Thailand has received 260 human trafficking victims, more than half of them Ethiopians, from Myanmar, its army said on Thursday, in a massive repatriation that comes amid a mounting crackdown on scam centers operating along a porous border.

Criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to work in illegal online operations generating billions annually across Southeast Asia, especially along the Thai-Myanmar border, according to the United Nations.

“After screening the group and verifying their nationalities, it was found that there were 20 nationalities,” the Thai army said in a statement, with 138 of them Ethiopians.

Although these illegal operations have been in place for years, Thai authorities renewed efforts last month after Chinese actor Wang Xing was abducted in Thailand, lured on the promise of an acting job.

He was later freed by Thai police who found him in Myanmar.

On Wednesday, a large group of trafficking victims who were sent back from Myanmar’s Myawaddy area were seen crossing the Moei River to Thailand, where they were directed onto Thai military vehicles as soldiers looked on.

The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a Myanmar rebel group based along the Thai border, said it had found around 260 people from unspecified “businesses” when its personnel looked for forced labor in areas under its control.

“We don’t know how they got here,” the outfit’s chief of staff Major Saw San Aung told Reuters. “We are continuing the search of forced labor, and we will send them back.”

Thailand earlier this month cut electricity, fuel and internet supply to parts of Myanmar where the illegal compounds operate, reflecting growing unease in Bangkok over the impact of scam centers on the vital tourism sector.

Sri Lanka extended power cuts for a third day on Thursday as it scrambled to restore its national grid to full capacity after a monkey triggered a widespread blackout over the weekend that disrupted supply to the island’s 22 million people.

An outage lasting six hours on Sunday was blamed by power minister, Kumara Jayakody, on a monkey that disrupted a grid station in a Colombo suburb. No power cuts were implemented on Wednesday, which was a holiday in Sri Lanka.

The animal had come into contact with the transformer at the station, disrupting supply to the entire country. There were no immediate details on whether the monkey survived the incident.

One-hour power cuts will be implemented from 6 p.m. (12:30 GMT), the island’s state-run power monopoly, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), said in a statement.

Sunday’s disruption also affected the island’s only 900 MW coal fired power plant, causing it to operate in safe mode, the CEB said.

“All efforts are being made to restore the grid to full capacity but power cuts will be implemented to manage peak demand hours in the night,” the CEB statement added.

Ninety-minute power cuts were implemented on Monday and Tuesday to manage demand. An investigation into the outage was being conducted by the energy ministry.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone struck the destroyed nuclear power plant at Chernobyl near Ukraine’s border with Belarus on Thursday night.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service later said that the radiation background limits remain within normal limits.

“A Russian attack drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the shelter protecting the world from radiation at the destroyed 4th power unit” at the plant, Zelensky said on X.

The concrete shelter that covers the unit was damaged, Zelensky added and a fire was extinguished. “Radiation levels have not increased and are being constantly monitored. According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant,” Zelensky said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said on X that shortly before 2 a.m. local time its team at the Chernobyl site “heard an explosion coming from the New Safe Confinement, which protects the remains of reactor 4 of the former Chernobyl NPP, causing a fire.”

“They were informed that a UAV [drone] had struck the NSC roof,” the IAEA added.

Unit 4 at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, sending extensive clouds of radioactivity across parts of the Soviet Union and Europe. It was later encased in a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

Altogether, on Thursday night, the Ukrainian military reported that Russia fired 133 drones at Ukraine, 73 of which were shot down and 58 did not reach their targets. The numbers are broadly in line with the recent average of drone attacks. It said drones were shot down in 11 regions, covering much of the country.

Zelensky said in his post that the nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure meant that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is definitely not preparing for negotiations — he is preparing to continue deceiving the world.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman was involved in a collision with a merchant ship near Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday night, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday.

It’s not clear what caused the collision between the US warship and the Panamanian-flagged vessel Besiktas-M, but the spokesperson said it did not result in any flooding on board the Truman and its nuclear propulsion plants were unaffected.

No injuries were reported on either vessel, though the merchant ship sustained some damage, a Navy official said.

An investigation is ongoing to determine how they collided, but the official noted that the area they were in near the Suez Canal is typically very densely packed with ships.

The Besiktas-M, a 617-foot (188-meter) long bulk carrier, had exited the Suez Canal and was heading to Romania, according to tracking website Marine Traffic.

The Truman, a 1,100-foot-long Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, was heading toward the canal, tracking data indicates.

Marine expert Sal Mercogliano, a professor at Campbell University, said in an X Spaces conversation that the area where the collision occurred, near an anchorage off Egypt’s Port Said, had around 100 ships in it at the time of the incident.

Former US Navy captain Carl Schuster, an instructor at Hawaii Pacific University, said such conditions leave little room for error.

“There is not a lot of room for maneuvering in a restricted seaway and both ships require about one nautical mile to stop,” Schuster said.

Small navigation mistakes, misreading of the other ship’s intentions or delayed decision-making from the crew of either ship could have put them in danger quickly “with very few viable options,” Schuster said.

Last week the Truman was in Souda Bay, Greece, for a “working port visit” after two months of combat operations in the Central Command region, a Navy statement said. During that time, it conducted multiple strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and launched airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia, the Navy said.

The Truman is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy fleet.

Accidents involving the huge ships and commercial vessels are rare as the carriers usually travel with a strike group, protected by a screen of destroyers.

But ships entering the Suez Canal must travel in single file, which could make them more vulnerable to a collision, experts said.

The last known time a US carrier collided with a merchant vessel was on July 22, 2004, when a dhow, a sailing vessel common in the Middle East, struck the former USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, according to maritime outlet USNI News.

Two US Navy destroyers were involved in fatal collisions in 2017. Seven sailors died after the USS Fitzgerald struck a cargo ship off Japan in June that year, and 10 sailors were killed when the USS John S McCain collided with a tanker off Singapore and Malaysia two months later.

Pope Francis will go into the hospital in Rome for treatment for bronchitis and medical examinations, the Vatican said Friday, the latest in a string of ailments that have raised concerns about the 88-year-old pontiff’s health.

“This morning, at the end of the audiences, Pope Francis will be admitted to the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic for some necessary diagnostic tests and to continue in a hospital setting treatment for bronchitis that is still ongoing,” the Vatican said.

Francis has made a number of visits to the hospital in recent years, and received abdominal surgery in 2023. He has been struggling with bronchitis in recent weeks and has asked aides to read speeches and addresses.

The latest diagnosis of bronchitis will cause particular worries for the Roman Catholic Church, because Francis has suffered from lung-related issues for much of his life. As a young man, the Argentinian leader suffered from severe pneumonia and had part of one lung removed.

Francis became pope in 2013, the first pontiff from South America. More recently he has been seen with a walking stick and sometimes uses a wheelchair. Last month, he suffered a fall and injured his arm.

Francis also suffers from diverticulitis, a common condition that can cause the inflammation or infection of the colon. In 2021, he had surgery to remove part of his colon.

Despite his medical issues Francis has kept up a busy calendar of events, including a 12-day visit of four countries in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. That trip was one of the longest any pope has embarked on and marked the furthest geographical distance (about 20,000 miles) that Francis has traveled since being chosen as the leader of the Catholic Church.

Last week, it was announced that the pope would meet King Charles III in April.