Foreign News
Kate, Princess of Wales: I am having cancer treatment
The Princess of Wales says she is in the early stages of treatment after a cancer diagnosis.
In a video statement, Catherine says it was a “huge shock” after an “incredibly tough couple of months”. But she sent a positive message, saying: “I am well and getting stronger every day.”
Details of the cancer have not been disclosed, but Kensington Palace says it is confident the princess will make a full recovery.
The video statement from Catherine explains that when she had abdominal surgery in January, it was not known that there was any cancer.
“However tests after the operation found cancer had been present. My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I am now in the early stages of that treatment,” said the princess.
The chemotherapy treatment began in late February. The palace says it will not be sharing any further private medical information, including the type of cancer.
The princess, 42, said she was thinking of all those who have been affected by cancer, adding: “For everyone facing this disease, in whatever form, please do not lose faith or hope. You are not alone.”
Catherine said recovery from her surgery in January, for a condition which has not been revealed, had taken time and the priority was now reassuring her family. “William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.” The princess added: “It has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be ok.”
She said the family now needs “some time, space and privacy”.
The King and Queen had been informed of the news about the princess’s health prior to Friday’s announcement – and King Charles himself has also been undergoing treatment for cancer.
King Charles and Catherine were briefly treated at the London Clinic private hospital at the same time – Catherine had her abdominal surgery there and the King was admitted for a “corrective procedure” for an enlarged prostate.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said the King was “so proud of Catherine for her courage in speaking as she did”.
After their time in hospital together, he has “remained in the closest contact with his beloved daughter-in-law throughout the past weeks”.
Prince Harry and Meghan sent a message saying: “We wish health and healing for Kate and the family, and hope they are able to do so privately and in peace.”
Catherine and Prince William are now not expected to appear with the Royal Family on Easter Sunday, and there won’t be any early return to official duties for the princess.
Kensington Palace also said Prince William’s sudden absence from a memorial service on 27 February was because of the discovery of Catherine’s cancer diagnosis.
The couple have faced intense public speculation and a social media frenzy about her health, since her operation in January. She has not attended any official events since Christmas.
In her video statement, she spoke about the support from her family: “Having William by my side is a great source of comfort and reassurance too. “As is the love, support and kindness that has been shown by so many of you. It means so much to us both.”
Kensington Palace said the video of the princess was filmed on Wednesday by BBC Studios, the production arm of the BBC.
In a statement, BBC News said: “Along with other media, BBC News was briefed by Kensington Palace on the announcement this afternoon.”
There have been calls for privacy from the palace after weeks of speculation and conspiracy theories about the royal couple. This had intensified after the withdrawal by photo agencies of a photograph of the princess for Mother’s Day, on 10 March, because of concerns over digital alterations, for which the princess subsequently apologised.
There were also social media theories over video footage showing Prince William and Catherine shopping in Windsor earlier this week.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday Catherine had shown “tremendous bravery” with her statement, wishing her a “speedy recovery”. He said: “In recent weeks she has been subjected to intense scrutiny and has been unfairly treated by certain sections of the media around the world and on social media. “When it comes to matters of health, like everyone else, she must be afforded the privacy to focus on her treatment and be with her loving family.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his thoughts were with the Royal Family, adding he was “heartened” by Catherine’s “optimistic tone and her message of faith and hope”. He said: “Any cancer diagnosis is shocking. But I can only imagine the added stress of receiving that news amid the lurid speculation we’ve seen in recent weeks.” William and Catherine are “entitled to privacy and, like any parents, will have waited to choose the right moment to tell their children”.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said on X, formerly Twitter, that he was joining “millions around the world in praying” for Catherine’s “full recovery”.
Professor Pat Price, an oncologist and founder of the Catch Up With Cancer campaign, praised the princess for speaking out “so openly and frankly”. “As was the case with the King’s diagnosis, her doing so will no doubt give many more people that vital prompt to get themselves checked and give others affected by cancer more confidence to speak about their own experience.
“This announcement is a stark and shocking reminder that cancer is no respecter of age or social status.
(BBC)
Foreign News
Thousands of Chinese lured abroad and forced to be scammers – now Beijing is cracking down
“Should I feel anything?” asks the beady-eyed man, sitting in a padded cell with handcuffs around his wrists.
He’s being grilled by Chinese investigators about the time he allegedly ordered a stranger to be killed – a human offering to celebrate his sworn brotherhood with a business partner.
“Wasn’t he a living, breathing person?” an investigator asks.
“I didn’t feel much,” the man maintains.
The scene may sound like it came straight out of a crime drama. In fact, it is part of a documentary on Chinese state media – a look inside the workings of the justice system almost unheard of in a country where court proceedings are largely kept out the public eye.
The handcuffed man answering questions is Chen Dawei, a member of the infamous Wei family, one of several powerful mafia groups that for years operated with impunity in Myanmar’s border town of Laukkaing.
His confession forms just one part of a months-long propaganda push by Chinese officials. It both warns Chinese people of South East Asia’s billion-dollar scam industry, and highlights the Chinese government’s crackdown on the men behind an industry which has trapped thousands, and stolen billions.
The message China wants to send, as one investigator puts it, is clear: “It’s to warn other people, no matter who you are, where you are, as long as you commit such heinous crimes against Chinese people, you will pay the price.”
Or, to use a Chinese idiom: kill the chicken to scare the monkey.
There are few chickens bigger than the Weis, Lius, Mings and Bais – Godfather-esque families who rose to power in Laukkaing in the early 2000s.
Under their rule, the impoverished backwater was transformed into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts.
More recent are the scam farms – which hold people against their will, forcing them to defraud strangers online, or face brutal punishment or even death. Many of those trapped were Chinese and targeted people in China.
But the families’ empires came crashing down in 2023, when Myanmar authorities arrested them and handed them to China. Since then, Chinese courts have tried them for crimes ranging from fraud to human trafficking to homicide.
Examples are now being made out of the families: 11 members of the Ming clan and five of the Bais have been sentenced to death, while dozens have been given lengthy jail terms. Prosecution is under way for the Lius and the Weis.
Their ignominious falls from grace are clear in the documentaries they feature in, from the glint of their handcuffs to the colour of their prison uniforms.
It is a far cry from the lives they were living just two years ago.
The rise of Myanmar’s scam clans
The godfathers of Laukkaing rose to power after Min Aung Hlaing, who now heads Myanmar’s military government, led an operation to oust the town’s then-dominant warlord.
The military leader had been looking for co-operative allies, and Bai Suocheng – then a deputy of the warlord – fitted the bill.
Bai was appointed the chairman of Laukkaing district and his family came to command a 2,000-strong militia, Chinese media reported.
In the power vacuum left by these changes, a handful of families swooped in, securing military and political power.
According to Chinese investigators, the Wei family had one member of parliament and another military camp commander. Meanwhile, the Lius controlled key infrastructure like water and electricity and exerted strong influence over local security forces.
For years they made their money through gambling and prostitution.
But more recently they expanded to cyberscam operations, with each family controlling dozens of scam compounds and casinos that raked in billions of dollars.
While the families lived large with grand banquets and luxury cars, a culture of abominable violence thrived behind the walls of their scam compounds, Chinese authorities said.
Testimonies collected from freed workers point to a common pattern of abuse: fingers chopped off with knives, zaps of electric batons and regular beatings. Unco-operative workers were locked in small dark rooms and starved or beaten until they gave in.
China’s war on the ‘scamdemic’
Many of the Chinese workers had been lured there with lucrative job offers – no doubt tempting amid China’s economic slowdown and high youth unemployment.
Horror stories of such scam centres have seeped into daily chatter in China, from taxi rides to social media and pop culture.
No More Bets, a 2023 blockbuster about Chinese people trafficked to a foreign scam farm, kept millions of Chinese tourists away from Thailand – which has gained a reputation for being a transit hub to scam centres in Myanmar and Cambodia.
In January this year, the national spotlight was on Wang Xing, a small-time Chinese actor who had flown to Thailand for an acting gig, only to be taken to a scam centre across the border in Myanmar.
His family’s search for him went viral and he was ultimately rescued.
But Wang is in the lucky minority. Many Chinese people are still looking for their loved ones who have disappeared into South East Asia’s scam centres.
“My cousin was lured there four or five years ago. We haven’t heard from him at all. My aunt is in tears every day, it’s hard to describe her current condition,” a Weibo user wrote last month.
Selina Ho, associate professor specialising in Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore, tells the BBC that “by publicising the most recent crackdown, Chinese authorities are aiming to calm domestic sentiments and reassure the families of victims”.
The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in scam centres worldwide.
Much to Beijing’s chagrin, those running many such scam centres are often Chinese themselves.
This is common knowledge among Chinese citizens. “Once you’re abroad, the people you should least trust are your own countrymen,” reads a comment on Weibo.
“The fact that Chinese nationals are the masterminds behind many of these operations has been deeply damaging to China’s image on the international stage,” Ivan Franceschini, co-author of Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, tells the BBC.
As anxieties rise at home, Chinese authorities are eager to show their resolve in eradicating these massive scam networks.
Since 2023, Chinese and Myanmar authorities have arrested more than 57,000 Chinese nationals for their role in cyberscams, state media reported.
And they’ve made it clear that it’s not just the Godfathers they’re after. In October, China announced the prosecution of another syndicate which they described as a “new generation of power” in Laukkaing that’s “no less violent” than the infamous families.
In – yet another – state media documentary, a Chinese official investigating this syndicate recalled what his team leader had told him: “If this case can’t be solved, there will be a permanent stain on your career.”
For all the effort that China is putting into its crackdown and the ensuing publicity, the numbers offer some optimism: cyberscams reported in China have declined steadily over the past year, and authorities say such crimes have been “effectively curbed”.
As one official told documentary viewers, investigating scam gangs in Myanmar has made him realise “how happy we are in China, and how important a sense of security is to Chinese people”.
[BBC]
A new chapter in South Africa’s long-running Zuma saga is set to begin with the 43-year-old daughter of the former president due to go on trial this week on terrorism-related charges.
In what is believed to be a first for the country, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla is being prosecuted over what she wrote on social media four years ago during deadly protests.
Jacob Zuma’s nine-year presidency, littered with controversies, came to a halt in 2018 amid extensive graft allegations – all denied.
Then in 2021 he was jailed for failing to show up at a corruption inquiry, triggering protests and the worst scenes of violence since before the start of the democratic era in 1994.
A week of anarchy in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, including looting and arson, left at least 300 people dead and caused an estimated $2.8bn (£2.2bn) damage.
Prosecutors allege Zuma-Sambudla played a central role in stoking this.
This unique trial will be a chance for the state’s legal team to prove its mettle in successfully prosecuting cases relating to the 2021 unrest, but the accused sees it as an attempt to settle political scores with her father.
He is now an opposition leader after leaving the African National Congress (ANC) and joining a rival party, Mkhonto weSizwe (MK).
In recent years Zuma-Sambudla has emerged as the former president’s most stalwart supporter regularly seen by his side. She has also become an MK member of parliament.
In 2021, she was outraged by his incarceration and posted images from the looting. The allegation is that these praised what was happening and incited her legion of social media followers, some 100,000 at the time, to press on with the mayhem.
Zuma-Sambudla is accused of the incitement to commit terrorism under the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act. She is also accused of the incitement to commit public violence.
She has denied the charges, with her lawyer describing the state’s case as “weak”. She used a procedural hearing ahead of the trial to take shots at the prosecution, wearing a shirt ironically branded with the words “Modern Day Terrorist”.
Several dozen posts from July 2021 on what was then known as Twitter are at the heart of the state’s case against her.
In one tweet, she shared a film of a vehicle transporter ablaze and stacked with cars shot at Mooi Plaza, a tollgate near one of the towns in KwaZulu-Natal hardest hit by the violence. Along with the hashtag #FreeJacobZuma she wrote: “Mooi Plaza…We See You!!! Amandla”, along with three fist emojis.
“Amandla” means power in the Zulu language and was a well-known slogan in the resistance movement against white-minority apartheid rule.
In another tweet she shared a poster calling for the “shut down” of KwaZulu-Natal including “roads, factories, shops [and] government” until the former president was released.
She also included the Zulu word “azishe” which literally means “let it burn” but in slang can mean “let it start” or “let it proceed”.
The MP was born and raised in Mozambique, where her father was living in exile after spending a decade as a political prisoner in South Africa. She grew up with her twin brother Duduzane and was one of Zuma’s five children with his third wife Kate Mantsho – who took her own life in 2000.
Duduzile and Duduzane are arguably the most well-known of Zuma’s rumoured 20 children with several wives and former partners.
For several years, it was Duduzane who dominated headlines after his association with the controversial Gupta family came to light in the early 2010s.
That family was at the centre of the corruption allegations that plagued the Zuma presidency. The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing.
Apart from her lavish wedding to businessman Lonwabo Sambudla in 2011, dubbed the wedding of the year at the time, Zuma-Sambudla kept out of the spotlight. She mostly focused on raising her two daughters and being a housewife, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news site.
She separated from her husband in 2017.
It was around that time that she was seen increasingly at her father’s side whenever he appeared in public, either in court or at political events – as a result the spotlight turned towards her.
Zuma-Sambudla backed her father when he joined the MK party. Despite being a political novice, she now has a seat in parliament, after last year’s general election, and is an influential figure in the party despite holding no official position.
She was also appointed to the African Union’s Pan-African Parliament.
Aside from her controversial 2021 tweets, Zuma-Sambudla has become adept at using her social media accounts to show off her regimented fitness routine, provide glimpses into her private life and throw the occasional barb at her political opponents.
Her higher public profile now makes the case against her “very highly politicised with a strong public interest”, Willem Els, from think-tank the Institute for Security Studies, told the BBC.
Political science academic Prof Bheki Mngomezulu believes the case is politically motivated and a “way of fighting her father”.
“If she wasn’t the daughter of the former president, chances are these charges would have been dropped a long time ago,” he argued.
Both experts also questioned the delay in charging her.
The police’s elite corruption-busting agency, the Hawks, confirmed her arrest in January this year – nearly four years after the deadly protests.
“The fact that so few unrest-related cases have reached conviction also raises eyebrows around whether the prosecution is selective,” Mr Els said.
There have only been a handful of other cases relating to the violence in 2021 that have reached court.
The South African Human Rights Commission, in a statement released earlier this year, indicated that 66 possible cases were currently with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) but it faced challenges due to a “general lack of evidence… and hesitations by witnesses to co-operate or testify due to fears of reprisal and victimisation”.
In the Zuma-Sambudla case, the “high evidentiary bar” will be a big challenge for the prosecutors to show that it was not “just commentary or protest”.
“Prosecutors need to prove intent and causation that a post directly incited terrorism.”
He added that there were “few successful prosecutions” under the relevant legislation and that it was the first time in South Africa’s “legal history that someone has been charged specifically with incitement of terrorism via social media”.
NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga acknowledged in January that the case was “complex in nature” and prosecutors had to bring in external “experts on social media because [the police don’t] have an expert on social media”.
The NPA, however, would not have taken it this far if it was not confident with the case it had built, Mr Els added.
The MK has slammed the case against Zuma-Sambudla as a “social injustice”, while spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlela dismissed the “trumped up charges” as a “political ploy” and persecution.
Regardless of whether the prosecution is successful or not the party could make hay from the case and present her as a martyr.
Meanwhile, it is likely to generate massive interest from the public and become part of the country’s continuing Zuma drama.
[BBC]
President Donald Trump has said no United States officials will attend this year’s Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Africa, citing the country’s treatment of white farmers.
Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump said it was a “total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa”.
“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote, reiterating claims that have been rejected by authorities in South Africa.
“No US Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue. I look forward to hosting the 2026 G20 in Miami, Florida!” he added.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly claimed that white South Africans are being persecuted in the Black-majority country, a claim rejected by South Africa’s government and top Afrikaner officials.
Trump had already said on Wednesday that he would not attend the summit – which will see the heads of states from the world’s leading and emerging economies gather in Johannesburg on November 22 and 23 – as he also called for South Africa to be thrown out of the G20.
US Vice President JD Vance had been expected to attend the meeting in place of the president. But a person familiar with Vance’s plans told The Associated Press news agency that he will no longer travel to South Africa.
Tensions first arose between the US and South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law in January seeking to address land ownership disparities, which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in the hands of the white minority more than three decades after the end of apartheid.
[Aljazeera]
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