The Imperial Household Agency and other sources say the princess is getting engaged to Kei Komuro, who works for a law firm. Both are 25 years old. They met 5 years ago as students at International Christian University.

The princess is the eldest daughter of Prince and Princess Akishino, and is the first grandchild of the Emperor and Empress.

During his university days, Komuro took the role of “prince of the sea” in a tourism campaign for Fujisawa City, south of Tokyo, the online said.

Rina Namikawa also worked for the campaign. She says she was surprised but delighted to hear the news.

Congratulating the couple, Namikawa says Komuro is kind and pleasant, and the “prince of the sea” title suits him. She says the couple will look very good together.

Osaka University of Tourism President Osamu Akagi has known Princess Mako since she was a child. Akagi says he was surprised to hear that she is getting engaged.

He says he hopes she will create a happy family that people of her generation will admire. Princess Mako studied at a British graduate school and works as a researcher at a museum in Tokyo.

Sources say she has introduced Komuro to her parents and received their approval. Their relationship has already been reported to the Emperor and Empress. The wedding is expected to take place next year.

Since the beginning of May, hundreds of Myanmar workers at factories and workshops in Thailand faced dismissal, were not paid, or were suspended from their jobs without reason.

Most workers already suffered difficulties over food and shelter when seeking a new job, according to the AAC.

“MoU Myanmar workers – 18 females and a male – arrived in our office seeking help. They resigned from their factory because they didn’t get their salaries for about two or three months,” said Ye Min from AAC.

In recent days, although a factory owner said those working at the Pineapple Canned Factory in the Pran Buri town would get three days’ wages, no workers received the money they were due.

More than 180 workers held a protest over payment of wages after taking a half-day’s leave. However, Myanmar workers had stopped working as the factory owner demanded Bt2 million compensation.

Nearly 100 workers out of over 180 who stopped working were sheltering at a monastery and faced difficulties getting food.

Ye Min said that labour diplomats from Myanmar embassy in Thailand had many weak points as they didn’t settle labour disputes. Likewise, employment agencies have no responsibility for seeking a new job.

“ We came to Thailand through MoU. Now, we have no new job over 15 days long. We called the employment agency but they can’t exactly say. The agency told us to find a new job. But, it is failed. We have no money to buy a food,” said Mi Mi.

The Ministry of Immigration and Population reported that there were over 100,000 workers in Thailand.

Smoke swept through the airport’s Terminal 2 building after the fire broke out in the departure hall, spurring authorities to seal off the area.

Operator Changi Airport Group said in a statement two people were sent to hospital for observation after approaching staff for medical assistance and four others were brought to a clinic at Terminal 3.

“A small fire occurred at the departure hall of Changi Airport Terminal 2. The fire has been extinguished by SCDF (Singapore Civil Defence Force),” Singapore police said in a statement.

Police said the fire alarm was activated at around 5:40pm (0940 GMT) as smoke poured from air vents.

Changi Airport Group said the affected terminal was shut to ensure passenger safety, and all departing and arriving flights moved to Terminal 3.

The SCDF gave the all-clear for Terminal 2 at 10 pm and airport authorities said operations there have resumed progressively.

“Changi Airport will do its very best and work through the night to clear the backlog of delayed flights,” the operator said.

“A total of about 40 flights at Terminal 2 have been affected this evening. Changi Airport will work with authorities to investigate the incident.”

An AFP reporter at the airport said the scene earlier was mostly calm as the departure and arrival halls were evacuated. Airport staff were also seen leaving but there was no panic.

M. Ramarao, an Indian software engineer working in Singapore, was set to take a flight back home with his 18-month-old daughter when they were evacuated.

“I am very worried now because we have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning for my daughter who fractured her arm, so it’s quite urgent,” he told AFP.

“If it’s for one or two hours it’s okay, but they shouldn’t cancel the flight.”

About 58.7 million passengers from around the world passed through Changi Airport last year, making it the world’s sixth busiest for international traffic.

The airport serves more than 100 airlines flying to some 380 cities worldwide.//AFP

The Australian government’s internationally competitive, meritbased scholarships and fellowships provide opportunities for citizens around the world to undertake study, research and professional development in Australia.

The Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships promote leadership, research and academic excellence. It builds linkages between Australia and the region, the embassy said in its press release.

The scholarships and fellowships are now open to all Thais who want to pursue study in Australia in four categories: postgraduate scholarship, research fellowship, vocational education and training scholarship, and executive fellowship.

Those interested can visit https://internationaleducation.gov.au/endeavour for more information and online applications.

They have until June 30 to apply for the fund. Thai applicants should direct questions to aei.bkk@dfat.gov.au

Around 170 Thai scholars have been granted the fellowships and scholarships since the programme’s inception in 2007.

The fund also provides opportunities for Australians to undertake research and professional development in Thailand.

The Mekong Delta will disappear in the next several decades once Pak Beng Dam and another 10 planned hydropower dams are built on the Mekong River in Laos and Cambodia, warned environmental experts.

“Vietnam wants all upstream Mekong River nations to adopt proper policies in exploiting the river, especially in hydropower dam construction, in order to ensure rights for downstream nations, like Vietnam,” Minister of Natural Resources and Environment and chairman of the Vietnam Mekong River Commission, Tran Hong Ha, said at a conference on the issue last weekend in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.

“Vietnam is seriously worried about the increasing exploitation of hydropower in the Mekong River in recent years by upstream nations. Vietnam has recently suffered severe drought, saline intrusion and land sinking,” he added.

The Laotian government plans to start building the dam by the end of this year and have it operational by 2024. The 912 MW project is expected to generate 4,700 GWh of electricity per year, of which 90 per cent will be sold to Thailand and the remaining 10 per cent to Laos’ state-owned utility, Electricite du Laos.

“Laos should take additional time for consultation and temporarily delay the construction plan for Pak Beng Dam because all the environmental impact figures of the project are very backward, insufficient and fail to follow international standards,” said Dr Le Anh Tuan, deputy head of the Can Tho University Climate Change Research Institute.

“Therefore, all suggestion from Vietnamese and international experts about how to limit environmental impacts for the project seem meaningless,” he added.

“Pak Beng Dam will be built in a region prone to earthquakes. Within 10–20 years, an earthquake measuring 5 or 6 on the Richter scale could occur, and within 50 years, it would be stronger at 7 on the Richter scale. It is dangerous to build even one hydropower plant in the region,” said Professor Nguyen Ngoc Tran, former deputy head of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Commission.

The transboundary impact of Mekong River dams upstream include sudden changes in water level, flooding of riverbank gardens, drought and loss of traditional fish. The lower Mekong dams will drastically compound these impacts, turning 55 per cent of the lower stretch of the river into a series of reservoirs, blocking critical fish migration and the flow of nutrient-rich sediment necessary to sustain regional agriculture and food security.

“Pak Beng Reservoir will keep most of the alluvium and there will be no more for the Mekong River downstream,” said Dr Nguyen Anh Duc, director of the Mekong River Basin Development Support Centre.

“With all 11 hydropower dams operating, Chau Doc in An Giang Province will lose 65 per cent of alluvium and the Mekong Delta will disappear,” he added.

Additionally, Pak Beng Reservoir is designed to cover 97 square km and the water flow for fish will be so slow that most of the fish will be kept in the reservoir. “The dam will impact daily life of over 33 million local residents in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam,” environmental expert Nguyen Huu Thien said.

“Vietnam should prepare scenarios to cope with climate change, sea rising and impacts from hydropower dams on the Mekong River. We should request international support in protecting the Mekong River Delta,” said Nguyen Thanh Hung, deputy chairman of Dong Thap Province People’s Committee.

“There is an urgent need for regional governments to press the pause button on further dams on the Mekong mainstream, to take stock of projects already under construction, to conduct further studies on the transboundary and cumulative impacts of these projects and to re-consider the dangerous approach being taken towards dam development on the lower Mekong mainstream,” said Dr Duong Van Ni from Can Tho University.

“Energy development trends in Laos are indispensable because hydropower is the only natural resource for Laos,” Minister Ha added. “To stop construction of hydropower dams is nearly impossible but we should contribute our ideals to limit maximum impact,” he added.

The Pak Beng Dam is the northern most of 11 dams proposed for construction on the lower Mekong River mainstream, in Oudomxay Province, 100 km away from the northern Laotian town of Luang Prabang.

In 2007, China Datang Overseas Investment (Datang) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Laos to develop the Pak Beng Dam. Following this agreement, in March 2014, Datang received environmental permits from the Lao Government for the hydropower project.

A report obtained by International River in 2015, revealed construction activities under way on access roads and a bridge across the Mekong River from Pak Beng to Mung Gheurn in Xayaburi Province.

The rapid pace of dam development on the Lower Mekong mainstream – including the construction of the Xayaburi and Don Sahong Dams – has ignored calls from Mekong Governments, donors, scientists and concerned communities for further studies, transboundary impact assessments and participatory regional decision-making.

The assault, which began Friday and was being described as the biggest-ever cyber ransom attack, struck state agencies and major companies around the world — from Russian banks and British hospitals to FedEx and European car factories.

“The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” said Europol, Europe’s police agency.

Europol said a special task force at its European Cybercrime Centre was “specially designed to assist in such investigations and will play an important role in supporting the investigation”.

The attacks used ransomware that apparently exploited a security flaw in Microsoft operating systems, locking users’ files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Images appeared on victims’ screens demanding payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!”

Payment is demanded within three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received within seven days the files will be deleted, according to the screen message.

But experts and government alike warn against ceding to the hackers’ demands.

“Paying the ransom does not guarantee the encrypted files will be released,” the US Department of Homeland Security’s computer emergency response team said.

“It only guarantees that the malicious actors receive the victim’s money, and in some cases, their banking information.”

– ‘Painful’ –

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Experts and officials offered differing estimates of the scope of the attacks, but all agreed it was huge.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cyber security company F-Secure, told AFP it was the biggest ransomware outbreak in history, saying that 130,000 systems in more than 100 countries had been affected.

He said Russia and India were hit particularly hard, largely because Microsoft’s Windows XP — one of the operating systems most at risk — was still widely used there.

French police said there were “more than 75,000 victims” around the globe, but cautioned that the number could increase “significantly”.

The virus spread quickly because the culprits used a digital code believed to have been developed by the US National Security Agency — and subsequently leaked as part of a document dump, according to researchers at the Moscow-based computer security firm Kaspersky Lab.

Microsoft said the situation was “painful” and that it was taking “all possible actions to protect our customers”.

It issued guidance for people to protect their systems, while taking the highly unusual step of reissuing security patches first made available in March for Windows XP and other older versions of its operating system.

– Europe worst hit –

====================

US software firm Symantec said the majority of organisations affected were in Europe, and the attack was believed to be indiscriminate.

The companies and government agencies targeted were diverse.

In the United States, package delivery group FedEx said it was “implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible,” while French carmaker Renault was forced to stop production at sites in France, Slovenia and Romania.

Russia’s interior ministry said some of its computers had been hit by a “virus attack” and that efforts were underway to destroy it. The country’s banking system was also attacked, although no problems were detected, as was the railway system.

Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn said its station display panels were affected. Universities in Greece and Italy also were hit.

China’s network information safety working group sent a warning to universities about the cyber-attack and the National Internet Emergency Center suggested that users update Windows security patches.

Shanghai’s Fudan University received reports that a large number of school computers were infected with the virus.

– Accidental ‘kill switch’ –

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Kaspersky said it was “trying to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack — with the aim of developing a decryption tool as soon as possible.”

On Saturday, a cyber security researcher told AFP he had accidentally discovered a “kill switch” that could prevent the spread of the ransomware.

The researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, said registering a domain name used by the malware stops it from spreading, though it cannot help computers already affected.

“If you have anything to patch, patch it,” the researcher said in a blog post. “Now I should probably sleep.”

A hacking group called Shadow Brokers released the malware in April claiming to have discovered the flaw from the NSA, Kaspersky said.

“Unlike most other attacks, this malware is spreading primarily by direct infection from machine to machine on local networks, rather than purely by email,” said Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at the US technology group Ntrepid.

G7 finance ministers meeting in Italy vowed to unite against cyber crime, as it represented a growing threat to their economies and should be tackled as a priority. The danger will be discussed at the G7 leaders’ summit next month.

In Britain, the attack disrupted care at National Health Service facilities, forcing ambulances to divert and hospitals to postpone operations.

“There will be lessons to learn from what appears to be the biggest criminal cyber-attack in history,” Interior minister Amber Rudd said.

“But our immediate priority as a government is to disrupt the attack, restore affected services as soon as possible, and establish who was behind it so we can bring them to justice.”