BANGKOK (AP) — It often starts with a text message asking if you are available on weekends, looking for a part-time job or you get a simple “hello” from an unknown number. Halfway across the world, a laborer is usually pulling in 12-16 hour days, sending non-stop messages, hoping someone will take the bait.

The ultimate goal is always to take your money — victims have lost tens of billions to scams and hundreds of thousands of people are in forced labor to keep the schemes going. These workers are often housed in massive complexes scattered across southeast Asia, where the industry has flourished.

Here is why rooting out the scamming industry is such a complex issue:

The crackdown in Myanmar

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Congressional Budget Office on Thursday confirmed it had been hacked, potentially disclosing important government data to malicious actors.

The small government office, with some 275 employees, provides objective, impartial analysis to support lawmakers during the budget process. It is required to produce a cost estimate for nearly every bill approved by a House or Senate committee and will weigh in earlier when asked to do so by lawmakers.

Caitlin Emma, a spokeswoman for the CBO said in a written statement that the agency “has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward.”

The Washington Post first wrote the story on the CBO hack, stating that the intrusion was done by a suspected foreign actor, citing four anonymous people familiar with the situation.

MONTREAL - A former researcher with Quebec's hydro utility who is facing economic espionage charges said Thursday he was applying for work at universities in China as a contingency plan because he was unhappy at Hydro-Québec.

Yuesheng Wang, 38, maintained under cross-examination that there was nothing nefarious about his interest in moving back to China. He explained that it was tied to Hydro-Québec's unwillingness to extend his work visa for more than year at a time and his experience at the institute around 2017 and 2018.

“At that time, my thinking was if I’m not happy at Hydro-Québec, going back to China to be a full professor was one of my options," Wang testified.

The Crown argued that Wang, while he was working at Hydro-Québec, applied to work at Chinese universities under the framework of the Thousand Talents program, a recruitment tool used by the Chinese government to attract foreign-trained scientists to return to work in China.

Religious groups can relax: the federal government is not planning to remove their charitable tax status.

Not that it ever planned to do that. But now we have an official word from the office of Liberal MP Karina Gould, chair of the House of Commons Finance Committee, that it’s not going to happen.

In an email to Al Postma, the Canadian executive director of the Christian Reformed Church (a copy of which I have seen), her office stated there is no plan to remove religion as a charitable purpose from the Canadian Income Tax Act.

Charitable status for religious organizations “is not under review, and this government has no plans to change that,” her office said. “Any suggestion otherwise is false.”

In the Psalms, lament is seen as a way to express sorrow, pain, and frustration to God while maintaining an underlying trust in God’s character and promises.

In that respect, then Struck Down, Not Destroyed, a new book by 31-year-old Vatican correspondent Colleen Dulle, is a book of lament.

That’s the view of Jesuit priest and author James Martin. In his preface to Dulle’s book, Martin said that “her account of her work as a conscientious and faithful reporter in the Catholic Church that has been roiled by scandal and stained by sin has more than a hint of the biblical practice of lament running throughout it.”

Despite those scandals, and the cover-ups that accompanied them, Dulle managed to keep her faith — while at the same time recognizing “the injustices and unjust structures that often belie our claim to be the people of God,” he added.

It was just over a decade ago that the Winnipeg “cradle to grave” social service agency, Jewish Child and Family Service, launched its comprehensive addiction-services program and hired its first ever addiction-services co-ordinator.

In the years since, those services have expanded, evolved and offered support to numerous individuals and families struggling with addictions and hoping for healing.

The program takes place within the confines of safe and nurturing environments committed to the idea that Jewish spirituality, values and teachings have a critical role to play in recovery.

The annual Serenity Shabbat — which takes place today, following National Addictions Awareness Week — is part of this program.