Lin Taylor

Although the lid has been lifted on the brutal conditions in cyber-scam compounds across Southeast Asia, rescuing victims is still complicated and made ever more difficult because of U.S. aid cuts, says a leading expert.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked by criminal gangs to scam centres in recent years, the United Nations has said, where they have been forced to contact people via social media and messaging apps to lure them into making fraudulent investments, a scheme known as "pig butchering."

As the number of people fleeing war, poverty and climate disasters reach record levels worldwide, governments are increasingly turning to digital fixes to manage migration.

In April, Britain said it would use artificial intelligence to speed asylum decisions, arming caseworkers with country-specific advice and automated summaries of key interviews.

European countries have tightened migration policies this year, with more changes expected, despite a 38% drop in illegal migrant entries last year to the lowest level since 2021.

Elections this year have seen far-right, anti-migration parties grow in popularity and immigration remains a politically charged topic in the bloc's 27 member states.

Half of all charities that help women and girls risk folding this year due to savage aid cuts that could sever sexual health services, close schools and abandon the very poorest of the poor, the United Nations said last week.

International aid fell in 2024 for the first time in six years, and is set to plunge further this year after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign aid, and many other key donors announced cuts. 

Low pay, staff shortages and a tough job - no wonder Britain's care homes are struggling to fill vacancies.

Now, industry leaders say that could get even harder due to the British government's plans to prevent care sector firms from recruiting abroad - part of sweeping immigration reforms aimed at cutting net migration over the next four years.

Britain is hoping to clear a record backlog of asylum claims with artificial intelligence (AI), outsourcing life-and-death decisions to dehumanising technology, rights groups say.

As global displacement soars, Britain said it would deploy AI to speed asylum decisions, arming caseworkers with country-specific advice and summaries of key interviews.

Britain has said it will cut its foreign aid budget, prompting the resignation of its development minister and criticism from charities already grappling with the fallout from freezes to USAID funding.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week said he would slash the overseas development budget from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in order to boost Britain's defence spending. 

Profiteers have flooded social media with fake news and bogus videos since a powerful earthquake devastated Myanmar last month, exploiting the chaos with clickbait that can reap tens of thousands in ad revenues, digital activists say.

Be it sensational images that go viral or fake rescue tales, the schemes prey on the heightened fears and appetite for news that follow any disaster or outbreak of war.

The United States once led the world in running clinical trials that aimed to look like the nation at large. Now it is dumping equality goals and slashing health research, so experts are looking to Europe and Britain to plug the diversity gap.

Racial health inequality manifests in many ways - be it discriminatory treatment or higher death rates - but one glaring disparity kicks in at the get-go with the testing of all drugs, medical devices and treatments pre-launch. 

Tech giants Amazon, Google, TikTok and Meta are suppressing women's health content on their platforms, charities and businesses say, worried the erasure is entrenching a rollback of diversity policies and reproductive rights.

From women's health start-ups to reproductive healthcare groups, many say their social media posts are being censored, online paid advertisements rejected and digital accounts suspended.