across Myanmar, which has been plunged into civil war since a 2021 military coup, with another 100,000 people held in Cambodia and elsewhere in conditions that amount to modern slavery.
Criminal enterprises also exist in Laos, Thailand and the Philippines, with many of the lucrative online scam operations ranging from illegal gambling, to love scams and crypto fraud.
“People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes. They are victims. They are not criminals,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in the report.
One key hub for scam syndicates is Myanmar, which shares a mountainous border with southwestern China – and Beijing is now trying to crack down on cross-border crime targeting Chinese nationals.
In heavily guarded compounds controlled by local warlords, tens of thousands of people, mainly Chinese, have been trapped and forced by criminal gangs to defraud strangers with sophisticated schemes over the internet. Beijing has pressed Myanmar’s military government to rein in the scam operations, but with limited success.
Elsewhere, casinos in the Philippines catering to illicit gamblers from China have spawned across the country with authorities in Manila struggling to curtail the rising number of gambling establishments used as fronts for scam centers and other fraudulent crimes.
Earlier this month, more than 800 Filipinos, Chinese and other nationals were rescued during a police raid of an online romance scam center posing as a casino some 100 kilometers from the capital, the official Philippine News Agency reported, citing local authorities. Hundreds of the victims were made to pose as lovers to lure people to send money, in what’s commonly known as a “pig-butchering” scam.
The victims, some from Malaysia and Vietnam, told local investigators that each forced worker was pressured by alleged crime lords to siphon $42,000 daily online, and said they were beaten when they did not meet that target.
And scammers are getting more sophisticated, using artificial intelligence to swindle corporations.
In Hong Kong, a finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake AI technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to local police. It is unknown where the scammers were based or where the huge sum of money went.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”