Shwe Kokko, the city born of online scams in Myanmar

Today's news: Ishiba at the White House to relaunch the Japan-US alliance in the Pacific; Materials to start clearing rubble are still not getting into Gaza; The Indian Central Bank cut interest rates for the first time since 2020; Russia wants to lower the age for being indicted for drug dealing to 14.

MYANMAR

Eight years ago there was practically nothing: just trees and a few roughly constructed concrete buildings. Today,’ the BBC reports, ’in this corner of Karen State on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, a city with large buildings has sprung up like a mirage. Its name is Shwe Kokko and it is accused of being built on scams, home to a lucrative but deadly nexus of fraud, money laundering and human trafficking.

JAPAN-UNITED STATES

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has landed for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, expected this afternoon. He will be the second head of government after Israel's Netanyahu to meet Trump at the White House since the inauguration. At the summit, Ishiba aims to revive the Japan-US alliance in the Indo-Pacific region and emphasise the contribution of Japanese companies to the US economy in order to avoid the imposition of tariffs on imports from Japan.

GAZA-ISRAEL

Despite the devastation, none of the families in Gaza express a desire to leave. On the contrary, they are determined to rebuild. But their main obstacle is the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of heavy machinery needed to remove rubble and essential building materials. This is recounted in a series of testimonies collected from the Strip by the UAE online newspaper The National.

INDIA

India's central bank cut interest rates for the first time since May 2020, amid concerns about slowing economic growth that seem to be outweighing inflation risks and the weakening rupee. The benchmark rate was lowered by 25 basis points to 6.25 %, the first change since February 2023, when it was raised to 6.50 %.

SOUTH KOREA

In South Korea, the government and the People Power Party agreed to take tougher measures to prevent bullying in the workplace, following the death of a freelance meteorologist, who died last year after complaining in vain about harassment by her colleagues.

RUSSIA

The Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Aleksandr Bastrykin, has proposed lowering the age to apply for the charge of drug dealing crime, from 16 to 14, as drug traffickers are increasingly shamelessly using teenagers, certain of their impunity, whereas now at that age they can only be punished for theft.

KAZAKHSTAN

The Central Asia website, on the basis of the last census in recent days, has highlighted the statistics of the various ethnic groups in Kazakhstan. Of the 20.286 million inhabitants, 71% are ethnic Kazakhs (14.2 million), then almost 3 million Russians (15%), 660 thousand Uzbeks (3.3%). 375 thousand Ukrainians (1.88%) and just over 300 thousand Uyghurs (1.51%), plus minorities of Germans, Poles, Tatars, Azerbaijanis, Koreans, Turks and Dungans, another Chinese-speaking Muslim group.

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