What happened
The UK government has begun chartering flights from Oman to bring home British nationals caught up in the escalating conflict between Iran, the US and Israel. One aircraft departed Muscat yesterday, with further departures planned in the coming days.

Since the war broke out on Saturday, “more than 130,000 Britons have registered their interest with the UK government in being helped to leave the region” – including 112,000 in the United Arab Emirates – said Ella Kipling on the BBC. Regional airspace closures following missile and drone attacks have grounded or diverted the bulk of commercial services, leaving travellers stranded across the Persian Gulf. Passengers offered seats on the government flights must cover the cost.

Who said what
The Foreign Office said it would “continue to work with airlines to find more routes for people to return home”, and is urging people to avoid non-essential trips to the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Stranded traveller Poppy Cleary said: “I registered, I paid the £350 and then I never heard back.” She said she had not been informed that she had missed out.

What next?
Officials say more flights will follow, although demand currently exceeds capacity.

What happened
More than 225 million children could be obese by 2040 unless drastic steps are taken globally, an international report has warned. Last year about 180 million children around the world were classed as obese, but new data from the World Obesity Federation suggests that within the next 14 years, about 227 million of all five- to 19-year-olds will fall into that health category.

Who said what
It’s wrong to “condemn a generation to obesity and the chronic and potentially fatal non-communicable diseases that often go with it”, said World Obesity Federation chief executive Johanna Ralston.

Experts have welcomed the report, noted The Guardian. Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, regional adviser for nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the World Health Organization, Europe, said childhood obesity was a “failure of environments”. Childhood obesity is “not inevitable”, said Katharine Jenner, executive director of the Obesity Health Alliance.

What next?
The report is demanding changes, and warns: “Without urgent action, rising obesity rates will place a growing strain on health systems, communities and future generations.” Wickramasinghe has called for mandatory, rather than voluntary, marketing restrictions or front-of-pack labelling.

Prosecutors in Taiwan indicted 62 people on Wednesday for their alleged links to the Prince Group, a multinational network that is accused of running a vast system of scam centres out of Cambodia.

Scam centres across Southeast Asia have become so powerful and entrenched that they are now developing into “scam states”.

Scam states are similar to narco states, which are countries where the entire government and economy become profoundly corrupted and controlled by the illegal drug trade.

A “scam state” is a country where an “illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into legitimate institutions, reshaping the economy, corrupting governments and establishing state reliance on an illegal network”, said The Guardian. They’re growing in number because the “multi-billion-dollar global scam industry” has become “so monolithic”.

After beginning as small online fraud rings, scamming has transformed into a sprawling, industrial-scale criminal economy in parts of Southeast Asia, an illicit industry that has penetrated local financial systems and institutions to a degree that rivals some of the world’s most entrenched illegal trades.

The US and UK have launched joint efforts – like the Scam Center Strike Force – to take on the illegal networks and the infrastructure supporting them, but dismantling scam states is a complex task.

Analysts warn that without targeting the leadership and financial core of these networks, law enforcement may merely displace the problem rather than eliminate it. The rise of scam states highlights a new frontier of organised crime – one that intertwines digital innovation, exploitation and corruption on a vast scale.