But it is not a joyous homecoming for the truckloads of men and women, who fled Thailand in fear of a new law that hardens penalties on the millions of undocumented migrant workers underpinning its economy.

Thailand’s sudden rollout of the labour decree, which hikes up fines on unregistered workers and their employers, sent a lightning bolt of panic through migrant communities.

“If we were arrested, we would have to pay money to police. If this happened, all of our money would disappear,” Thu Ya, who worked in a Thai plastics factory, told AFP while preparing to cross back into Myanmar’s eastern border town of Myawaddy.

The mass exodus of migrants — estimated to be more than 60,000 — is only the latest chaos to highlight the precarious lives of migrant workers who take up difficult and dangerous jobs in Thailand’s factories and fishing boats.

Much of the work force lacks proper documentation and lives in constant fear of exploitation from police, bosses, and traffickers.

And yet many Myanmar migrants scrambling across the border said these hardships still beat the prospect of dire poverty in their homeland, where jobs and good wages are difficult to come by.

“I will consider coming back in a legal way, with the full documents,” said Thu Ya, 32, who has spent much of his life in Thailand.

‘We have a problem’

Myanmar’s new civilian government, which came to power last year, was expected to usher in a windfall of foreign investment into a resource-rich country that was closed off to the world during the former junta’s 50-year reign.

In a jubilant visit to Thailand in June 2016, de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed to drive the economic growth that would bring her countrymen home.

But a year on the gains have fallen short of expectations and Myanmar is still years away from offering wages that rival those in Thailand.

A steep decline in foreign investment — down 28 percent in the last quarter of 2016 — sounded alarm bells over an economy whose initial opening in 2011 was met with a rush of investor excitement.

The country’s GDP growth also fell below seven percent for the first time in five years in 2016, clocking in at 6.5 percent.

Having fleetingly become the fastest-growing economy in the region, Myanmar now lags behind the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia.

Economists blame the slump on a lack of clarity from the new government on its economic policies, as well as the ponderous progress in passing a new investment law.

“We have a problem because the ministers have no economic culture, and then the reforms are done too slowly,” said Myanmar economist Khin Maung Nyo.

The young civilian government, stacked with political novices, faces the monumental challenge of trying to unpick the junta’s devastating economic legacy.

“We need to create thousands of jobs but I doubt we will be able to do it quickly,” Khin Maung Nyo added.

‘They’ll be back’

In the meantime, Thailand looks set to continue to be a magnet for its neighbour’s workers.

Huge sections of Thailand’s economy, especially construction and food production, rely on migrants to do jobs that comparatively wealthier Thais have long since eschewed.

And while the country has one of the slowest growth rates in Asia, the minimum wage of 305 baht ($9) a day is more than three times the equivalent in Myanmar.

Since coming to power in 2014 Thailand’s junta has unveiled a series of campaigns to clean-up abuses in its migrant labour sector, which also attracts significant numbers of workers from Cambodia and Laos.

But rights groups say the drives are often short lived and ad-hoc, creating more confusion. This time was no different.

Caught off-guard by the mass exodus, Thailand’s junta ruled last week to suspend its new law for six months.

Junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha called for calm and reassured business owners: “Don’t panic, they will come back soon.”

He is likely to be right.

Silar, a Myanmar nurse working in Bangkok, went home full of hope in 2015, eager to reunite with her husband and daughter.

But she struggled to find work and is now back in the Thai capital — gripped with fear after misplacing her work permit.

“In Myanmar, there is still not enough work, especially in the countryside, and wages remain very low,” she told AFP, using a pseudonym for anonymity.

“I do not know what I’m going to do.”

The hills around the revered Tibetan Buddhist academy Larung Gar were once a seamless carpet of vibrant red, dominated by the homes of thousands of monks, nuns and devotees who crowded the remote valley in southwest China to explore their faith.

Today the landscape is riven with scars, with many houses destroyed and some neighbourhoods torn apart after demolition crews were sent in by authorities, who have ordered a mass clear out of the area.

More than 10,000 people – including many Han Chinese devotees – were living around Larung Gar, the world’s largest and most important institution for Tibetan Buddhist learning, but the government believes the area had become dangerously overcrowded.

Chinese tourists have partially demolished houses as the backdrop for photos at the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Sichuan. The government, citing overcrowding, wants to halve the population. Photo/AFP

Rights groups, however, see the demolitions as a ploy by the atheist ruling Communist Party to tighten its grip on religious practice in Tibetan regions.

Bulldozers began crushing homes last year, but the process has escalated in the past few months. The properties are being razed to make way for tourism infrastructure, parking and better roads leading down the steep hills to the central monastic buildings.

“They tore down so many houses – he government said there were too many people,” laments Tibetan Buddhist student Gyatso, 26, as he hands freshly sawed planks to a red-robed friend hammering them onto an extension to a house they now share metres from his old one.

Inside, a small tape player quietly chants mantras. Tibetan-language books line the walls next to framed photographs of Jigme Phuntsok, the charismatic lama who founded the academy in the 1980s.

“It’s freezing here in the winter, but I’m used to it and wouldn’t live anywhere else,” says Gyatso, who came to Larung Gar as a boy with his family of poor nomadic herders.

He received 5,000 yuan (Bt25,000) in compensation for his old home.

E’deng, who like Gyatso withholds his full name for security reasons, was not so lucky. Last autumn he was ordered out of Larung Gar, his home of two decades, and now rents a room near a monastery two hours away.

“Of course I didn’t want to move, but when the Khenpos decide something, you have to listen. There was nothing I could do,” he says, referring to revered Buddhist teachers who manage the encampment and have mediated the government request to reduce numbers.

Departing residents have to sign pledges promising never to return to live at Larung Gar, and some have been subject to intensive political re-education once home, according to Human Rights Watch.

HRW has condemned the evictions as a “fundamentally abusive campaign that has prompted suicides, public humiliation, and serious disruption to the community”.

The European Parliament called on China in December to stop the demolitions and respect freedom of religion.

Six United Nations rights experts expressed “grave concern” in a November letter to the government, recalling a previous demolition campaign in 2001, when 8,000 residents were driven out as homes were destroyed, sometimes with people inside.

Larung Gar has grown in unprecedented size and influence for a Buddhist academy on the Tibetan plateau. Authorities said last year its population, estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000, would be cut to 5,000 by this September to improve fire safety and sanitation.

A blaze destroyed around 100 houses in 2014, without causing casualties, according to the International Campaign for Tibet.

“Of course fire safety isn’t the issue – all they want is to control things very easily,” says Lobsang, a monk now living in a neighbouring county who studied at Larung Gar for seven years.

“The government doesn’t like so many people – over 10,000 people – opening their minds because the school is so good. They think these people are very dangerous,” he adds.

An excavator clears debris from the partially demolished monastery complex. Photo/AFP

Some 4,500 nuns and monks had been expelled as of March, according to a senior abbot cited by campaign groups, and more than 3,000 homes are thought to have been destroyed as of this spring.

Authorities have made the area nearly inaccessible to foreigners with checkpoints and a heavy security presence, while temporarily limiting flows of Chinese tourists.

In a neighbouring valley, nuns have been placed in square rows of blue-roofed temporary housing.

But locals say demolitions cannot take away the strong pride in Tibetan identity, language and religion the academy has instilled.

Villagers in hamlets hours away carry cards and wear pendants distributed by Larung Gar, representing a vow to live by a moral programme of “10 virtues” espoused by its Khenpos.

For Lhamo, a Tibetan county government employee charged with convincing elderly devotees to leave Larung Gar for retirement homes, imposing the current order has been emotionally taxing.

People yell and curse at her, she says, but she understands their frustration.

“That little house is their everything. Even though some are very, very crude, they don’t have anything else in the world,” she says.

“When I tell them there are better living conditions elsewhere, they say they only care about studying Buddhism, not material things. What can you possibly say in return?”

The PCA favoured the Philippines over China in a judgement on July 12 last year. It ruled that Beijing has no historical right over the South China Sea in the disputed areas and had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone. It said China had interfered with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration by constructing artificial islands and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from operating in the zone.

China has long been at loggerheads with many Asean members, including the Philippines and Vietnam, over territory in the South China Sea.

While other members have tried to settle their conflicts within the region, the previous administration in Manila took its case to the PCA at the Hague.

However, there has been no implementation of the PCA verdict over the past year. Many countries in the region have continued activities in the contentious area, including the construction of artificial islands and military projects.

While the Philippines has called for the PCA ruling to be respected, the new administration under President Rodrigo Duterte has seemed to soften its stance towards China and did not mention the issue during an Asean summit in April.

Vietnam, which is not a party to the PCA verdict, called for the ruling to be respected and for a denial of China’s historical claim to the so-called Nine Dash Line, which is known among Vietnamese as “cow tongue lines”, according to an official at Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry. Hanoi deemed the construction of artificial islands as damaging to the marine environment, the official said.

Vietnamese scholar Dang Cong Ngu said the PCA decision had made Vietnam “ready for the future struggle”, adding that the country would push Asean to bolster the code of |conduct to “make sure that we go in the right direction”.

Ngu, who is a former chairman of Hoang Sa People’s Committee, urged Asean members to unite in the settlement of disputes, emphasising the importance of completing a binding code of conduct based on international law, including the PCA’s verdict.

Hoang Sa is the Vietnamese name for the Paracel Islands, over which Vietnam has a claim, but which remain occupied by the Chinese.

Asean is working with China on a framework for the code. Officials said that they could reach common ground and would unveil the content by early August when foreign ministers of the group gather for an annual meeting in the Philippines.

With Myanmar emerging as a manufacturing hub for mass-produced clothes, a crop of young designers are using home-grown fashion to preserve the country’s sartorial heritage and reshape the sweatshop model.

Inside her boutique in downtown Yangon, Pyone Thet Thet Kyaw crafts her own designs using traditional patterns and fabrics, many from ethnic minority groups, to make A-line skirts, dresses and tops.

On another she adds the high-collared neckline of the inngyi – a tight top usually worn by Myanmar women along with a fitted, sarong-like skirt – to a flirty pleated dress.

With Myanmar emerging as a manufacturing hub for mass-produced clothes, a crop of young designers are using homegrown fashion to preserve the country’s sartorial heritage and reshape the sweatshop model. Photo/AFP

“We Burmese really care about our own ethnic and traditional clothes,” she says in the shop, over the whirr of sewing machines.

“When you modernise the traditional patterned clothes you have to be careful they’re not too flashy – or too modern.”

Myanmar is fiercely proud of its traditional garb, which was largely protected from the influx of homogenous Western fashion now ubiquitous across Southeast Asia by the former military junta.

For 50 years they shut the country off to foreign influences and tightly controlled what was worn in all official media.

Designer Ma Pont says she was not allowed to show even a flash of shoulder or armpit when she used to make clothes for military-controlled TV channels in the 1990s.

“We were not really free,” she says.

Designer Pyone Thet Thet Kyaw posts at her own Virya Couture in Yangon. Photo/AFP

Fashion was particularly politically charged in that era, when many women would secretly ask their tailors for designs that imitated the distinctive style of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Local media reported the purple outfit she wore the day she was released from almost two decades of house arrest soon became a popular sight on Yangon’s streets.

Today the democracy icon, who last year became the de facto leader of Myanmar’s first civilian government in generations, is still widely admired for the elegant Burmese outfits she wears at public appearances.

But while many still prefer traditional clothes, especially the sarong-like longyi worn by both men and women, fashions are starting to change.

Shopping malls aimed at Yangon’s growing middle class are sprouting up around the city, while on its fringes factories are churning out clothes for international brands drawn to its pool of young, cheap labour.

It is a flip-side of the industry which boutique designer Pyone Thet Thet Kyaw has seen first-hand.

As a teenager she spent months toiling in garment factories on the outskirts of the commercial capital – a job that earned her 2,000 kyat a week (now worth about Bt50).

The experience made her determined to open her own boutique and train young women in the art of clothes-making to make sure they never suffer the same fate.

“I started to see things, like how you could only spend 10 minutes for your lunch or you could not go to the toilet whenever you wanted because it would disrupt their production line,” she says.

“If fast fashion and unethical fashion continues, then we’re the ones to be suffering.”

Impoverished but emerging Myanmar is swiftly becoming a new hub for massive garment factories making cheap clothes as quickly as possible for fashion giants like H&M and Primark.

A  woman weaving silk on a loom for traditional Myanmar clothing at a workshop in Mandalay. Photo/AFP

Exports more than doubled to $1.65 billion last financial year, according to official data, and are expected to surge after the US ended sanctions in October.

But while the sector is helping to drive rapid economic growth, critics say few benefits are trickling down to workers who earn some of the lowest wages in Asia and have little legal protections.

A recent report by multinational watchdog Somo warned of “significant risks of labour rights violations being committed in Myanmar’s garment industry that need to be addressed as a matter of urgency”.

Other local designers, like Mo Hom, are working to save Myanmar’s centuries-old traditional fabric industry from the influx of cheap imported clothes from Thailand and China.

Her boutique in Yangon is filled with colourful designs in cotton and silks sourced from Chin and Shan states, where they can take months to weave by hand using traditional wooden looms.

Many are dyed with natural substances like green tea and strawberries to give subtle colours, which she mixes with traditional ethnic patterns and silhouettes.

“Local mills are actually dying because there is no market demand any more,” says Mo Hom, who trained and worked as a designer in New York before moving back to Myanmar in 2012.

“A lot of the mills are actually closing down.”

Violence continued to rage after G20 leaders returned home Saturday, with far-left protesters setting fire to a number of vehicles into the early morning hours, police said.

Demonstrators gathered after the close of the summit in the Schanzen district, a stronghold for radicals which was the site of multiple confrontations since Thursday.

Armed with glass bottles and targeting vehicles, many of which they set on fire, the protesters were pushed back by officers, using water cannon and tear gas, police said on Twitter.

At a news conference, the head of operations for Hamburg police, Hartmut Dudde, said 476 officers had been injured since Thursday in a deployment of more than 20,000 officers, and 186 people were detained. No accurate number for protesters injured was available.

Earlier President Frank-Walter Steinmeier surveyed the damage and visited wounded officers in hospital with Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz, saying he was “shocked and dismayed” by the “will to destroy shown by demonstrators against police and private citizens’ property”.

“We must ask ourselves as democrats whether a few violent protesters can keep countries such as Germany from holding such international meetings,” Steinmeier told reporters.

Scholz thanked the “heroic” police for their service and the citizens of Hamburg who brought flowers to a military hospital where many officers were being treated, pledging compensation for those who suffered losses from vandalism.

He dismissed criticism by some peaceful demonstrators that officers had been excessive in what he called “the biggest police operation in the post-war period” and called for “lengthy jail sentences” for participants in the riots.

The explosion of violence at the meeting had sparked pointed questions over how Hamburg could descend into “mob rule” and why Chancellor Angela Merkel chose a hotbed of leftist militancy as the venue.

Hamburg, a vibrant port city, is a citadel of anti-capitalist radicals and authorities had long been bracing for possible violence on the sidelines of the summit.

Dudde admitted that despite 18 months of preparation that security forces had been “surprised” by the extent of the violence.

The German police officers’ union GdP on Friday hit out at so-called black bloc anarchists, accusing them of “hijacking peaceful demonstrations by tens of thousands of people to deliberately attack” police.

The clashes occurred as leaders from the world’s 20 biggest developed and emerging economies held a two-day meeting focusing on trade, terrorism, climate change and other key global issues.

World leaders made concessions on trade and climate language to US President Donald Trump Saturday at the end of the most fractious and riot-hit G20 summit ever, in exchange for preserving a fragile unity of the club of major industrialised and emerging economies.

Kem Ley, a popular and charismatic political analyst, was shot twice in the head as he sipped coffee in Phnom Penh — a brazen assassination that sent shockwaves through the country’s already beleaguered activist community.

Unemployed former soldier Oeuth Ang admitted carrying out the killing and was sentenced to life in March after a brief trial.

His declared motive, that the murder was revenge for an unpaid $3,000 debt, caused broad disbelief and was not cross examined in court because he effectively admitted his guilt.

“I don’t know whether they made up that debt story but I don’t believe it at all,” Kem Ley’s 77-year-old mother Phok Se, told AFP as well-wishers began gathering at the family home in Takeo province.

“There has been no justice for us so far,” she added, echoing the sentiments of many at the ceremony which saw Buddhist monks chant prayers as devotees made offerings around the grave.

In Phnom Penh police stopped mourners from placing flowers at the petrol station cafe where Kem Ley was gunned down.

In a joint statement to mark the anniversary more than 100 local and foreign organisations called on the government to reopen the case after a “flawed trial”.

“There has been no transparency in the murder investigation and there are still many unanswered questions in this case,” the statement read, adding there was “compelling evidence” Oeuth Ang had accomplices.

Many friends and supporters find it hard to believe Oeuth Ang, who rarely held down a job, could afford to lend $3,000 — more than twice the average annual salary in Cambodia.

“One year has passed and yet we are nowhere near uncovering the full picture of what happened to Kem Ley,” Chak Sophea, from the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, told AFP.

Cambodia has been ruled by strongman premier Hun Sen for 32-years and has a dark history of usually unsolved activist killings.

In the 1990s and early 2000s such assassinations were common, but they had become rarer in recent years.

Spooked that the bad days may have returned, tens of thousands turned out for Kem Ley’s funeral in scenes that rattled the government.

Kem Ley criticised Cambodian politicians of all stripes, but he was particularly scathing about the endemic corruption that blights the country.

Shortly before his murder he gave a radio interview about an investigative report that detailed some of the millions of dollars amassed by Hun Sen’s family.

The government has strongly denied any responsibility in his killing.

Hun Sen faces crunch national polls next year and has dramatically ramped up his rhetoric in recent months.

Last month he called on critics to “prepare coffins” and warned he would eliminate “100 or 200 people” if stability was threatened.

Hun Sen portrays himself as a leader who has brought growth and security to the war ravaged nation.

Critics say corruption, inequality and right abuses have become entrenched during his years in office.

The statement by the foreign physicians looked likely to add to international pressure on China to release its most prominent democracy advocate for treatment overseas.

The First Hospital of China Medical University in the northeastern city of Shenyang where Liu is being treated for late-stage liver cancer had said Saturday it was “unsafe” for him to travel due to his deteriorating condition.

But American oncology expert Joseph Herman from the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center and German doctor Markus Buchler of Heidelberg University, who visited Liu on Saturday, said otherwise.

“While a degree of risk always exists in the movement of any patient, both physicians believe Mr. Liu can be safely transported with appropriate medical evacuation care and support,” they said in a joint statement.

“However, the medical evacuation would have to take place as quickly as possible.”

Their statement added that both of their respective institutions had agreed to accept Liu for treatment.

Beijing has come under fire from human rights groups over its treatment of Liu and for waiting until he became terminally sick to release him from prison more than a month ago.

 – ‘China lied’ –

Liu, 61, and his family want him to be allowed to seek treatment abroad.

Rights activists and Chinese dissidents accuse Beijing of stalling and falsely claiming Liu is too sick to travel for fear of giving him a platform to speak freely overseas.

“The statement by the two experts shows that the Chinese authorities lied when the hospital released the statement yesterday,” Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon said.

“The Chinese government should face it instead of covering up and faking news any more. They should respect Liu Xiaobo’s wish to leave the country before it’s too late.”

Herman and Buchler said they “acknowledge the quality of care” that Liu had received at the Chinese hospital.

But while noting that the hospital is recommending a focus on relieving the symptoms of Liu’s terminal illness, the foreign doctors implied that more could be done.

“Additional options may exist, including interventional procedures and radiotherapy,” they said.

That appeared to jar with the hospital’s account of their visit.

The hospital has said Saturday that the Western experts claimed they knew of “no better method” for treating Liu other than the care he was now receiving.

Liu was arrested in 2008 after co-writing Charter 08, a bold petition that called for the protection of basic human rights and reform of China’s one-party Communist system.

He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2009 for “subversion” after calling for democratic reform. At the Nobel ceremony in Oslo in 2010, he was represented by an empty chair.

He is also known for his efforts to help negotiate the safe exit from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square of thousands of student demonstrators on the night of June 3-4, 1989 when the military violently suppressed the protests.

A group of Liu’s friends fear he is near death and they issued an open letter earlier this week calling on the Chinese government to give them access to him on “humanitarian” grounds.

Hu Jia, a prominent Chinese activist and good friend of Liu, called for increased pressure on China in the wake of the doctors’ statement.

“Now we’re waiting for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to unlock the doors of Liu’s prison. Liu’s supporters need to increase the pressure,” Hu said.

Around 2,300 firefighters were battling several blazes with triple-digit temperatures recorded in valleys and inland areas.

A wildfire in the Sierra Nevada foothills north of Sacramento was only five percent contained by late afternoon and had destroyed 10 homes, scorching 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of forest and sparking small-scale evacuations.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) said five residents and a firefighter had sustained minor injuries.

Meanwhile a blaze that forced evacuations in Santa Barbara County doubled in size overnight to 5,750 acres, fanned by hot, dry winds.

Some 17 wildfires in various states of containment were burning in California Saturday, from the Six Rivers National Forest in the north to the San Bernardino Forest, east of Los Angeles.

An excessive heat warning has been extended until 11:00 pm (0600 GMT) for much of southern California, with temperature records being broken across the region.

Downtown Los Angeles tied the 1954 record of 96 degrees Farenheit (36 Celcius) while the city’s northwestern suburb of Woodland Hills reached a high of 109 degrees, breaking the record of 108 set in 2006.

“Dangerous and potentially life-threatening heat is expected through (today), when high temperatures between 100 and 110 degrees are expected for many interior sections of southwest California,” the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a statement.

The weather service attributed the heat wave to a “strong upper-level high-pressure system centered over the desert southwest,” adding that the heatwave could continue into Sunday.

“Hot temperatures will create a dangerous situation in which there is an increased threat of heat-related illnesses. The extended heat wave will also bring elevated fire weather conditions through the weekend,” said the NWS.

California Governor Jerry Brown in April declared the official end of the state’s drought that lasted more than five years.

But he kept in place water reporting requirements, as well as bans on practices like watering during or following rainfall and hosing off sidewalks.

“This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement.

“Conservation must remain a way of life.”

Frenchman Mark Karpeles — once the high-flying head of the world’s busiest Bitcoin trading platform, who reportedly lived in an $11,000-a-month penthouse and spent money lavishly, including on prostitutes — is facing embezzlement and data manipulation charges.

“He is keeping calm as the trial gets underway,” his lawyer Kiichi Iino told AFP, adding that Karpeles plans to plead his innocence.

The 32-year-old was first arrested in August 2015 and released on bail nearly a year later over allegations he fraudulently manipulated data and pocketed millions worth of Bitcoins.

MtGox, which claimed it once hosted around 80 percent of global Bitcoin trading, shuttered in 2014 after admitting that 850,000 coins — worth around $480 million at the time — had disappeared from its vaults.

The company initially said there was a bug in the software underpinning Bitcoins that allowed hackers to pilfer them.

Karpeles later claimed he had found some 200,000 of the lost coins in a “cold wallet” — a storage device, such as a memory stick, that is not connected to other computers.

Tokyo-based MtGox filed for bankruptcy protection soon after the cyber-money went missing, leaving a trail of angry investors calling for answers and denting the virtual currency’s reputation.

Still missing

Karpeles, who said he is working as an IT consultant, is active on social media and has commented on issues concerning Bitcoin but not on details of his criminal case.

“The charges (against Karpeles) only cover a subset of the issues which were happening at MtGox, so I don’t expect that we will find out most of the information we want to know,” said Kolin Burges, a British investor who said he lost several hundred Bitcoins in the MtGox collapse.

“I’ve not had any back yet but hopefully, eventually all the creditors will get a small percentage of their money back from the bankruptcy distribution,” he told AFP.

Around the time of his 2015 arrest, Karpeles’ mother told Japan’s top-selling Yomiuri newspaper that her son was a “genius” who learned computer languages at age three and started making simple programmes by the time he was five.

In 2006, Karpeles wrote on his blog that computer crime was “totally contrary to my ethical principles”.

But four years later, a Paris court sentenced him in absentia to a year in prison for hacking. He had come to Japan to work for a web development company around 2009 and later got involved with the Bitcoin exchange.

In the wake of the MtGox scandal, Japan passed a bill stipulating that all virtual currency exchanges must be regulated by its Financial Services Agency.

Virtual currencies are generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the world, and are not backed by any government or central bank, unlike traditional currencies.

Bitcoin has suffered hacking incidents including one last year in which a major Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex suspended trading after $65 million in the virtual unit was stolen.

Soaring popularity

Despite the demise of MtGox and concerns about security, Bitcoin and hundreds of rival digital currencies are becoming increasingly popular and accepted by merchants worldwide.

Bitcoin remains the most popular. Its market value has ballooned to more than $42.9 billion, according to the website coinmarketcap.com.

The unit has seen wild volatility during its short life, soaring from just a few US cents to around $2,500 now, more than double its value just a few months ago.

Backers say virtual currencies offer an efficient and anonymous way to store and transfer funds online.

Critics argue the lack of legal framework governing the currency, the opaque way it is traded and its volatility make it dangerous.

Bitcoin’s reputation was damaged when US authorities seized funds as part of an investigation into the online black market Silk Road.

Power plant facilities in the central island of Leyte, which provide electricity for the island and neighbouring regions, sustained damage when the quake struck on Thursday, an energy department statement said.

The geothermal plants, near the quake’s epicentre, were damaged by both the tremors and resulting landslides, the department said.

Leyte, home to some 1.75 million people, bore the brunt of the quake, recording two deaths and 72 injuries.

Much of Leyte and the surrounding islands of Samar and Bohol were without power on Saturday as repairs were still being conducted, energy undersecretary Wimpy Fuentabella said.

“In three to 10 days, we will see a tremendous improvement in ensuring that there will be basic electrical service available,” he said on ABS-CBN television.

Vegetable seller Cheryl Anne Acidera, 25, in the Leyte city of Tacloban, recalled running out of her school in terror when the quake struck.

“We all ran out to the plaza so nothing would fall on us,” she told AFP, adding that some of her companions fainted.

The Philippines lies on the so-called Ring of Fire, a vast Pacific Ocean region where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

In February, a 6.5-magnitude quake killed eight people and left more than 250 injured outside the southern city of Surigao.

The following month a 5.9-magnitude tremor killed one person.

Before the Surigao disasters, the last fatal earthquake to hit the Southeast Asian nation was a 7.1-magnitude quake that left more than 220 people dead and destroyed historic churches in the central islands in October 2013.