World News: 24 November 2022

Two Estonians accused of €560 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme
The accused duo, Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turygin, both 37, are thought to have defrauded hundreds of thousands of victims through a multi-faceted scheme.
The department said that the two lured their victims into fraudulent equipment rental contracts with the defendants' cryptocurrency mining service called HashFlare.
Potapenko and Turygin also made victims invest in a fake virtual currency bank called Polybius Bank, which never paid out the promised dividends, the Justice Department said.
The US authorities further claimed that the victims paid over $575m to the alleged fraudster's companies and that they both subsequently used shell companies to launder the fraud proceeds and to purchase real estate and luxury cars.

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China’s daily COVID-19 cases hit record high at 31,600
The previous record high of 29,411 cases was registered on April 14. According to the agency’s statement, 87% of those infected recorded over the past 24 hours are symptomless carriers.
According to published data, on November 23, one more individual died of coronavirus in China with a total of 5,232 fatalities. The spread of the coronavirus infection in China has noticeably intensified recently.

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Afghans sedating hungry children and selling organs
The UN has said a humanitarian "catastrophe" is now unfolding in Afghanistan.
A majority of the men in the area outside Herat work as daily wage labourers. They have been leading difficult lives for years.
But when the Taliban took over last August, with no international recognition for the new de-facto government, foreign funds flowing into Afghanistan were frozen, triggering an economic collapse which left the men with no work on most days.
On the rare day they do find work, they make roughly 100 Afghanis, or just over $1 (£0.83).
Everywhere we went, we found people being forced to take extreme steps to save their families from hunger.

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India police say rats ate 200kg of seized cannabis
In 2018, eight Argentinian police officers were fired after they blamed mice for the disappearance of half a ton of cannabis from a police warehouse. But experts disputed the claim, saying that the animals were unlikely to confuse the drug for food and "if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse".

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Long-time reformist leader Anwar sworn in as Malaysian PM
Anwar was a former deputy prime minister whose sacking and imprisonment in the 1990s led to massive street protests and a reform movement that became a major political force. Thursday marked his reformist bloc's second victory — its first being the historic 2018 polls that led to the first regime change since Malaysia's independence from Britain in 1957.
Anwar was in prison at the time for a sodomy charge he said was politically motivated. He was pardoned and was due to take over from Mahathir Mohamad. But the government collapsed after Muhyiddin defected and joined hands with UMNO to form a new government.

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Gold coin proves 'fake' Roman emperor was real
Discovered in 1713, the gold aurei coins had been declared poor forgeries in the mid-19th century by the leading expert at the time, a man named Henry Cohen, due to many irregularities. They differ in manufacture and style to authentic coins of their period, for example, vary considerably in weight, have mixed up motifs and messed up inscriptions.
Imitations of Roman coins were made outside of the empire at the time, and again during the Renaissance period as clearly fake trinkets. Later, more realistic forgeries were produced with simulated wear intended to trick wealthy coin collectors.
The weight of the gold in the 1713 collection exceeds US$20,000 in modern value. Three of the four coins stored at The Hunterian Museum in Scotland for the past two centuries depict actual emperors, including one known as Philip the Arab, but the fourth features the mystery man.

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