Singapore police have seized about S$1bn ($735m; £578m) - including luxury homes, cars and watches - in one of its biggest anti-money laundering probes.
Gold bars, designer handbags, wine and S$23m in cash were among the items seized in the raids.
It added that 94 properties, including houses in some of the country’s most sought after areas, were seized, along with 50 vehicles.
Ten people, aged between 31 and 44, were arrested for alleged money laundering and forgery offences.
“We have zero tolerance for the use of Singapore as a safe haven for criminals,” said David Chew, director of the police’s Commercial Affairs Department, which investigates white-collar crime.
It added that it would take “firm action” against institutions which did not meet official anti-money laundering requirements.
Thousands of Muslims in a city in Pakistan have set fire to at least four churches and vandalised the homes of Christians over claims that two men desecrated the Quran, police say.
“The Pakistani society has experienced increased fragmentation, driven by widening economic disparities, leading to an upsurge in violence directed towards minority religious groups,” Mr Bashar said.
A local official told BBC Urdu that authorities received calls about protests and fires early Wednesday morning after reports of the two men allegedly desecrating the Quran, the holy book of Islam, circulated on social media.
Authorities said torn pages of the the sacred text with blasphemous content allegedly scribbled on them in red marker ink, were found near a Christian community.
“They broke the windows, doors and took out fridges, sofas, chairs and other household items to pile them up in front of the Church to be burnt,” he told AFP news agency.
Amir Mir, the information minister for Punjab province, condemned the alleged blasphemy and said in a statement that thousands of police had been sent to the area, with dozens of people detained.
Shane Thompson, the region’s environment minister, told a press conference on Wednesday that the fires had “taken another turn for the worse” and now represented a “real threat” to Yellowknife.
“Watching the flights sell out and the prices go up I just kind of got to a point where we should leave,” Ashley Maclellan, who fled with her baby to nearby Edmonton, told the CBC.
Resident Lisa Mundy described how her bumper had begun to melt, her windscreen had cracked and her car had filled with smoke as she and her husband left the town with their two children on Sunday.
Canada’s military has been co-ordinating airlift operations out of several communities in Northwest Territories’ South Slave Region that have been threatened by wildfires in recent days.
Airlift operations out of Yellowknife are set to begin on Thursday afternoon, the territory’s government said, with five flights scheduled to Calgary.
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Syria’s government has doubled public sector pay while at the same time cut fuel subsidies, as it tries to boost the war-torn country’s economy.
Syria has been devastated and more than half a million people have been killed by the civil war that erupted after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down violently on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011.
Presidential decrees issued early on Wednesday ordered a 100% increase in the salaries and pensions of civil servants, military personnel and government contractors - the first such rise since December 2021.
Prime Minister Hussein Arnous said last year that cutting fuel subsidies would ensure the poorest families benefited, reduce the budget deficit and help stabilise the Syrian pound.
They have also warned that the public sector pay rise is likely to further increase inflation and the Syrian pound’s depreciation, meaning that the economic benefit could be all but wiped out within months.
Officials have blamed the economic crisis and the hardship among its ordinary Syrians on strict US sanctions imposed in 2019, which targeted any foreign person or entity knowingly providing support to Mr Assad’s government.
Its members were allowed to move to Belarus as part of a deal to end a mutiny in Russia in June, in which its forces sought to march on Moscow.
According to the Single State Registry of Companies and Individual Entrepreneurs of Belarus, Wagner registered for “educational activities” at the village of Tsel in Osipovichi district, the same location as their new base.
Media reports say a real estate company, Concord Management and Consulting, was registered at the same address last month.
Concord is said to be 100% owned by a Russian company of the same name, whose director general is Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Last month the BBC verified the location of the camp at Tsel and the arrival of Wagner troops there, who were welcomed by Prigozhin.
The mutiny in June saw Wagner mercenaries seize military facilities in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don following tensions between its leadership and the Russian general staff over the conduct of the war in Ukraine.
That's something I don't understand, really. Nobody here is denying what U.S. did in the past, and pointing out Russian war crimes doesn't deny U.S. war crimes either. But if they're happy with their whataboutism, then...
Which is the issue with Liberals really, you come around to willing to condem what the U.S. does after it’s decades in the past and there’s no possible way to revert any of the damage, while it’s contemporary you’ll justify everything in the name of spreading/protecting democracy, fighting terrorism, standing up to autocrats, etc.
Some people still justify bombing Yugoslavia and invading Iraq to this day too so i don’t even know if that first part is really true.
you come around to willing to condem what the U.S. does after it’s decades in the past and there’s no possible way to revert any of the damage
Well, then sorry for not having Internet back then and being underage to understand geopolitical issues. Please, condemn me to life sentence so my future children can be as mature as you when they'll be 5.
Sorry for being more worried about passing my maths, Spanish language and biology exams than being worried about an invasion.
Oh, and sorry for not being diagnosed with ADHD back in the day, so I could be more aware about my surroundings instead of being trapped inside my own racing thoughts.
The point of that comment is that Liberals support whatever war the U.S. currently wages while at the same time pretending to be anti-war by condemning the “past wars” (the US still occupies a lot of the places they went to war with) because this time it’ll be different!
I fail to see how arming neo-Nazis and putting in Ukraine will play out any differently than arming religious fundamentalists did in the Middle East, every time I ask this I either get called a Russian troll or genocide apologist.
Don’t get me wrong, of course it’s important that items are kept safely and nobody gets to walk off with shiny things. But it’s a bit hypocritical, because the British Museum is full of things stolen from all over the world, they even have a page about it.
The mokomokai are from the 19th century and were most likely created to meet demand from Europeans. It really annoys me that they refuse our national museum’s request to repatriate them.
I don’t think the British would like it if we had some of their great great grandfathers’ heads.
Under no circumstances would I assume that money I receive from an ATM is not linked to my accounts. I would also assume that the bank is gonna get theirs because generally speaking, they do.
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