Category World News

As Myanmar’s military rulers prepare for the elections in November, 8, 665 people are being held on charges of opposing army rule, according to state media.

The election results on Thursday, which human rights organizations have criticized as a sham process, allowing prisoners to cast ballots in upcoming polls.

In a 2021 coup that sparked a civil war, Myanmar’s military seized power and threw up elections, which were praised as a return to normalcy for the Southeast Asian nation.

3, 085 people who were found guilty of making comments that “could cause fear or spread fake news” are eligible for reduced sentences under the order.

Additional 5, 580 people who are still at large have also been charged.

When the releases would take place, and how many of those who were covered were political prisoners were it not immediately known.

The measures were outlined in a statement from a spokesman for the Myanmar military government, Zaw Min Tun, who spoke on Wednesday before the amnesty was officially announced.

The Associated Press news agency received a message from a Yangon Insein Prison official on Thursday, but he did not specify the names or phone numbers of the prisoners who would be freed.

Releases took several days in some earlier amnesties.

Numerous people gathered on Thursday morning to welcome friends and family members who were being freed under an amnesty outside Insein Prison, which has for decades been the main detention facility for political prisoners.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 80, who has been essentially imprisoned since the military’s military’s seized control in February 2021, was not immediately known for his inclusion in the prisoner release. She is currently serving a sentence of 27 years.

Due to the lack of free media and the arrest of the majority of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party leaders, critics claim that the election will be neither free nor fair.

The director of Burma Campaign UK, Mark Farmaner, wrote on X: “It’s wonderful news for the prisoners.”

However, he added that Burmese military are using political prisoners “as expected” to try to create a false narrative of reform before the elections, “for public relations purposes.”

The country’s internet regulator has announced that Australian internet users are prohibited from accessing a number of websites that used artificial intelligence to produce child sex exploitation material.

ESafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant announced on Thursday that the three “nudify” sites withdrew from Australia following an official warning.

According to Grant’s office, the websites had been featured in prominent cases of AI-generated child sex abuse imagery involving Australian school students and had been receiving about 100, 000 visits a month from Australians.

According to Grant, “nudify” services, which use artificial intelligence to create images of real people to appear naked, have had a “devastating” impact in Australian schools.

We took enforcement action in September because this provider failed to implement safeguards to stop children from being exposed to child sexual exploitation material, and they even used marketing features like “any girl,” with options for “schoolgirl” image generation and features like “sex mode,” Grand said in a statement.

The development comes after Grant’s office issued a formal warning to the British-based company that runs the sites in September and threatened civil penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33.22 million) if it didn’t implement measures to stop image-based abuse.

According to Grant, Hugging Face, a hosting service for AI models, has taken additional steps to comply with Australian law, including changing its terms of service to mandate account holders take steps to reduce the risks of platform misuse.

Australia has been at the forefront of international efforts to stop under-16s from using social media and stop them from downloading deep-fake apps.

With the rapid expansion of platforms that can produce photo-realistic material with the click of a mouse, AI has become increasingly popular for creating non-consensual sexually explicit images.

Just days after the most recent pageant, legal drama has taken the place of the Miss Universe competition, whose owners are facing fraud charges in Thailand and a Mexican drug and weapons trafficking investigation.

Since 2022, Thai mogul Anne Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip and her business, JKN Global, have owned the Miss Universe Pageant, which was once owned by US President Donald Trump.

After avoiding a court hearing in Bangkok this week over a $ 30 million legal dispute with a JKN Global investor, Jakrajutatip is wanted there. According to Thai media, the Bangkok South District Court announced on Wednesday that it had issued an arrest warrant for Jakrajutatip, whose whereabouts are still unknown.

According to the Associated Press news agency, Jakrajutatip and JKN Global have been dealing with significant balance sheets since 2023 when the business began to make payments to investors in vain. The business reportedly owes about 3 billion baht ($92.63 million) in Thailand as a result of its bankruptcy court filing in 2024, according to the Associated Press.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand earlier this year fined Jakrajutatip and JKN Global for publishing “false or misleading information” in the business’s financial statement.

According to the SEC statement, JKN Global did not fully disclose to investors that it had agreed to sell 50% of its stakes in the Miss Universe Pageant to Mexican businessman Raul Rocha Cantu and his business Legacy Holding Group USA Inc. in October 2023.

Despite the sanction, Jakrajutatip is still a shareholder despite having left all of her positions with the company, according to AP. Additionally, she skipped earlier this month’s most recent Miss Universe contest in Bangkok.

According to the AFP news agency, Cantu is facing other legal issues in Mexico, where prosecutors announced on Wednesday that he was being looked into for alleged arms, drug, and fuel trafficking between Mexico and Guatemala.

Cantu has not yet been formally named, according to the AFP, but the prosecution has charged 13 people in connection with the case.