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Thousands of workers flee Cambodia scam centres, officials say

Thousands of people, including suspected victims of human trafficking, are estimated to have been released or escaped from scam compounds across Cambodia over recent days, after growing international pressure to crackdown on the multibillion-dollar industry. The Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh said it had received reports from 1,440 of its nationals who had been released from scam centres, while large queues of Chinese nationals were also seen outside the Chinese embassy. Amnesty International said it had geolocated 15 videos and images, and reviewed social media posts that appear to show escape attempts and releases at least 10 scamming compounds across Cambodia. There are no exact figures for the numbers released, but Amnesty estimates it to be in the thousands. It is hard to determine what role the police are playing in the releases, said Amnesty’s regional research director Montse Ferrer, who added that in some videos police are visible, while in other footage they cannot be seen. There is concern about the lack of support for workers who have been released, Ferrer added. Some have been seen “walking around in search of assistance – and we also know that some people have managed to get to safe houses,” she said. Without support there is a risk of workers simply being moved to a new scamming location – a trend in previous releases. “We’ve seen people who are forced to move to other compounds, and it’s possible that if people have escaped but don’t know where to go, don’t know what to do next, [then they] end up in another compound.” The online scam industry has flourished across parts of south-east Asia over recent years, including in Cambodia, where the UN estimates 100,000 work inside compounds. Many workers have been duped into accepting jobs in the compounds, and are then held against their will and forced to carry out online scams, including romance-investment scams and crypto fraud. Jacob Sims, visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center, described the recent releases as unprecedented in Cambodia. “It is extremely clear that this is all being precipitated by escalating international pressure, which has been mounting for years, but really started exponentially increasing with the historic UK and US October 14 action against Chen Zhi.” Chen Zhi, a Chinese-born Cambodian tycoon, was sanctioned by the UK and the US in October last year, with the US accusing him of operating a “transnational criminal empire through online investment scams targeting Americans and others worldwide”. Chen, who chairs Prince Group, was arrested and extradited to China earlier this month, the strongest step yet to be taken against criminal syndicates inside Cambodia. The Cambodian government did not respond to a request for comment regarding the recent releases. Prime minister Hun Manet has pledged on Facebook to “eliminate … all the problems related to the crime of cyber scams”. Sims said that while the latest releases are promising, the problem will simply re-emerge if international pressure is not maintained. “This industry obviously has gotten to the point where it’s sort of too big to fail. It’s a major regime patrimonial resource,” said Sims, who is also a senior adviser on transnational crime at Inca Digital, an open-source intelligence company. “What happens from here, a lot of that is going to depend on how sustained and durable this pressure remains against the regime,” he added. The Cambodian government has repeatedly been accused of being complicit in the scam industry. The US Trafficking in Persons Report for 2024 warned of Cambodia: “Some senior government officials and advisers owned – either directly or through businesses – properties and facilities known to be utilized by online scam operators used to exploit victims in labor trafficking and financially benefited directly from these crimes.” The involvement of “officials and economic elites resulted in selective and politically motivated enforcement of laws, inhibiting effective law enforcement action against trafficking crimes,” it said. Cambodia has denied suggestions its government is complicit, saying it has “never supported, nor will it ever tolerate, cybercriminal activity” and that it “remains fully committed to integrity, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law and international norms.” According to estimates by United States Institute of Peace, in Cambodia, the return on cyber scamming is estimated to exceed $12.5bn annually, half the country’s formal GDP.

Wednesday briefing: Can we afford to be optimistic about grassroots music venues?

Good morning. The music industry has long been one of the UK’s successful export stories, whether it was the British invasion of the US spearheaded by the Beatles and the Stones in the 1960s or the contemporary success of the likes of Adele and Ed Sheeran. In recent years, however, there has been a steady drumbeat of doom in the background. Artists have concerns about artificial intelligence slop replacing them, they face dwindling earning power due to paltry streaming royalty rates, and crucially, there has been a contraction in the number of venues where musicians can hone their craft and build a fanbase. The Music Venue Trust (MVT) is a charity that works to protect, secure and improve the UK’s grassroots music venues (GMVs). Ahead of the publication of its annual report (pdf) this morning, I spoke to founder and CEO chair Mark Davyd to discuss the progress the MVT has made in safeguarding GMVs, and what he believes could be improved to keep the UK’s music scene thriving for the decades ahead. First, here are the headlines. Five big stories UK news | The government has approved the construction of a vast new Chinese embassy complex in east London despite concerns about security and its impact on political exiles in the capital. Chagos Island | Donald Trump has suggested Britain’s decision to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is among the reasons he wants to take over Greenland. Social trends | Rightwing movements are struggling to gain support among graduates as education emerges as the most important dividing line in British attitudes towards politics, diversity and immigration. Middle East | Israeli crews have started bulldozing the Jerusalem headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and fired teargas at a UN vocational school in Qalandia in the West Bank. US news | An Indiana state court judge and his wife were in stable condition on Monday as authorities continued to search for suspects who shot the couple the day before at their Lafayette home. In depth: ‘There is language from this government that suggests doors are opening’ Last night I was at the V&A in Kensington for the launch of the Music Venue Trust’s annual report. V&A director Tristram Hunt pointed out the museum would host a Lost Music Venues exhibition this year, Liberal Democrat culture spokesperson Anna Sabine pointed out nobody from Labour had come, Glenn Tilbrook did a whistle-stop Squeeze greatest hits accompanied by his son Leon, and I embarrassed myself by being too much of a fanboy when I spotted, then clumsily introduced myself, to The Anchoress. More importantly than all that, the numbers in the new MVT report suggest the live music scene could be on the verge of recovery, but Davyd is keen not to overstate the improvement in fortunes in 2025. “I wouldn’t say we’ve turned the corner,” he tells me. “But I think I would say that we are at least peering round a corner.” *** Reasons to be cheerful On the face of it, there are reasons for cautious optimism. Audiences are back, more gigs are being staged, and the rate at which venues are disappearing has slowed. Over the year covered by the report, 30 venues permanently closed and 48 stopped operating as grassroots music venues – but 69 new or revived spaces joined the network, meaning the overall decline eased. Activity across the sector is higher than it was in the bleak post-pandemic years of 2023 and 2024. But beneath that surface recovery, the financial foundations remain dangerously thin. More than half of grassroots music venues made no profit at all in 2025, and the average profit margin across the sector was just 2.5%. Live music itself is still often structurally loss-making, with many venues subsidising gigs through bar sales, food and other income streams. *** This is not a love song The sounds coming out of government, Davyd says, are more positive than they have been for years. Officials at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have been broadly supportive since the trust was founded more than a decade ago, but he believes something has shifted politically. “There is language from this government that suggests doors are opening,” he says. “The creative industries sector plan was fantastic for grassroots venues.” Ministers, he says, now clearly recognise the role small venues play not just in developing artists – the “talent pipeline” – but also as “drivers of local community engagement and social cohesion”. The problem, he says, is turning that recognition into policy. “Has that yet resulted in government policies that are really taking the opportunity to build something on it? Not so far.” Davyd points to business rates as a case in point. “We have been saying for 10 years you need a specific category for music venues, otherwise they are assessed as more commercial entities and will eventually be forced out of the premises. The business rate review got announced, and that wasn’t done. So we are now currently trying to help the government and the Treasury understand exactly how that’s gone wrong – and what they can do to unravel it.” *** Stand by me By far the biggest shock in the 2025 report is not about rents or energy bills, but employment. The sector lost almost 6,000 jobs in a single year – a 19% contraction – after the government lowered the threshold at which employers start paying national insurance contributions. “I think if we were talking about a 19% downturn in employment in just about any other sector of industry it would be headline news,” Davyd says. “In one year 6,000 people lost their jobs. That is absolutely shocking and should never have happened.” He describes it as a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. “I don’t think anybody sat down to write a national insurance policy intended to make people lose their jobs in grassroots live music, but they took a general approach which failed to recognise the specifics of this sector.” Those specifics, he explains, are that much of the workforce is young and freelance, juggling two, three or even four low-paid jobs across different venues. “People are earning between £5,000 and £10,000 from each employer, and when the threshold dropped, suddenly all of those jobs became liable for national insurance.” What really alarms him is who was hit. “The sad part about that, and the bit that really should worry everybody, is the fact that those 6,000 jobs were almost exclusively in the 18 to 25-year-old bracket.” These are the trainees and future technicians, bookers and promoters of the industry – the people who get their first foot in the door by doing the lights, working the bar or taking tickets at a small venue. “They’re losing future skills and staff,” Davyd says. “In 10 years’ time we will have a shrunk workforce across the whole music industry because of what happened in this one sector in 2025.” *** This town ain’t big enough The report paints a picture of a sector that is busier and better organised, but also shows how the national touring circuit continues to retreat into a handful of major cities, leaving 175 towns and cities – home to about 25 million people – without regular visits from professional touring artists. Davyd calls it a map of cultural “haves and have-nots”, with local audiences and emerging musicians alike cut off from the ecosystem that once sustained them. Music Venue Trust is trying to plug those gaps through emergency grants, advice and new touring schemes. In Margate, the grassroots venue Where Else? credits the trust with helping it survive a crisis with its landlord. Its co-founder Sammy Clarke says the intervention “didn’t just solve an immediate crisis; they helped us build a more secure financial footing for the future”. Yet the NME reported the venue has recently had to resort to crowdfunding to try to stay afloat – a reminder of how little headroom most operators have. *** There is a light that never goes out For Davyd – and myself – this is not an abstract policy problem. I am an enthusiastic gig-goer myself, and while I enjoy seeing the heritage acts I loved in the 80s and 90s in big arenas, I still love discovering new artists in small rooms – Dog Race, the New Eves, and the aptly named Desperate Journalist have all deeply impressed me in recent years. Davyd traces his own life in music back to walking into the 100 Club as a teenager. “It was the first time probably my entire life I ever felt, ‘Oh yeah, I actually belong somewhere.’” He went on to open the Tunbridge Wells Forum and to build his career around live bands. “I just get such a buzz out being in a small room with 200 or 300 people. I love that moment when the band plays the song you’re all waiting for and you all start singing it together.” That, he says, is what is at stake. Despite everything, he believes the opportunity still exists to do more than simply keep venues on life support. “I think we genuinely could pick up on a huge opportunity to actually start restoring this network – not just stabilising it. So we’re pretty optimistic about 2026. But it does require some actions.” Guardian live Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US? On Wednesday 21 January, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan, Anand Menon and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path. Book tickets here What else we’ve been reading Iranians are still being cut off from the world with the state-enforced internet blackout. But a brave protester has been able to get their words out against the odds. Aamna Our picture desk has gathered together the 20 winning photographs from the Portrait of Britain photography awards. Martin Donald Trump made 10 key pledges a year ago. What has happened since? David Smith breaks it down. Aamna Amy Hawkins takes a long look at the morbid sounding Are You Dead? app which has become a sensation in China among lonely and isolated people. Martin Technology has changed how we live in profound ways, Tom Gill writes. For those desperate to connect, check out his tips to help us feel more human. Aamna Sport Football | Arsenal confirmed their place in the last 16 of the Champions League without the need for a playoff with an impressive 3-1 win at Inter. Kasper Høgh scored twice before Rodri was sent off as Manchester City were outclassed 3-1 by Bodø/Glimt, with Pep Guardiola admitting “everything is going wrong”. Tennis | Emma Raducanu crashed out of the Australian Open in the second round with a poor 7-6 (3), 6-2 loss to Anastasia Potapova after a tepid, error-strewn performance in Melbourne. You can follow today’s latest Australian Open action with our live blog. Golf | Luke Donald will hold talks with senior officials at the European Tour Group this week in Dubai, as the Englishman edges closer to a third stint as Europe’s Ryder Cup captain. The front pages “Europe condemns Trump threats on Greenland as ‘new colonialism’” is the Guardian’s print lead today. The Financial Times has “Rift with Europe deepens as Trump warns ‘no going back’ on Greenland”. The Times seems more relaxed: “We’ll work something out, Trump tells Nato”. Practicalities in the i paper: “RAF and Navy in talks to join Nato force in Arctic”. “Online rant stuns the world” – the Metro is talking about guess who, talking about Britain ceding Diego Garcia to Mauritius. On that topic the Telegraph runs with “Fix your country, Trump tells Starmer” while the Express goes to Kemi Badenoch for an opinion: “PM ‘out of his depth in the new world order’”. “MI5 warning to kowtow Keir” – the Mail says the PM faces “fury” over the approval of China’s London “mega-embassy”. “Moment Brooklyn snapped – this ends now” – that’s the Mirror on the Beckham feud if you’re interested. Today in Focus How we got hooked on The Traitors Elle Hunt on the success of the BBC’s hit reality show Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Britain saw a record number of archaeological and treasure finds in 2024, largely due to metal detectorists. Significant discoveries included a hoard of pennies linked to Harold II and buried around 1066, a rare Roman vehicle fitting, and early medieval objects. The British Museum reported that 94% of finds were reported by the public, demonstrating the contribution of metal detecting enthusiasts to preserving the nation’s history. The 179 silver penny hoard, containing only coins from Harold II’s short reign, is notable among discoveries from the politically tumultuous 1060s. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv to replace Chinese-made Mavic drones

Ukraine’s new defence minister has announced troops will begin fielding a homegrown replacement for the Chinese-made DJI Mavic drone. Reliance on China for drones and components has been a major concern for Ukraine given Beijing’s close relationship with Moscow. The retail-grade Mavic is used widely for aerial reconnaissance on the frontlines by both sides, even though Ukraine already builds many of its own “suicide” attack drones – as well as defensive versions used to take down Russian drones. Mavic drones are prized by Ukrainian army units, who are often supported by volunteer groups that continuously run campaigns to source Mavics and raise funds to buy them. Mykhailo Fedorov, the defence minister, said: “We will have our own Mavic analogue: the same camera, but with a longer flight range.” Fedorov did not disclose the manufacturer of the Ukrainian version. Fedorov on Tuesday promised a sweeping data-driven overhaul of Ukraine’s military to reward commanders achieving results on the battlefield and give Ukrainian forces the upper hand. Fedorov said he would start by overhauling the vast defence ministry’s management and spending, emphasising the importance of “the mathematics of war”. He promised a mission control system for drone flights and for artillery crews to increase the data available about crews’ performance and effectiveness. Fedorov said Ukraine would establish a system allowing its allies to train their military artificial intelligence models on Kyiv’s combat data collected throughout the war including combat statistics and millions of hours of video taken by drones. Overnight Russian strikes on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed a 77-year-old man and a 72-year-old woman, and wounded a 53-year-old woman, said Oleksandr Ganzha, the head of the regional military administration. The missile and drone attack also damaged several buildings, he added. Kryvyi Rih, is about 80km (50 miles) from the frontline and is the hometown of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Earlier, a Russian air attack cut power to more than a million Kyiv residents and affected substations carrying power from Ukraine’s nuclear plants on Tuesday. Ukrainian officials had warned in recent days that Moscow would target nuclear-related facilities. The UN atomic watchdog said several substations critical for nuclear safety were affected by the attack, while power lines to some other nuclear plants were affected. Drone and missile strikes killed four people: three in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia and one in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital. Other regions in the east, south and north of Ukraine also came under attack. “In Kyiv alone, as of this evening, more than one million households remain without power,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his Tuesday evening address. “And a significant number of buildings have no heating, more than 4,000 apartment buildings.” Authorities in the northern region of Chernihiv bordering Russia said 87% of the population was without power. All off-site power was also temporarily lost at the Chornobyl plant – where the reactor destroyed in the world’s worst civil nuclear catastrophe is entombed and requires constant monitoring for safety. “While Russian officials speak about the ‘importance’ of power lines, their forces deliberately strike substations, directly endangering nuclear safety,” said Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha. A new round of peace talks at the weekend between US and Ukrainian officials was followed on Tuesday by a meeting at Davos in Switzerland between envoys for presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Kiril Dmitriev, the Russian envoy, said their meeting on a possible peace deal to end the war had been “very positive” and “constructive” and claimed that “more and more people are realising that Russia’s position is right”. Dmitriev met Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Zelenskyy urged the US to pile more pressure on Moscow, saying it had “not yet had the strength” to stop Russia. “Can America do more? It can, and we really want this, and we believe that the Americans are capable of doing this,” said the Ukrainian president. Zelenskyy said some of the Russian missiles fired on Tuesday had been produced this year and called for tougher sanctions on Moscow to curb its production. He said he was ready to travel to Davos if Washington was ready to sign documents on security guarantees for Ukraine and a postwar prosperity plan.

Iran’s central bank using vast quantities of cryptocurrency championed by Farage, says report

Iran’s central bank appears to have been using vast quantities of a cryptocurrency championed by Nigel Farage, according to a new report. Elliptic, a crypto analytics company, said it had traced at least $507m (£377m) of cryptocurrency issued by Tether – a company touted by the Reform UK leader – passing through accounts that appear to be controlled by Iran’s central bank. Elliptic’s report tracked what it says is the Iranian central bank’s “systematic accumulation” of Tether stablecoins, a type of crypto that is pegged to the dollar so it can easily be exchanged for hard currency. This pointed to “a sophisticated strategy to bypass the global banking system”, perhaps to trade or to prop up the rial, Iran’s currency. With thousands confirmed dead in the brutal suppression of protests, the Iranian regime’s apparent use of Tether’s stablecoins raises questions for Farage about his support for the cryptocurrency. In September, Farage revealed he was planning to raise Tether during a meeting with the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey. “I’m going to go tomorrow to say this,” Farage told LBC radio. “You know, Tether is a stablecoin. Stablecoins are the way which money goes from conventional currencies through into cryptocurrencies and back again. Tether is about to be valued as a $500bn company.” Farage criticised Bailey for imposing restrictions on crypto and urged the UK to catch up with the US, where Donald Trump, who chose Howard Lutnick, Tether’s banker, as his commerce secretary, has reversed efforts to police digital currencies. Farage added: “You know, stablecoins, crypto – this world is enormous, and I’ve been urging for years that London should embrace it. We should become a global trading centre for this stuff, under proper regulation.” One of Tether’s major shareholders, the tech investor Christopher Harborne, is Reform’s biggest donor. His lawyers said Harborne, who does not hold an executive post at Tether, is not responsible for illicit activities by its users. Suggestions that Harborne profits from Iran’s use of Tether stablecoins were “baseless drivel”, the lawyers said. A spokesperson for Reform UK said “many companies and organisations across the globe” use Tether. They added: “All donations to Reform UK comply with electoral law and regulations. We stringently vet each donation. We continue to actively support the Iranian people in their fight for freedom.” Booming demand for Tether’s stablecoin – known as USDT – has generated huge returns from the real-currency reserves the company holds to maintain its peg to the dollar. Tether’s $13bn annual profits are one-and-a-half times those of McDonald’s. Some of that demand comes from illicit sources. In the face of US, UN and other sanctions that make it difficult to trade, buy foreign currency and hold accounts with most banks, it seems Iranians and their rulers have turned to Tether’s stablecoins. Last year, Israel revealed what it said were dozens of crypto accounts used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. That prompted a prominent Iranian businessman to complain on X about the regime’s failure to keep its dealings secret. His post contained two crypto account numbers the businessman said were used by Iran’s central bank. It was through this apparently inadvertent disclosure that Elliptic’s researchers found connections between 50 accounts, concluding with a “high level of confidence” that they were controlled by Iran’s central bank. A Tether representative did not address questions about Iranian central bank use of its stablecoins, but said: “Tether maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward the criminal use of our financial products.” The representative said Tether followed US sanctions guidelines. “We work closely with law enforcement globally to identify and promptly, upon request, freeze assets to prevent further movement whenever they are identified to be in connection to illegal activity or illicit actors.” They added that Tether has collaborated with more than 310 law enforcement agencies across 62 countries and frozen more than $3.4bn in assets “linked to criminal activity”. Tether has frozen the suspected Revolutionary Guards accounts identified by Israel last year but most of those that appear to have been used by the Iranian central bank seem to remain active.

‘Nostalgia is not a strategy’: Mark Carney is emerging as the unflinching realist ready to tackle Trump

For much of Mark Carney’s career as an economist and central banker, he existed at the nexus of global thinkers and multilateral institutions. The “rockstar banker” was a fixture at summits, where he spoke beside business leaders and the political elite, espousing the values of international cooperation and the need for open economies and shared rules. But after less than a year as prime minister of Canada, Carney offered a blunter assessment of the world on Tuesday: “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” In a wide-ranging speech that was at times elegiac for the predictable rules-based order, Carney laid out a doctrine for a world of fractured international norms, warning “compliance will not buy safety”. “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it,” he said. “Nostalgia is not a strategy.” The remarks, delivered to politicians, media and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were received with a standing ovation. While they did not explicitly mention Donald Trump, Carney nonetheless alluded to growing frustration and concern that the White House is eager to dismantle and weaken the “the architecture of collective problem solving” that has defined much of the past eight decades. “Leaders in other western capitals have alluded to ‘dangerous departures’ Trump has taken from norms, but they always return to the possibility that he can be appeased or accommodated. Mr Carney has exposed that as simply inaccurate,” said Jack Cunningham, a professor of international relations at the University of Toronto. Leaders increasingly realise they will not be able to “manage” Trump for the remainder of his term, says Cunningham, and are reckoning with the fact that the systems of international order that the US helped craft are crumbling. “Carney is the first major western leader to basically acknowledge the reality. A lot of leaders abroad are looking for somebody to set a direction. And this speech is planting a flag.” Canada’s prime minister warned that the “great powers”, a thinly veiled reference to the US, have started using economic integration as “weapons”, with “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said. In recent days, Trump has threatened to place levies on European nations that oppose his bid to seize control of Greenland. But Carney also warned against diplomatic and economic retreats, telling attendees that a world of “fortresses” will be poorer and less sustainable. “The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious,” he said. “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu” Much of Carney’s rapid rise from economist to world leader is centred on a thesis that geographic proximity, tight economic integration and longstanding political alliances with the US no longer guarantee prosperity and security. But the speech, written by the prime minister himself, comes as the two nations prepare for a protracted trade negotiations and Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada. “Carney understands that while there’s no need to poke him in the eye, there’s also no need to excessively flatter the president,” said Cunningham. “The prime minister knows that Trump’s commitment and his words are essentially worthless. He can- and often does, go back on them on a whim. And so this is a position we are being forced into by growing American unreliability.” Carney touted his government’s recent trade mission to China, where he courted Chinese investment in Canada’s oil sector and dramatically scaled back tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, the latter of which signalled a break with US policy. But as Canada shifts to become more “principled and pragmatic” in its dealings with other nations, Carney laid out his vision for how his government and other middle-power countries could navigate the tumultuous and unpredictable nature of global politics. “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms,” he said. “Middle powers do not.” Carney said he would pursue a policy of “variable geometry”, which involves forming different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests. Carney pointed to billions spent in support of Ukraine’s defence and reiterated that Canada stood “firmly” with Greenland and Denmark. He said his government was also seeking to link trade with Asian and European nations. This flexible, seemingly ad-hoc way of developing alliances comes in stark contrast to the concrete certainties of the post-war international order that Carney has long championed. But Bob Rae, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said it was the nations meant to uphold the institutions that have failed in their duties, not the institutions themselves. “Superpowers – like Russia and the United States – have decided that they’re going to take the law into their own hands,” he said. “The prime minister was clear in his message: You don’t abandon those institutions, and you don’t give up on them. But you do need to recognise that in the real world, they’re very challenged. Too many countries in the world are breaking all the rules and asking everybody else to break those rules.” Rae, who saw first-hand the “fickle” and erratic nature of US foreign policy commitments at the UN, said the speech was both “blunt” in its assessments- and optimistic in his call to allied nations. “Mr Carney is clear: we are not bending to nations that want to break these systems and we will work tirelessly with other countries that feel the same way,” he said. “We’re much stronger working together in the face of the countries that want to break up the global system.” In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump wrote that he had agreed to a meeting with “various parties” regarding Greenland while visiting Davos, reiterating his belief that US interest in the island was “imperative for national and world security”. Carney cautioned that as nations look to strike deals with powerful nations, “we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination,” he said. “We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong – if we choose to wield it together.”

Shinzo Abe’s killer sentenced to life in prison over shooting of Japanese former PM

A court in Japan has sentenced the assassin of former prime minister Shinzo Abe to life in prison – a case that shocked the public and exposed politicians’ ties to an influential religious group. Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, had earlier pleaded guilty to killing Abe in July 2022 as he was making an election campaign speech in the western city of Nara. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister who left a lasting influence on the country’s politics, died of injuries sustained after Yamagami shot him from behind with a homemade weapon. Abe wasn’t the first Japanese politicians to have been killed in the postwar period, but his violent death in broad daylight on a suburban street sent shockwaves through a country where gun crime is almost unheard of. Yamagami, who was wrestled to the ground by Abe’s security detail moments after the shooting, pleaded guilty when his trial started in October last year. Describing the crime as “unprecedented in postwar history”, prosecutors had demanded a life sentence, but not the death penalty, which in Japan is usually reserved for multiple killings. Yamagami’s defence team had called for a prison term of no more than 20 years. In Japan, life imprisonment leaves open the possibility of parole, although in reality, many inmates serving life die in prison, according to legal experts. Under the country’s legal system, a trial continues even when a defendant pleads guilty. As controversial government plans were made to hold a state funeral for Abe, who resigned in 2020 after a second term in office, details emerged of Yamagami’s motive for targeting him. The former member of the maritime self-defence forces told investigators the killing was revenge for Abe’s relationship with the Unification church – commonly known as the Moonies – which he blamed for plunging his family into poverty. Yamagami’s mother, a church follower, had bankrupted the family with donations to the organisation, which was formed in South Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and conservative values. Reports said that two decades ago she had donated more than ¥100m ($1m at the time) to the church’s coffers. Abe, who had spoken at church-related events, was among a large number of Japanese politicians, mainly from the governing Liberal Democratic party (LDP), whose ties to the organisation were exposed during the investigation into his death. The church, which critics describe as a cult, began exerting its influence on Japanese politics in the 1960s, forming alliances with conservatives, including Abe’s grandfather and postwar prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, who were sympathetic to its strong anti-communist message and opposition to trade unions. Yamagami “thought if he killed someone as influential as former prime minister Abe, he could draw public attention to the church and fuel public criticism of it”, a prosecutor said earlier in the trial at Nara district court. Yamagami said he had decided to kill Abe after seeing a video message the former leader sent to a group affiliated with the church. His aim, he said, had been to damage the church and expose its relationship with Abe. Public anger over the revelations forced the party to distance itself from the organisation, while the church’s branch in Japan was later stripped of its tax-exempt religious status and ordered to dissolve. Some members of the public were sympathetic to Yamagami, citing the damage his mother’s devotion to the church had caused his family. Yamagami was forced to give up higher education and in 2005, attempted to take his own life before his brother died by suicide. His case drew attention to the plight of other children of Unification church followers in Japan, and led to the introduction of a law designed to protect people from “malicious” solicitations for money by religious and other groups. Thousands of people signed a petition requesting leniency for Yamagami, and others sent care packages to his relatives and the detention centre where he was being housed. Agencies contributed reporting.

‘I could not stay silent’: Palestinian prisoner tells of sexual abuse in Israeli jail

Sami al-Saei said he heard the Israeli prison guards who raped him laughing through the assault, before they left him lying blindfolded, handcuffed and in agony on the floor to take a cigarette break. At least one of the group knew a crime was being committed and intervened, not to stop the torture but to prevent its documentation. Al-Saei said he heard the man warning others “don’t take a photo, don’t take a photo” as they attacked. He bled from his rectum for more than three weeks after the assault, which happened soon after he was detained in February 2024. He described sexual torture that lasted more than 20 minutes including beatings on his buttocks, a guard applying extreme pressure to his genitals, and forced anal penetration with two different objects. “I tried to prevent them by clenching my muscles (in my anus), but I could not. They forced it in very deep, it was extremely painful,” he said in an interview about his ordeal. “I don’t know how loudly I screamed from the pain.” It left him in so much pain that he collapsed twice when ordered to stand up and walk afterwards. Moved to an overcrowded cell, al-Saei said he received no medical treatment and was forced to use wads of toilet paper to staunch the blood. The 47-year-old father of six was held without charge or trial until June 2025. About 40 days after his release, he posted a video on TikTok detailing the attack, defying the extreme social stigma and Israeli warnings against going public about abuse in jails. “I could not stay silent. I have a moral responsibility to say what happened to me and other prisoners,” he said. ‘A network of torture camps for Palestinians’ Extensive and extreme sexual violence in Israel’s civilian and military jails has been documented by domestic and international observers including doctors, Israel’s military prosecutor, and the UN committee on torture. The human rights group B’Tselem described a “grave pattern of sexual violence in detention facilities and prisons”, in a report released on Tuesday detailing abuse of Palestinians in Israeli jails. It ranges from “threats of sexual assault, through forced stripping, to actual sexual assaults”, the report found. “These include beatings to the genitals that caused severe injuries, setting dogs on prisoners, and forced anal penetration with various objects.” A spokesperson for the Israeli prison service said it “categorically rejects the false allegations presented in the [B’Tselem] report”, and was “not aware of the claims described” by al-Saei and other survivors of sexual violence. “All inmates are held in lawful custody, with due regard for their rights, including access to medical care as required and the provision of living conditions in accordance with the law,” the spokesperson added. Tamer Qarmut, 41, was detained by Israeli soldiers in November 2023 when they raided Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, where his family had taken shelter. He said that in the first 24 hours he was accused of being a militant – even though he had been disabled by a leg injury in his teens – and was beaten so badly he sustained permanent damage to his hearing, attacked by a dog and then raped by a soldier. “He shoved a wooden stick up my anus, left it there for about a minute, and pulled it out. Then he shoved it back in, even harder, and I screamed at the top of my lungs,” Qarmut said in testimony given to B’Tselem. “After a minute, he pulled the stick out again, told me to open my mouth, pushed the stick into my mouth and forced me to lick it.” He was held for nearly two years, but never charged or put on trial before his release in October last year under the deal brokered by the US president, Donald Trump. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment. B’Tselem’s report is its second on conditions in Israel’s civil and military prisons. After 7 October 2023, the detention centres were transformed into a network “dedicated to the abuse of inmates as policy”, where torture was an “accepted norm”, the report said. “A space of this kind, in which anyone who enters is condemned to deliberate, severe, and unrelenting pain and suffering, functions de facto as a torture camp.” The abuse of Palestinians is not hidden. Prison authorities boast of mistreatment, which is publicly backed by Israeli politicians and the judicial system, reported with approval in Israeli media, and has been normalised in Israeli public opinion, B’Tselem said. In 2024 Israeli military prosecutors charged several soldiers over a violent rape at the Sde Teiman military detention centre, the only attempt to prosecute Israeli guards for sexual violence in detention centres after October 2023. Members of the government and Knesset backed the suspects and when video of the alleged attack was leaked, it produced little outcry in Israel about the abuse itself. Instead it led to the resignation and then arrest of the chief military lawyer. A single soldier has been convicted of abuse of Palestinian prisoners in that period. Torture of Palestinian prisoners must be understood in the context of dehumanisation and a broader campaign of extreme violence, said B’Tselem’s executive director, Yuli Novak. “The Israeli regime has turned its prisons into a network of torture camps for Palestinians, as part of a coordinated onslaught on Palestinian society intended to destroy their existence as a collective,” she said. Beyond Israel there had been condemnations of torture but no effective intervention, she added. “The international community continues to grant this regime full immunity.” In addition to sexual violence, the report details other forms of torture including electric shocks, use of teargas and stun grenades, jailers burning prisoners with boiling liquids and cigarettes, and setting dogs on them. Prisoners are also systemically denied medical care, leading to irreversible harm including amputations, loss of sight and hearing, and in dozens of cases, loss of life. At least 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since 7 October 2023, and the real toll is probably substantially higher. ‘Brother, come help me, I’m being tortured’ Many of the dead were young and had no prior health conditions. Abdul Rahman Mirie, 34, was a carpenter who died in November 2023, leaving behind three young sons and a daughter. He was detained on his way back from work in February 2023 and held without charge or trial. He was probably beaten to death, according to details from a prison autopsy and testimony from other prisoners. Men held in cells near him during his final hours told his mother, Aziza, that they heard him calling out in agony: “Brother, come help me, I’m being tortured.” His family cannot confirm the cause of death, or move on without a burial, because Israel is holding his body hostage. Ahead of the ceasefire deal for Gaza brokered by Trump last year, Aziza Mirie got a call from authorities asking if she wanted her son’s remains. “We said definitely yes, but never heard any more,” she told the Guardian at the family home. Mirie’s broken-hearted father died soon after losing his son, Aziza said, and the rest of the family is struggling. “At night I keep imagining how they tortured Abdul Rahman, and what condition he was in before his death,” she said. “Sometimes I find his daughter crying alone, and she asks me, ‘why don’t I have a father?’.” Israel last provided totals for Palestinian prisoners in detention before Trump’s ceasefire deal, but they indicate that by January Israel was detaining about 9,000 Palestinians from Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. About half of them are jailed indefinitely without charge or trial. Inhuman living conditions, including starvation rations, crowding and deprivation of basic hygiene needs such as showers and clean clothes, exacerbate the impact of violent assaults. There is no independent oversight, with International Committee of the Red Cross visits halted from October 2023, and prisoners are denied contact with their families or any news from the outside world. Al-Saei has paid a high price for speaking out. Forced to move away from gossiping neighbours, he has struggled to find work and is haunted by vivid nightmares about his children’s future. But he does not regret his decision to become a voice for those who cannot face adding new pain to deep trauma. “It was my choice,” he said, adding that during 16 months in jail he saw clear evidence in the overcrowded cells that many other prisoners had been assaulted. “Even if the others didn’t speak about it, it was obvious they also had this experience.”

‘I felt numb’: German bank heist victims devastated after thieves ransack 3,000 deposit boxes

Faqir Malyar, a carpet trader from the western German city of Gelsenkirchen, was on his way to visit one of his customers during the Christmas holidays when he heard news on the radio of an astonishing bank heist. Thieves had drilled a hole in the wall of the vault of a local Sparkasse – savings bank – and made off with the contents of almost 3,250 deposit boxes. The robbery, likened by a police spokesperson to the Hollywood film Ocean’s Eleven, made international headlines: it is estimated that the thieves’ haul could have been worth as much as €300m (£260m), a sum that would make it the one of the biggest bank heists in a country wearily familiar with them. Calling it an “unprecedented crime”, the chief investigator, André Dobersch, criticised attempts on social media to make light of the case. “We’re not talking about safe-crackers in a comic,” he said, “but about criminals who’ve caused sleepless nights … and destroyed livelihoods.” For Malyar, the news was deeply alarming. The Gelsenkirchen Sparkasse was where he kept his savings as well as family heirloom jewellery. He fears his dreams of retiring soon with his wife have now gone up in smoke. “I hoped against hope that my deposit box wasn’t one of those that had been plundered,” the 67-year-old said. But after spending 45 minutes waiting in a queue for his call to a bank hotline to be answered, he was told his box, number 1,413, was among more than 3,000 to have been emptied. “I felt as numb as if I’d had an injection,” he said. Police believe the thieves carried out the theft over a four-hour period on 27 December. Having gained access to the bank from an adjoining car park through a manipulated emergency exit, they then set about boring a hole with a 300kg drill into the vault’s wall. Police were only alerted 48 hours later after a fire alarm was activated and they arrived to find the break-in. CCTV footage shows the masked suspects – believed to be between five to seven men – leaving the car park in a black Audi and a white Mercedes van, both bearing stolen number plates. Three weeks after the heist, the suspects are still at large. In the days after the heist, customers gathered outside the bank in angry and emotional scenes, chanting “let us in” and demanding information. Malyar and the thousands of others whose money and valuables have gone want answers from the Sparkasse: what level of security did it have? Were its surveillance systems fit for purpose? Jürgen Hennemann, an insurance lawyer who since 2012 has represented the victims of more than two dozen bank robbery cases in Germany, most of them involving the savings banks, said criminals were becoming increasingly brazen as banks failed to address security shortfalls. “The banks have been constantly warned over 13, 14 years that they are in the crosshairs of organised crime,” he said, adding that despite this many had failed to act. The result: “The attacks are getting more and more intense; the robberies are happening ever closer together.” Hennemann is representing a number of customers of the Sparkasse in Norderstedt near Hamburg, which in one of the more spectacular heists of recent years was broken into in 2021 by criminals who rented the apartment above and drilled through the concrete ceiling to gain access to 650 safety deposit boxes. Losses there are estimated to have been between €11m (according to the bank) and €40m (according to the lawyers representing the customers). Klaus Nachtigall, the former head of Berlin’s criminal police office, now a security consultant, said he was not surprised by the theft in Gelsenkirchen: “There are now so many such cases, but the financial institutions don’t seem to want to learn from them.” “It’s upsetting to know that these acts are preventable. If security systems are working, the alarm should sound at the first sign of a piece of debris falling out of the wall,” he told local media. So far the Sparkasse network, which consists of about 342 lenders serving about 50 million customers, has said it can give little information while the police investigation is continuing. About 230 officers have been assigned to “Operation Drill”. But, in a statement, Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen defended its security measures. “We can only say that our security technology meets recognised state-of-the-art standards. We ensure this through our collaboration with specialist companies. Within the last two years, the burglar and fire alarm systems in our buildings have been inspected and upgraded,” it said. Michael Klotz, the head of the Gelsenkirchen branch, said both the bank and its customers had been “victims of a burglary carried out with highly criminal energy and using complex technology”, telling the local newspaper WAZ that they were in a “constant race between security technology and criminals”. For those who have lost their savings that is unlikely to bring much solace. Many people have said their Sparkasse boxes contained items with a value of €40,000 or more. A lot have been shocked to learn that the basic insurance policy will cover only up to €10,300 a box. Hans Reinhardt, a lawyer who is preparing to represent many of the Gelsenkirchen victims in the event of legal action, said his clients, including a man who had been planning to fund his retirement via gold bars worth €600,000 he had stored in the vault, had seen the items as protection against catastrophe. “Many people told me that out of fear of war and inflation they had moved away from stocks and bank accounts, investing in gold instead. Some said they kept larger sums of cash on hand so they could access it quickly if needed,” he said. Malyar, meanwhile, said his carpet shop, around the corner from the bank, had become a meeting point for victims. “I dish out tea,” he said. “I have become something of a counsellor to those in a similar position who come by to share their woes with me.”