At least that was what journalists from 20 countries, including The Nation, saw and heard during a state-sponsored trip on how the US deals with human trafficking.

But how does it deal with the issue outside its territory? One of the best-known ways is through the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report by the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

The US is legally obliged to provide reports on human trafficking situations in 188 countries across the world, including Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Every year, the US ranks itself in the highest Tier 1, which is reserved for the government of a country that “fully complies” with the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

The report in 2018, evaluating the situation in the year prior to its release, would cover the first full-year performance under President Donald Trump.

While a single person, or even a lone federal administration, cannot be blamed if the ranking were affected, an advocate source expressed concern that migration-related legislation passed during the Trump administration would point to prejudice.

“We can see trends of xenophobia, racism and sensationalism in the White House under Trump. Issues and policies are becoming less addressed from true expertise or even not addressed at all,” said the source, who asked not to be identified.

Despite the Trump’s administration’s missteps, the annual TIP report would be issued as usual.

“What we are doing is just keep trying to send the message that it’s not about the US but it’s about embracing shared responsibilities with international interests,” said the Office’s acting deputy director Laura Svat Rundlet.Rundlet

“In general, there is no consequence as the provision states in the law,” Rundlet said, “unless you remain on Tier 3, which still can be waived as it is not mandatory.”

Thailand was placed in Tier 3, the lowest rank possible, from 2014 to 2015 before it returned to the Tier 2 Watch List, where it was from 2010 to 2013.

Like reports on other countries, the opinion on Thailand is also formulated in Washington based on accounts from several sources, be they Thai authorities, US agencies, NGOs as well as international organisations.

One of the bodies active in fighting human trafficking is the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which also collaborates with the local governments of its 169 member states, including Thailand.

“Due to long-standing relationships, the IOM is able to provide services in government-run shelters and is often involved in training officials on victim-sensitive and protection-oriented approaches in assisting victims of trafficking, as well as prevention,” the IOM explained in an e-mail response.

The IOM’s cooperation with the Thai government, included reaching out to more than 32,000 migrants through an outreach and information campaign last year, providing direct assistance to victims including interpretation, medical, shelters and psychological support as well as intervention to disrupt migrant trafficking operations in Thailand and its neighbours.

Win Myint, a 66-year-old former political prisoner and staunch ally of Suu Kyi, was elected president on Wednesday after his predecessor suddenly resigned.

Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who championed Myanmar’s emergence from junta rule by sweeping 2015 elections, is constitutionally barred from the presidency because she was married to a foreigner.

To circumvent that snag, her party created a new position for her called state counsellor — allowing Suu Kyi to rule “above” the president.

That makes it vital for her to have a reliable proxy in office, especially as she manages the delicate power-sharing arrangement with the military, which ruled the country for almost half a century and remains enormously influential.

In his first address to parliament, the famously straight-talking Win Myint said he would focus on the rule of law, national reconciliation and “amending the constitution to build a democratic federal union”.

The three issues are touchstones of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

But talk of amendments to Myanmar’s 2008 constitution is likely to rise heckles among Myanmar’s still-powerful generals.

The army has ceded some power to the civilian administration, but retains 25 percent of parliamentary seats and total control of security affairs under the charter.

Win Myint also said he would work to “protect human rights”, a thorny subject in a country accused of ethnic cleansing by the UN against its Rohingya Muslim population.

A violent military crackdown has forced some 700,000 Rohingya — a long-persecuted stateless minority — over the border into Bangladesh since August.

The army insists the campaign was a legitimate response to Rohingya militant attacks against border-guard police posts.

Win Myint is part of Suu Kyi’s inner circle — the pair campaigned together during the 1988 democracy protests against the then-junta, a movement that was violently suppressed.

For his role Win Myint, alongside many others, was taken political prisoner.

Suu Kyi is still widely regarded as a pro-democracy heroine in Myanmar even though her reputation lies in tatters globally for failing to speak up on behalf of the country’s Rohingya Muslims.//AFP

But Spain – which has many more Brit visitors every year – had the highest number of deaths, the Sun tabloid reported on March 28.

Cambodia and Thailand top the table when comparing the number of deaths to the number of British visitors per year, according to new figures obtained by Sun Online.

Cambodia’s 11 deaths – taken against the 136,232 Brits who visit the country on average each year – mean a death rate of roughly eight young people per 100,000 Brit visitors.

Similarly, Thailand’s 25 deaths mean a death rate of around six young people per 100,000 when compared to the 411,000 Brits who usually go each year.

In the other hand, Spain drops down the danger table once its much bigger visitor numbers – nearly 13 million – are taken into account.

With less than four young people dead per million Brits arriving in the country annually, the country actually seems to be one of the safer places to holiday.

Other European countries have similar death rates, with Portugal, Turkey and Germany on roughly four out of a million and even fewer per capita dying in France and Italy.

Australia had the second-highest number of deaths, with 27 losing their lives.

France and Thailand came in joint third place with 25 Brits under 40 dying in each country, according to figures obtained by a Freedom of Information request from the FCO.

Thailand is famous for its beautiful beaches and lively nightlife, attracting plane-loads of sun-seekers every year.

But it has also become known for a string of tragedies in recent times, including a spate of mysterious tourist deaths on “death island” Koh Tao.

The country is also the deadliest in the world for motorbike accidents – such as the one that killed pregnant Brit mum Sophie Emma Rose last year – with the FCO warning of “poor vehicle and driver safety standards”.

Also ranking among the top ten countries was neighbouring Cambodia – where five Brit backpackers were this year arrested after cops raided a pool party because of “pornographic” dancing.

The US had ordered a similar number of diplomats from Russia to leave and the shuttering of one of its consulates as part of an international effort to isolate the country after an ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned in England in a nerve agent attack blamed on Moscow.

“Russia’s action today to expel American diplomats marks a further deterioration in the United States-Russia relationship,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“Russia’s response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it,” she said.

In all, more than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations in coordinated action against Moscow, which they accuse of poisoning ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in a nerve agent attack in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

While Sanders criticized the Russian expulsions, she said similar moves by the US and its allies were justified.

“The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom,” Sanders said.

US President Donald Trump has emphasized the need to keep trying to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite increasingly tense relations between the two countries, as officials from the intelligence community and the State Department engage in harsher criticism of Moscow.//AFP

Though frowned upon by the church, the gruesome re-enactments of Christ’s final moments draw thousands of believers — and tourists — in a carnival-like atmosphere that is big business for locals.

In towns located north of Manila at least three people had eight-centimetre (three-inch) spikes driven through their palms and feet in hot, dry fields. More devotees were expected to take part later in the day.

At the same time, bare-chested men, some of whose faces were concealed by hoods, lashed their backs bloody, as selfie-snapping onlookers watched.

They left droplets of blood on cars, houses and even bottles of soda displayed on snack vendors’ tables that lined the road.

“If one of my family members gets sick, this is what we do,” said Norman Lapuot, 25, as he flogged himself with a bamboo-tipped whip. “I do this for my relatives.”

Lapuot, who said it was his fourth time taking part in the ceremony, added that he believed the ritual bloodletting had helped his grandfather recover from a stroke.

While a majority of the Philippines’ 80 million Catholics spend Good Friday at church or with family, participants undergo the gruesome spectacle to atone for sins or give thanks for divine intervention.

The mock crucifixions on Good Friday have been going on for decades despite official disapproval from the nation’s dominant Catholic Church.

“The church never encourages self-flagellation, much less crucifixion,” Roy Bellen, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Manila, told AFP.

“All sacrifices being asked from Catholics during Lent and Holy Week should lead to actions that benefit the poor and the needy,” he added.

Food stalls, cab drivers and even souvenir stands get a boost from the event which draws some 35,000 people every year to the area over the course of Good Friday.

Nearly 80 percent of people in the Philippines are Catholic, a legacy of the nation’s 300 years of Spanish colonial rule that ended at the turn of the 20th century.

China’s space agency said on Thursday that the nearly eight-tonne Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere some time between Saturday and Monday. The European Space Agency has a smaller window between midday Saturday and early Sunday afternoon GMT time.

But there is “no need for people to worry”, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth”, it said.

The lab was placed in orbit in September 2011 and had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but it ceased functioning in March 2016 and space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of the country’s rise. It plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

China sent another lab into orbit, the Tiangong-2, in September 2016 and hopes to turn it into a crewed space station by 2022.

Experts have downplayed any concerns about the Tiangong-1 causing any damage when it hurtles back to Earth, with the ESA noting that nearly 6,000 uncontrolled re-entries of large objects have occurred over the past 60 years without harming anyone.

The CMSEO said the probability of someone being hit by a meteorite of more than 200 grammes is one in 700 million.

During the uncontrolled re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100 kilometres, according to the Chinese space office.

The intensifying heat and friction will cause the main structure to burn or blow up, and it should disintegrate at an altitude of around 80 kilometres, it said.

Most fragments will dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris will fall relatively slowly before landing, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that the Tiangong-1 is the 50th most massive uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957.

“Much bigger things have come down with no casualties,” McDowell told AFP.

“This thing is like a small plane crash,” he said, adding that the trail of debris will scatter pieces several hundred kilometres apart.

At an altitude of 60-70 kilometres, debris will begin to turn into “a series of fireballs”, which is when people on the ground will “see a spectacular show,” he said.//AFP

In the 55-second video dated March 28, a car is seen travelling on a winding road at 3.25am when it drives past a woman in red walking slowly by the roadside.

The car moves on ahead for several metres, but the same eerie figure crops up repeatedly. The figure, shown walking slowly on the left side of the road, appears two more times.

The driver continues his journey before the “apparition” appears in front of the car.

The car comes to a halt and immediately reverses from the scene and the video ends. Netizens were spooked by the video, which has been shared 2,700 times since it was uploaded on Facebook on Wednesday (March 28).

Netizens were spooked by the video, which has been shared 2,700 times since it was uploaded on Facebook on Wednesday (March 28).

While social media speculates on the authenticity of the video, mStar Online, the Star Media Group’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal, reported that a man had jokingly told a WhatsApp chat group that he created the video with the help of four friends.

Other netizens speculate that the video is a publicity stunt for actress Nur Fazura Sharifuddin’s upcoming horror flick The Legend Of Pontianak.

Earlier in February, Nur Fazura had shared a photo on Instagram of herself wearing a red kebaya taken on the set of the movie.

General Prayut will meet separately with Vietnam’s leader Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Thongloun Sisoulith of Laos ahead of the summit.

Tomorrow he will attend a retreat at which delegates will discuss “economic cooperation amid the changing global landscape” and a meeting on sustainable cooperation and development.

He will return to Thailand the same day.

The summit’s theme is “Leveraging 25 Years of Cooperation and Building a Sustainable, Integrated and Prosperous GMS”.

The region’s leaders are expected to endorse the five-year Hanoi Action Plan and the Regional Investment Framework 2022.

The quake struck at 5:25 pm local time (2125 GMT) about 162 kilometres from the New Britain town of Rabaul, the US Geological Survey said.

It was initially recorded at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres (six miles), before it was revised by the USGS to a depth of 35 kilometres.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center earlier said “hazardous” waves of between 0.3-one metre above tide level could be generated by the quake for some coasts of PNG.

It said smaller waves could also hit the Solomon Islands, but later added that the “tsunami threat from this earthquake has now passed”.

“It was felt as far away as Kokopo (150 kilometres from the epicentre),” Geoscience Australia seismologist Spiro Spiliopoulos told AFP of the tremor.

There were no reports of damage at this stage, Spiliopoulos said, adding that the affected areas were remote.

The earthquake was quickly followed by two powerful smaller tremors, measuring 5.3 and 5.1, both at a depth of 35 kilometres, according to USGS.

The quake came on the heels of a separate 5.8-magnitude tremor some 43 kilometres west of Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, which struck at 6:51 am local time (1851 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometres.

There are regular quakes in the region, and PNG is sitting on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire which is a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.

PNG was hit by a 7.5-magnitude quake on February 26 that buried homes and triggered landslides in its highlands region, killing at least 125 people.

Its mountainous and remote terrain means it often takes several days for information about damage from quakes to reach officials and aid agencies.

    In a lime green barely-there mesh dress and towering silver heels, the 22-year-old hopes to bring drag into the mainstream with regular performances in Hanoi, a conservative capital better known for its colonial charm than men in sequined minis.

“If we dare to be pioneers, soon this art will be accepted in Vietnam,” Betty told AFP before a show Saturday that stirred up crowds with renditions of hits by Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.

The drag night started as a weekly viewing party for the hit TV series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and quickly transformed into a show of its own — drawing a handful of men in drag to the stage for punchy lip-sync performances.

Organiser Tamah Lake said it’s the only event of its kind in Hanoi.

“It’s brought it more into the open… I think it’s becoming slightly more mainstream and slightly more well-known,” said Lake, not herself a drag queen, who works as a teacher during the week.

The drag queens who turn out for her Saturday night parties say they have few places to perform in a city where cross-dressing is almost unheard of, unlike in the West where starlets like RuPaul — the drag queen mother — have helped to popularise it.

“In Vietnam, there are drag queens that have been active for a long time but have not been acknowledged. This show helps more people know about our art,” said Betty, who started the five-member drag group “Victeam” in Haiphong, east of Hanoi.

Communist Vietnam is seen as relatively progressive on LGBT issues — the one-party state decriminalised gay marriage celebrations in 2015, although it stopped short of full legal recognition for same-sex unions — and the government is currently drafting a transgender law to allow legal gender changes.

But cross-dressing can help to boost tolerance, according to Vuong Kha Phong, LGBT rights programme officer at Vietnamese NGO iSEE.

“Drag queens being out there performing helps tremendously in getting people to know and be more comfortable with diversity,” Vuong told AFP.

Though the drag scene is still just emerging in much of Vietnam, cross-dressing has historic roots: the centuries-old ritual of “Hau Dong” requires mediums to dress as the opposite sex to channel spirits.

Still, when it comes to modern cross-dressing, some drag queens face pushback from the community for blurring gender norms.

First-time performer Za Za Zellia hopes the drag show will help to sway conservative attitudes.

“Hanoi is really traditional, they don’t hate (drag) but they don’t approve of it at the same time,” the 25-year-old told AFP, after debuting in a Gatsby-inspired sequined look.

“This just tells people it’s alright, it’s completely normal,” Za Za said after the show, a huge white feather emerging from a wig of thick black curls.//AFP