内容摘要：In Kwoyo in Homa Bay County, Linet Achieng worries about her 71-year-old mother, who left home to join the Migori church 11 years ago and never returned.

In Kwoyo in Homa Bay County, Linet Achieng worries about her 71-year-old mother, who left home to join the Migori church 11 years ago and never returned.

booming online cyber-scam operationsin Southeast Asia – an industry that is believed to have enslaved tens of thousands of workers lured with the promise of decently paid jobs in online sales and the information technology industry.

“When I got there, I saw a lot of Africans in the office, with a lot of phones,” Khobby told Al Jazeera, recounting his arrival in Laos.“Each person had 10 phones, 15 phones. That was when I realised this was aThe operation Khobby found himself working for was in a remote area in northwest Laos, where a casino city has been carved out of a patch of jungle in the infamous “Golden Triangle” region – the lawless border zone between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand that has long been a centre for global drug production and trafficking.

He said he was forced to work long days and sleep in a dormitory with five other African workers at night during the months he spent at the scam centre in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone.Khobby recounted the original message he received from an acquaintance encouraging him to take the job in Laos.

“My company is hiring new staff”, he said, adding that he was told the salary was $1,200 per month.

“He told me it was data entry.”The planet is 8.6 times heavier than Earth, and 2.6 times as large. Critically, it sits in what is known as the “Goldilocks Zone” of its sun: that’s the region around a star where a planet’s temperature could, in theory, support water in its liquid form on the surface.

In 2023, Cambridge astronomers found methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the planet.That was the first time that carbon-based molecules had been discovered in the atmosphere of any planet in the habitable zone of its sun – the distance from a sun where it’s neither too hot, nor too cold, and so possible for life to survive. The scientists said that a surface covered first by an ocean, and then a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, would explain the presence of carbon-based molecules. Simply put, it was possible that the planet could have water.

What have the scientists found now?Researchers have now found much harder evidence suggesting that the planet might not only have the conditions to host life – but could, at least in theory, be hosting life itself.