Foreign News
Vietnam court jails journalist Huy Duc for 30 months over Facebook posts
A leading independent journalist and book author from Vietnam has been sentenced to 30 months in jail over Facebook posts critical of the government.
Following a trial that lasted only for a few hours, a court in the capital Hanoi convicted 63-year-old Huy Duc of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state” through posting 13 articles on Facebook.
“These articles have a large number of interactions, comments and shares, causing negative impacts on social order and safety,” the indictment quoted by Vietnam News Agency read.
Huy Duc worked for influential state-run newspapers before authoring one of Vietnam’s most popular blogs and Facebook accounts, where he criticised the country’s communist leaders on issues such as corruption, media control and relations with China.
Huy Duc, whose real name is Truong Huy San, is a former senior army lieutenant. He was fired from a state news outlet in 2009 for criticising past actions by Vietnam’s former communist ally, the Soviet Union.
In 2012, Huy Duc spent a year at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship. During his time abroad, his account of life in Vietnam after the end of the war with the United States, The Winning Side, was published.
His conviction comes just a few months after blogger Duong Van Thai was jailed for 12 years on charges of publishing antistate information.
He had almost 120,000 followers on YouTube where he regularly recorded livestreams critical of the government.
In January, a prominent former lawyer was also jailed for three years over Facebook posts.
Shortly before his arrest in June, Huy Duc took aim online at Vietnam’s new powerful leader To Lam, as well as his predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong. It is unclear if the charges were related to these particular posts.
Vietnam, a one-party state, has no free media and clamps down hard on any dissent. It is one of the world’s top jailers of journalists, according to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom campaign group.
RSF said previously that his articles were “an invaluable source of information enabling the Vietnamese public to access censored information by the Hanoi regime”.
Rights campaigners say the government has in recent years intensified its crackdown on civil society.
In December, Vietnam enacted new online rules requiring Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities.
Under “Decree 147”, all tech giants operating in Vietnam must verify user accounts by phone number or Vietnamese identification numbers and store that information alongside their full name and date of birth.
[Aljazeera]
Nigeria says it will seek compensation from South Africa for its citizens who have left the country following recent protests targeting undocumented migrants.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa told the BBC that the issue would be discussed between the two governments “at the highest levels”.
Acting High Commissioner to South Africa Alexander Ajayi said on local television on Tuesday that the government had begun documenting businesses and properties left behind by Nigerians.
One Nigerian trader waiting to be repatriated told the BBC he had lived in South Africa for nearly a decade and had abandoned his business and home because he feared for his safety.
Oghodero Erejor Wilson, 32, said he was losing “everything because of fear”.
“I left everything in my house including clothes.”
He is among hundreds of Nigerians still waiting to be evacuated from South Africa. More than 600 Nigerians have already been repatriated in recent weeks.
The South African authorities say those who have been flown home were in the country illegally – though this is disputed by Nigeria.
About 25,000 nationals of other African countries have left South Africa following a wave of protests in recent weeks by groups demanding that the government does more to curb illegal migration.
Some anti-migrant groups had given undocumented foreigners a deadline of 30 June to leave the country and organised marches attended by thousands of people on Tuesday. These were largely peaceful but there were isolated incidents of violence against foreigners.
The South African police say that about 900 people were arrested, mostly for immigration-related offences and looting.
The BBC has asked South Africa’s government for comment on Nigeria’s compensation demand.
Nigeria’s acting high commissioner said he had asked all of those who had left South Africa “to document very accurately those things they were leaving behind in terms of businesses, in terms of even cars, movable and immovable properties”.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Ebienfa told the BBC that all claims would be verified before any formal request was made
“We have not severed ties with South Africa, we are still engaging them at the highest level, we will sort those details using our usual diplomatic channels,” he said.
Wilson, the trader, said he had run a clothing business in the South African city of Centurion in Gauteng province for several years.
But he said he had now closed his shop and fled to stay near the Nigeria High Commission in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.
Scheduled to leave on the next repatriation flight to Nigeria on Friday, he estimates the goods left in his shop are worth more than 16,000 rand ($975; £735).
Wilson said his residency documents had expired in 2021 and he had been unable to renew them.
He said he was not very hopeful about the prospect of getting compensation.
“If South Africa government can compensate it, it will be nice, but I know they won’t,” he said.
(BBC)
US President Donald Trump made more than $1bn (£750m) last year from business dealings in cryptocurrency, according to his mandatory financial report for 2025.
In a 927-page disclosure, he reported $635m in royalties from a Trump meme coin that has plunged in value since he launched it days before taking office.
He also reported over $500m in income from World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm founded by his own sons and the children of his special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
He earned millions more from real estate and Trump-themed items. But the White House denied he was profiting from the presidency.
The earnings from his latest financial disclosure far outpace the previous ones for 2024, when Trump disclosed over $600m in income.
But the White House, which has repeatedly emphasised that Trump has placed his business in a trust managed by his sons, again denied any conflict of interest.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said the president had proudly made the US “the crypto capital of the world”.
“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest,” she said in a statement.
She added: “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people – and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”
The president himself has also highlighted that he is not subject to federal conflict of interest laws.
Trump once criticised cryptocurrency, famously calling Bitcoin a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen”.
But Tuesday’s disclosure shows his crypto earnings far overshadow income from his real estate business, which first catapulted him to fame.
He earned around $77m from his Mar-a-Lago club and $122m from his golf club in Doral, Florida.
He also earned more than $30m each from golf clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Jupiter, Florida, and Turnberry, Scotland.
Trump also earned millions from other business ventures, according to the financial disclosure.
These included $4.7m in royalties from Trump-branded watches, along with Trump-branded Bibles, trainers, fragrances and guitars.
First Lady Melania Trump also listed her income from 2025 in the disclosure. She made $10.7m from a “license agreement” related to the documentary about her that was released last year.
Another $6m in income is listed for her from the sale of NFTs, which are digital images sold online.
The president listed millions of dollars, too, in settlements from various legal actions.
These included $16m from a lawsuit against ABC, $16m from CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive, $24.5m from Meta, $22m from YouTube and $8m from X.
But the White House has said most of that money went towards Trump’s future presidential library or a nonprofit dedicated to the upkeep of park sites in the Washington DC area.
According to a list of the world’s richest people compiled by Forbes magazine, Trump has an estimated fortune of $6bn – up from $2.3bn in 2024. Bloomberg’s Billionaire’s Index puts the president’s net worth at $7.6bn.
After his return to the White House, Trump adopted a friendly approach to the crypto industry, even as companies linked to his family issued digital tokens.
The Trump-appointed head of financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, is also seen as an ally of the crypto industry.
Since taking office in April 2025, Paul Atkins has shifted the agency away from the strict, regulation-by-enforcement approach of his predecessor.
Last July, the president signed the GENIUS Act into law, to make “make America the undisputed leader in digital assets”.
(BBC)
Guo Wengui, who was once believed to be one of China’s richest businessmen, has been sentenced to 30 years in jail in the US for running a billion dollar scam.
The former property tycoon fled China to the US in 2017, where he reinvented himself as a Communist Party critic and built a loyal online following.
But Guo was later convicted on charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering.
New York court judge Analisa Torres said Guo had “preyed on those seeking to bring democracy to China”, taking their money to fund his lavish lifestyle.
The BBC has contacted Guo’s representatives for comment.
Guo – who goes by several names, including Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok – was sentenced in a courtroom packed with his supporters.
US attorney Sean S Buckley told the BBC: “Rather than being satisfied with the many legitimate opportunities afforded to him, Guo exploited the trust that thousands had placed in him for his own greed.”
“Today’s sentence shows that fame and wealth do not place you above the law, and that fraudsters who victimise families to enrich themselves will be met with significant consequences,” Buckley said.
Before fleeing China, Guo built a fortune as a property developer and had good ties with the country’s government.
But he sought asylum in the US after being accused by top Chinese officials of corruption.
Guo became a critic of China’s Communist regime and cultivated a wide online following among the Chinese community in the US.
Prosecutors said Guo raised more than $1bn (£760m) from online followers, who joined him in investment and cryptocurrency schemes between 2018 and 2023.
The money he raised was used to fund Guo’s lavish lifestyle which included a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $1m Lamborghini and a $37m yacht, they said.
Guo denied the allegations, saying the funds were used for his political activism.
He had built ties with other China critics, including Steve Bannon, a former adviser to US President Donald Trump.
Bannon and Guo often appeared in online videos and, in 2020, launched a campaign called the New Federal State of China, with the goal of overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party.
Later that year, Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht in Connecticut. Bannon was charged in an unrelated case with fraud in an alleged scheme to defraud people who funded a not-for-profit company to build a US-Mexico border wall.
Bannon entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan court to a first degree scheme to defraud charge and received a sentence of conditional discharge for three years.
He also faced federal charges over the wall campaign after he was indicted by a federal grand jury, but the prosecution came to a halt after Trump pardoned him 8n the final hours of his first White House term.
(BBC)
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