In a move that Telegram described as unexpected, Vietnam has ordered the country’s telecom service providers to halt use of the messaging app Telegram because it doesn’t cooperate with the country’s telecommunication service providers’ efforts to stop alleged crimes committed by platform users.
According to a report published on the government’s news portal on Friday, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Ministry of Telecommunications sent letters to internet service providers warning of “signs of law violation” on Telegram.
According to the ministry, internet service providers “should implement measures and solutions to prevent Telegram’s activities in Vietnam.”
The providers were instructed to take action against Telegram and submit a report to the ministry by June 2 according to the letter from May 21.
The government claimed in a report on the app that almost 70% of Vietnam’s 9,600 channels contain “poisonous and bad information,” citing police. The government added that “reactionary activities” were being carried out by groups and associations on Telegram, which included tens of thousands of people.
The government also claimed that some organizations on Telegram had “terrorist” connections to their users, used the app to sell user data, and were involved in drug trafficking.
Vietnam’s hardline government typically appoints swiftly to remove dissent and arrest critics, particularly those who have media following them on social media and social media.
In what critics characterized as the most recent attack on freedom of expression in the communist-ruled nation, new regulations were implemented in Vietnam last year that required platforms like Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and provide data to authorities.
A representative of Telegram told the Reuters news agency in a statement that the Vietnamese government’s action surprised the business.
“We have received timely responses from Vietnam.” The Telegram representative stated that the request is being processed as of May 27 as of the response deadline.
The decision came after Telegram’s failure to disclose user data to the government as part of criminal investigations, according to a representative from Vietnam’s Science and Technology Ministry.
As of Friday, Vietnam’s Telegram service was still active.
At the beginning of 2025, there were 79.8 million Internet users in Vietnam, and 11.8 million Telegram users, according to the data extraction company SOAX.
With close to one billion users worldwide, Telegram has been involved in international disputes involving security and data breach issues.
After an incident at the main train station in Hamburg, which left at least 17 people injured, authorities in Germany have detained a woman.
In the city’s rush hour of Friday evening’s mass stabbing incident, at least four of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries, according to emergency services.
A 39-year-old German woman was detained by law enforcement at the scene, according to a police spokesperson in Hamburg.
In comments made by public broadcaster ARD, spokesman Florian Abbenseth said: “She allowed herself to be arrested without resistance.
According to Abbenseth, “We don’t know for a fact that the woman may have had a political motive.”
Instead, we have information that we want to look into to determine whether she might have had a psychological emergency.
According to Hamburg police, the suspect was allegedly acting alone in a post on X.
According to a spokesman for Hamburg’s fire department, four of the victims have life-threatening injuries, down from earlier.
According to a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, the suspect was believed to have turned “against passengers” at the station.
Following the knife attack on Friday evening, Hamburg’s central station and police [Daniel Bockwoldt/EPA]
Images of the scene showed people being loaded into waiting ambulances and people having access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police.
Deutsche Bahn, a railroad company, said it was “deeply shocked” by the attack, and that the station’s four platforms were closed while the investigation was ongoing. Following the attack, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the Hamburg mayor to express his shock.
A number of violent attacks that have elevated security to the top of the agenda have rocked Germany recently.
According to Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, witnesses reported a series of explosions and waves of Russian drones roost over the city, and at least eight people were hurt when Kyiv, the country’s capital, was attacked by both a combined drone and missile attack.
Following the dawn attack, anti-aircraft units were deployed throughout the Ukrainian capital. The capital’s military administration’s head of state, Timur Tkachenko, reported two fires in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi district. In four other districts, drone fragments also hit the ground.
According to authorities, Russian missile attacks on port infrastructure in Odesa, in southern Ukraine, resulted in at least two fatalities.
According to authorities, three people died in shelling incidents in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, which is at the heart of the conflict’s front line.
The Ukrainian military claimed to have struck a battery-making facility in the Lipetsk region of Russia, which it claimed provided Russian missile and bomb manufacturers. The batteries were also used in cruise missiles, Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and aerial bombs, according to the statement.
diplomacy and politics
Once the prisoner exchange, which is currently taking place, is finished, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stated that Moscow will be prepared to hand Ukraine a draft document outlining conditions for a long-term peace agreement.
Lavrov has cast doubts on the Vatican’s potential location for peace talks with Ukraine. After Trump suggested the Vatican as a location, Italy had stated that Pope Leo XIV was willing to host the peace talks. The pope and the US had expressed hope for the city-state to host the talks.
In accordance with discussions between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye last week, Russia and Ukraine have each released 390 war prisoners and have committed additional release plans in the upcoming days.
Putin has stated in televised remarks that Russia needs to strengthen its position on the world’s arms market by boosting its weapons exports.
In his first phone call with China’s leader since Merz took office this month, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to support Western efforts to end the conflict in the Ukraine.
Bangkok, Thailand – Local looters picked up the ruins of an ancient temple in northeast Thailand over the course of several years.
Possibly hundreds of centuries-old statues that were long buried beneath the soft, verdant grounds around the temple were stolen.
The Prakhon Chai hoard, which is collectively known as the Prakhon Chai hoard, is housed in museums and collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia, and is still in existence.
In a matter of weeks, though, the first of those statues will begin their journey home to Thailand.
The Asian Art Museum’s acquisitions committee recommended that four bronze statues from the hoard, which had been in the museum’s collection since the late 1960s, be released last year.
San Francisco city’s Asian Art Commission, which manages the museum, then approved the proposal on April 22, officially setting the pieces free.
They are scheduled to return to Thailand in about a month or two after being suspected of spiriting the statues out of the country six decades later by the late British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford.
“We are the righteous owners”, Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Office of National Museums at Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, told Al Jazeera.
Disapong, who also serves on Thailand’s Committee for the Repatriation of Stolen Artefacts, said, “It is something our ancestors… have made, and it should be displayed here to show the civilisation and the beliefs of the people.”
The imminent return of the statues is the latest victory in Thailand’s quest to reclaim its pilfered heritage.
Their return exemplifies the efforts of nations all over the world to retrieve items from their own stolen histories that are still in the exhibit cases and the vaults of some of the best museums in the West.
The Golden Boy statue on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art]Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]
From Thai temples to Athens’ Acropolis
Latchford, a high-profile Asian art dealer who came to settle in Bangkok and lived there until his death in 2020 at 88 years of age, is believed to have earned a fortune from auction houses, private collectors and museums around the world who acquired his smuggled ancient artefacts from Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia.
Nawapan Kriangsak, Latchford’s daughter, agreed in 2021 to give Cambodia access to her late father’s private collection, which included more than 100 artefacts, valued at more than $ 50 million.
Though never convicted during his lifetime, Latchford was charged with falsifying shipping records, wire fraud and a host of other crimes related to antiquities smuggling by a US federal grand jury in 2019.
Before the trial for the man’s death was possible, he passed away the following year.
In 2023 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return 16 pieces tied to Latchford’s smuggling network to Cambodia and Thailand.
In a statement released during a ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security’s New York field office, Ricky Patel makes remarks about the repatriation and return to Cambodia of 30 Cambodian antiquities that Douglas Latchford and the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, New York City, United States, in August 2022 [Andrew Kelly/Reuters].
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has also previously returned pieces to Thailand – two intricately carved stone lintels taken from a pair of temples dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries, in 2021.
Greece has had a good time with the British Museum in London, whereas Thailand and Cambodia have recently done fairly well in efforts to reclaim their looted heritage from US museum collections.
Perhaps no case of looted antiquities has grabbed more news headlines than that of the so-called “Elgin Marbles”.
The 2, 500-year-old friezes, also known as the Parthenon Marbles, were stolen from Athens’ famous Acropolis in the early 1800s by Lord Elgin’s agents, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at the time ruled Greece.
Elgin claimed he took the marbles with the permission of the Ottomans and then sold them in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they remain.
The non-governmental Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy claims that Greece has requested the return of the items since 1832 when it first declared its independence and that it first submitted an official request to the museum in 1983.
“Despite all these efforts, the British government has not deviated from its positions over the years, legally considering the Parthenon marbles to belong to Britain. According to the institute, they have even passed laws to stop the return of cultural objects.
A woman looks at the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of stone objects, inscriptions and sculptures, on show at the British Museum in London in 2014]File: Dylan Martinez/Reuters]
Colonialism is still pervasive and pervasive.
Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit campaigning against the illicit trade of ancient art and artefacts, said that “colonialism is still alive and well in parts of the art world”.
Some institutions make the mistaken assumption that they are better carers, owners, and custodians of these cultural objects, Davis said.
But Davis, who has worked on Cambodia’s repatriation claims with US museums, says the “custodians” defence has long been debunked.
Before there was a market demand for these antiquities, leading to their looting and trafficking, “these were cared for by [their] communities for centuries, in some cases for millennia,” she said. “We still see resistance today.
Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, has heard museums make all sorts of claims to defend retaining pieces that should be returned to their rightful homelands.
Some museums make excuses, including claims that they are unsure where the pieces came from, that disputed items were bought before domestic laws forbid their repatriation, or that the pieces’ ancestors deserve a wider audience than they would in their home country.
Still, none of those arguments should keep a stolen piece from coming home, Gordon said.
The artefact should be returned, he said, “if we believe the object is stolen and the country of origin wishes for it to come home.”
Old attitudes have started breaking down though, and more looted artefacts are starting to find their way back to their origins.
“I hope more museums follow the example of the Asian Art Museum, and there is definitely a growing trend toward doing the right thing in this area.” We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go”, Davis said.
Following its return from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last year [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera], The Kneeling Lady is now on display at the National Museum in Bangkok, Thailand.
Much of the progress, Davis believes, is down to growing media coverage of stolen antiquities and public awareness of the problem in the West, which has placed mounting pressure on museums to do the right thing.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a well-known US comedy show, gave the subject its own episode in 2022. As Oliver said, if you go to Greece and visit the Acropolis you might notice “some odd details”, such as sections missing from sculptures – which are now in Britain.
“Frankly out of ten, it’s in the British Museum,” Oliver quips. “Officially, if you’re ever looking for a missing artefact, it’s in there.”
Gordon also believes a generational shift in thinking is at play among those who once trafficked in the cultural heritage of other countries.
When their parents return the artefacts, he said, “for example, the children of many collectors do this once they are aware of the facts about how they were taken from the country of origin.”
Proof of the past
The San Francisco Museum’s four bronze statues date from the 7th and 9th centuries and are scheduled to arrive in Thailand soon.
Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong said that period places them squarely in the Dvaravati civilisation, which dominated northeast Thailand, before the height of the Khmer empire that would build the towering spires of Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia and come to conquer much of the surrounding region centuries later.
Bodhisattva, one of the slender, mottled Buddhas who follow Buddhists on the path to nirvana, are depicted in three of the slim, mottled figures, one of whom is nearly a metre tall (3. 2 feet). The other is the Buddha himself, who is draped in a wide, flowing robe.
Tanongsak, who brought the four pieces in the San Francisco collection to the attention of Thailand’s stolen artefacts repatriation committee in 2017, said they and the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when much of the region was still Hindu.
It means we don’t have any evidence of the Buddhist history of that time at all, he said, which is strange because there are no Prakhon Chai bronzes on display anywhere in Thailand, in the national museum, or any local museums, either.
Plai Bat II temple in Buriram province, Thailand, from where the Prakhon Chai hoard was looted in the 1960s, as seen in 2016]Courtesy of Tanongsak Hanwong]
The Fine Arts Department first inquired about the statues’ illegal provenance in a letter to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2019, but it only became clear that it would get them returned once the US Department of Homeland Security intervened on behalf of Thailand.
Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, said staff could find no evidence that the statues had been trafficked in their own records.
Once Homeland Security provided proof, with the assistance of Thai researchers, they were persuaded that they had been looted and smuggled out of Thailand and of Latchford’s involvement.
“Once that evidence was presented and they heard it, their feeling was the appropriate place for these would be back in Thailand”, Mintz said of the museum’s staff and acquisition committee.
“Clear the curtain,” you say?
The San Francisco Asian Art Museum went a step further when it finally resolved to return the four statues to Thailand.
Additionally, it placed a special exhibit around the pieces to highlight the specific queries raised by the incident regarding the theft of antiquities.
The exhibition – Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities – ran in San Francisco from November to March.
According to Mintz, “one of our goals was to try to show the museum’s visitors how significant it is to examine where works of art have been historically,”
“To pull back the curtain a bit, to say, these things do exist within American collections and now is the time to address challenges that emerge from past collecting practice”, he said.
According to Mintz, Homeland Security has requested that the Asian Art Museum investigate the likely origin of at least another ten pieces from Thailand.
Thai dancers perform during a ceremony to return two stolen hand-carved sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries to the Thai government in 2021, in Los Angeles, the US. The San Francisco Asian Art Museum [Ashley Landis/AP] had the items on display.
Tess Davis, of the Antiquities Coalition campaign group, said the exhibition was a very unusual, and welcome, move for a museum in the process of giving up looted artefacts.
Disapong and Tanongsak claim that the Asian Art Museum’s recognition of Thailand’s legitimate claim to the statues could also aid in the return of the remaining Prakhon Chai hoard, which includes 14 more well-known pieces from other US museums and at least a dozen scattered throughout Europe and Australia.
“It is indeed a good example, because once we can show the world that the Prakhon Chai bronzes were all exported from Thailand illegally, then probably, hopefully some other museums will see that all the Prakhon Chai bronzes they have must be returned to Thailand as well”, Tanongsak said.
Thailand is looking to repatriate a number of other artifacts from international collections besides the Prakhon Chai hoard, he said.
Davis said the repatriation of stolen antiquities is still being treated by too many with collections as an obstacle when it should be seen, as the Asian Art Museum has, as an opportunity.
Davis remarked, “It’s a chance to educate the public.”
Donald Trump, president of the United States, has praised Nippon Steel’s $ 14 billion bid for US Steel, claiming that their “planned partnership” would help the US economy and create jobs.
After Trump’s comments, US Steel’s shares rose 21 percent on Friday as investors assumed Nippon Steel’s planned takeover, which was the final significant hurdle in the deal, had been approved.
Trump stated in a post on Truth Social on Friday that “this will be a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel, which will create at least 70, 000 jobs and add $14 billion dollars to the US economy.”
Nippon Steel announced this week that it would invest up to $ 4 billion in a new steel mill if the merger was approved.
Trump stated that he would hold a rally at US Steel in Pittsburgh on Friday of the following day that the majority of that investment would take place over the course of 14 months.
Nippon Steel praised Trump’s choice to approve the “partnership.” The White House did not respond to inquiries about the announcement right away.
US Steel’s share price soared after hours to $ 54, which is close to Nippon Steel’s $55-per-share offer price, which was made in the late 2023 period. Investors are confident that terms will be similar to those entered into in 2023 despite the release of no information. Investors informed them that US Steel will cease trading on the stock and eventually receive a cash payout.
Politically contentious
After it morphed into the political arena due to concerns that foreign ownership would lead to job losses in Pennsylvania, where US Steel is headquartered, the deal has been one of the most anticipated on Wall Street. It was taken into account in the election of Trump from the previous year.
More than 11, 000 Pennsylvania jobs will be protected and at least 14, 000 more will be created, according to Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, who also referred to the agreement as a “partnership.”
Surprisingly quickly, the final components of the deal came together. This week, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), which reviews deals for national security risks, made a statement to the White House, Reuters reported, transferring Trump’s final decision to the CFIUS.
Former President Joe Biden blocked the deal in January on national security grounds following an earlier CFIUS-led review.
The businesses filed a lawsuit, alleging that the review process was unfair. That view was rejected by the Biden White House.
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Biden claimed that he had won support from the United Steelworkers Union when he was attempting to reclaim his position. The review was defended by the Biden administration as crucial to safeguarding supply chains, infrastructure, and security.
Trump also expressed his initial opposition to the agreement, arguing that US businesses must be operated and owned by US citizens.
Even with Trump’s pledge of $ 14 billion in investment, the United Steelworkers were against the deal as recently as Thursday.
After waiting for a resolution for more than a year, the news brings relief to investors, including well-known hedge funds. One recent investor said, “We understood Donald Trump’s psyche and we used it to our advantage here,” and that “there were huge high-fives all around today.”
Trump appears to have gained popularity as a result of the increase in the pledge for new investments, according to investors.
A top figure in Venezuela’s opposition has been arrested on charges of “terrorism” before parliamentary elections scheduled for the weekend.
On Friday, a social media account for Juan Pablo Guanipa, a close associate of Maria Corina Machado, considered the leader of the opposition coalition, announced he had been detained. State television also carried images of his arrest, as he was escorted away by armed guards.
In a prewritten message online, Guanipa denounced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for human rights abuses, including stifling political dissent and false imprisonment.
“Brothers and sisters, if you are reading this, it is because I have been kidnapped by the forces of Nicolas Maduro’s regime,” Guanipa wrote.
“For months, I, like many Venezuelans, have been in hiding for my safety. Unfortunately, my time in hiding has come to an end. As of today, I am part of the list of Venezuelans kidnapped by the dictatorship.”
Since Venezuela held a hotly contested presidential election in July 2024, Guanipa, along with several other opposition figures, has been in hiding, for fear of being arrested.
That presidential election culminated in a disputed outcome and widespread protests. On the night of the vote, Venezuela’s election authorities declared Maduro the winner, awarding him a third successive six-year term, but it failed to publish the polling tallies to substantiate that result.
Meanwhile, the opposition coalition published tallies from voting stations that it said proved its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, had prevailed in a landslide. International watchdogs also criticised the election for its lack of transparency.
Maduro’s government responded to the election-related protests with a police crackdown that led to nearly 2,000 arrests and 25 people killed. It also issued arrest warrants against opposition leaders, accusing them of charges ranging from conspiracy to falsifying records.
Maduro has long accused political dissidents of conspiring with foreign forces to topple his government.
Venezuelan state television shows Juan Pablo Guanipa’s detention on May 23 [Venezuelan government TV/Reuters handout]
Gonzalez himself was among those for whom a warrant was signed. He fled to exile in Spain. Others have gone into hiding, avoiding the public eye. Until recently, a group of five opposition members had sought shelter in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas, until they were reportedly smuggled out of the country earlier this month.
Opposition members and their supporters have dismissed the charges against them as spurious and further evidence of the Maduro government’s repressive tactics.
“This is pure and simple STATE TERRORISM,” Machado, the opposition leader, wrote on social media in the wake of Guanipa’s arrest.
Machado and others have said that Guanipa was one of several people arrested in the lead-up to this weekend’s regional elections, which will see members of the National Assembly and state-level positions on the ballot.
Several prominent members of the opposition have pledged to boycott the vote, arguing it is a means for Maduro to consolidate power.
“Just hours before a farcical election with no guarantees of any kind, the regime has reactivated an operation of political repression,” Gonzalez wrote on social media, in reaction to the recent spate of arrests.
He argued that the detention of Guanipa and others was a means of ensuring “nothing will go off script” during Sunday’s vote.
“They harass political, social, and community leaders. They persecute those who influence public opinion. They intend to shut down all alternative information spaces and ensure a narrative monopoly,” Gonzalez wrote.
![The Kneeling Lady on display at the National Museum Bangkok, Thailand, following its return last year from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art [Zsombor Peter/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Knee-Lady-1747982733.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
![Plai Bat 2 temple in Buriram province, Thailand, from where the Prakhon Chai hoard was looted in the 1960s, as seen in 2016 [Courtesy of Tanongsak Hanwong]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Temple-2-1747983054.jpg?w=696&ssl=1)
