In the days following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, Syrians have crowded his regime’s notorious detention facilities in a desperate search for loved ones who were jailed or forcibly disappeared.

Thousands of prisoners have now been freed, many after decades of incarceration in brutal conditions. Yet many more of the missing have yet to be found, and hopes are fading with each passing hour.

Nearly half a million people were killed during Syria’s 13-year civil war, and up to 100,000 of those victims may have died in government-run prisons, according to UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Mazen al-Hamada

After five decades of Assad family dictatorship was swept away in the last two weeks, one prisoner story has been shared online perhaps more than any other, that of Mazen al-Hamada.

When an uprising against Assad’s iron-fisted rule erupted in spring 2011, al-Hamada was among the first to join and later organize demonstrations in his native city of Deir Ezzor.

He was hopeful, committed and a target of the regime. In 2012, the Air Force Intelligence service, among the state’s most feared security branches, arrested al-Hamada after he smuggled baby formula into a besieged Damascus suburb.

For nearly two years, he was subjected to medieval torture techniques, rapes and beatings, and unspeakable psychological abuse. He later said he confessed to crimes he did not commit when an officer secured a clamp around his penis, screwing it tighter and tighter until the pain made him feel like his mind would burst.

When al-Hamada was released, he returned to Deir Ezzor to find his city in ruins and, fearing for his life, he fled Syria for the Netherlands in 2014.

In Europe, he rose to prominence after detailing the torture he endured in a regime prison in a 2017 documentary.

“They laid me on the ground and broke my ribs,” he said in the film. “ (An officer) would jump up and come down on my body as hard as he could. I could hear my bones snapping.”

The interviewer asked al-Hamada how he felt about his abusers. He paused, swallowing as his eyes filled with tears that then flowed down his gaunt face. “I will not rest until I take them to court and get justice,” he added defiantly. “Justice for me and my friends that were killed.”

And he kept fighting for the cause he loved most – a free Syria. Al-Hamada traveled across Europe and the United States recounting the horrors he suffered in Assad’s prisons, imploring anyone who would listen to help save his people from a ruthless dictator.

He met with journalists, visited White House officials, spoke at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and sat down with Senator Marco Rubio.

But nothing changed. The grinding war claimed more lives, and the world’s attention slowly turned away from the tragedy. Assad seemed to have won.

Al-Hamada became jaded, homesick and depressed, said Omar Alshogre, one of his friends and a fellow survivor of the regime’s barbaric prison system. He was talking about going back to Syria, despite the glaring risks.

In 2020, al-Hamada flew back to Damascus, lured by government officials under false pretenses, his family believe. He was picked up shortly after his arrival by security forces and forcibly disappeared.

His friends launched a campaign to find him but never believed they would see him alive again. Until a few days ago, that is, when the rebels burst open Syria’s prisons. But hope was brief.

Pictures of al-Hamada’s body surfaced on social media after his remains were found at a Damascus hospital, believed to have been dumped there by officials from Saydnaya prison, a notorious facility that was nicknamed “the slaughterhouse.”

The image of his hollowed eyes and beaten face permanently etched in horror made the activist yet again a symbol of the country’s suffering and the regime’s brutality, even in its final hours.

“This tells you that even in the last minutes this regime was committing crimes,” Alshogre said. “They never wanted to change. They wanted to be a security state that killed people if they even breathed against the regime.”

Al-Hamada’s story is emblematic of Syria’s suffering. A brave activist who peacefully called for change, a torture victim of Assad’s reign of terror and, ultimately, a dreamer who died in his dungeons.

Yet his harrowing account lives on, and may one day be part of a wider effort to seek justice for the victims.

“His story will always be used as evidence and testimony against this regime that needs to be prosecuted. With that, hopefully we can honor him by bringing justice to Syria,” Alshogre said.

Rania al-Abbasi

When Syria’s uprising began, Rania al-Abbasi, a dentist and national chess champion, was living a comfortable life in Damascus with her husband and six children. They had recently moved back from Saudi Arabia where she had lived and worked alongside her sister Naila.

As the revolt rocked the country, Naila begged her sister to return to Riyadh.

In spring 2013, as the suffering and despair spread, al-Abbasi and her husband made a small but generous donation to a family from a city besieged by the government. It was a simple act of charity that drew the wrath of Assad’s forces.

Members of the regime’s military security branch in Damascus arrested al-Abbasi, her husband and all their children, ranging in age from 1 to 14. They were never heard of again.

In recent days, her sister watched from afar as the regime crumbled. Naila immediately began calling anyone in Syria who might help locate her sister and her family.

“We are speaking to everyone, searching everywhere,” she said. “We are looking for any detail big or small. But we have turned up nothing.”

Naila has campaigned tirelessly for the family’s release, prompting an Amnesty International letter-writing campaign that continued for years. Her efforts led the US State Department to label al-Abbasi a political prisoner, held without just cause. But Naila has never uncovered a single verified detail about her sister’s fate. She only has questions.

“They took children, little children. The youngest was still breastfeeding. She still wore diapers. How?” she said through tears. “They took an entire family. Is it true no one survived? Not even the children?”

In a last-ditch effort, Naila is now searching orphanages across Damascus for her nephews and nieces. Her bond with them runs deep. She is an obstetrician and delivered several of the children herself.

“We should be celebrating, singing and dancing, but without Rania and her family, we cannot feel joy,” she said. “It’s as if our wounds are reopened.”

As time passes, Naila’s hope that she will find her loved ones alive dims. Knowing nothing of their fate is purgatory.

Her agony is shared by the families of an estimated 100,000 disappeared Syrians, according to the United Nations.

“The tyrant is gone, but we need justice,” she said. “Every criminal who drew the blood of our children, our siblings, our parents must face punishment.”

Tal al-Mallouhi

After nearly 15 years apart, Ahd al-Mallouhi can finally hold her beloved daughter, Tal. At age 19, Tal was arrested for posting poems on political and social issues to her blog – she is now 33.

In the first photos taken since her release, Tal flashes a cautious, close-lipped smile. She is wearing a yellow hoodie and a scarf emblazoned with the flag of the opposition.

“I was overwhelmed with an indescribable feeling, a great joy,” her mother told AFP.

But Tal never witnessed the uprising that activists say may have led authorities to keep her in detention, even after her five-year sentence was completed.

In 2009, the high-school student was taken from her home in Homs by Syrian security forces, and her computer, CDs and other possessions confiscated, according to Amnesty International.

After being held incommunicado for months and possibly tortured, Tal was accused of spying for America, an outlandish charge for a teenage blogger. The US State Department condemned what it called a secret trial and dismissed the claims of espionage as “baseless.”

In February 2011, the Supreme State Security court sentenced Tal to five years in prison. She became one of the youngest prisoners of conscience in the Arab world, according to rights groups.

While she was behind bars those numbers swelled. Detention and torture became an integral part of the state’s repression of dissent. And Tal’s case gained international recognition. English Pen, a human rights organization, translated one of her poems to raise awareness.

“My master:
I would like to have power
Even for one day
To build the ‘republic of feelings,’” it concludes.

News of Tal’s survival and freedom spread quickly after the regime’s fall, with so many desperate to hear a story with a happy ending.

But she will need time to recover. Not even her family know what horrors she survived and what scars remain.

“Syria was freed first, then my daughter was released along with all the others,” Ahd told AFP. “Maybe if my daughter had been released alone, I would still fear for her, still be scared they could take her at any moment.”

Russia launched a new widespread attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, forcing the country to implement emergency power outages, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.

“The enemy continues its terror. Once again, the energy sector across Ukraine is under massive attack,” Ukrainian energy minister German Halushchenko said on his official Facebook page.

The extent of the damage had yet to be clarified, he said, while urging people to remain in shelters.

Streets in the capital Kyiv remained largely empty Friday morning as Ukraine’s air force warned of the threat of ballistic and cruise missiles potentially targeting parts of the country.

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s energy grid operator, said it was introducing emergency power outages across the country.

Moscow’s forces have intensified bombardments of Ukraine in recent months, leaving the country in a precarious position as the war grinds into its third winter.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to strike Ukraine again with a new nuclear-capable ballistic missile following a widespread attack on critical energy infrastructure that left more than a million households in Ukraine without power.

Russia’s latest assault comes after Moscow vowed on Thursday to respond to a Ukrainian attack on a city in southwest Russia, which Russia claimed involved six US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles.

Ukraine acknowledged making “tangible hits on Russian targets,” Wednesday, including military and energy facilities, but has not said what type of missiles were used.

The United States on Thursday announced a $500 million aid package for Ukraine in the coming days that will pull equipment out of US military stocks.

The Biden administration is working to surge deliveries of weapons to Ukraine in its final days in office in a concerted effort to put Kyiv on a strong footing going into 2025, according to a senior administration official.

Nine years ago, the UN established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which included ending poverty and hunger. Yet last year, nearly 750 million people faced hunger — an increase of around 152 million compared to 2019.

The G20 Leaders’ Summit in November marked the launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, an initiative aiming to eradicate hunger and poverty by 2030, aligning with the SDGs.

The Alliance’s early commitments, referred to as “2030 Sprints,” include reaching 500 million people with cash transfer programs and expanding nutritious school meals to 150 million children.

Wellington Dias: In 2015, the world reached an agreement approved at the UN General Assembly for the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Part of this was a commitment by the global community to eliminate poverty and achieve zero hunger by 2030.

The world has failed. Poverty, misery, and hunger have increased.

These issues have a larger impact than we think. Consider the migration crises or the root causes of conflicts — poverty and hunger are many times central to that. Even threats to democracies are tied to these issues.

The wealthier nations must help developing countries with a basket of proven effective projects. These include a national plan backed by knowledge and financial support. Developing countries must make their own plans and act on them, while developed nations must offer assistance. This initiative was approved in Rio de Janeiro (at the G20 Summit), and now we face the challenge of implementation.

WD: We are working through global blocs, such as the World Bank in Washington and the UN in New York, and with entities like UNDP (UN Development Programme) and FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization). Currently, 86 countries and 66 organizations are part of this alliance, with hubs in Europe (Rome at the FAO headquarters), South America (Brasilia), Africa (Addis Ababa), and Asia (Bangkok). The Gulf region and the Arab League are also under consideration.

The objective is to work with each country’s national plan, tailored to their needs. Maybe with a focus on income transfers, school feeding programs, local agriculture, professional training, and social integration, etc. Those countries capable of helping poorer countries will do so according to these plans.

WD: Hunger and poverty are topics that are often avoided. Especially by those who are impacted by it. Many countries facing poverty and hunger feel uncomfortable discussing this.

I greatly value events like the Doha Forum for addressing this issue. We need more open debate and experience-sharing among countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Mali, alongside UN organizations like the World Food Programme.

Hunger is a responsibility for all nations and citizens. In the past, hunger was tied to food scarcity. Today, in the 21st century, the world produces more than enough food for everyone. This means that countries joining together, by fighting food waste and engaging with the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, I think we can create a better world by 2030.

In the months before Iranian ballistic missiles struck the Nevatim Airbase in October, Iran dispatched spies to film and photograph the site in southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

The alleged operatives were neither highly trained nor seemed especially suspicious to the people who knew them in their day-to-day lives. Many of them appeared to struggle financially.

And yet, Israeli authorities allege that the images they captured of the base provided Iran with valuable targeting intelligence.

The Israel Police arrested the suspects in October, a group of seven Israelis living in Haifa, northern Israel, representing one alleged cell.

They are among more than 30 Israelis arrested by Israeli authorities over the past year for allegedly carrying out missions for Iran – with the accusations ranging from photographing military bases to plotting to kill senior Israeli officials.

It is an unprecedented number, according to Israel Police Superintendent Maor Goren, who oversees counterintelligence investigations.

“If we go check the last years – the last decades – we can count on two hands how many people got arrested for this,” Goren said.

It is a sign both that Iran has ramped up its intelligence-gathering efforts in Israel in recent years, and that – after operating for months or, in some cases, years without being detected – Israeli authorities are finally catching on to these under-the-radar activities.

Israeli authorities are still uncovering more alleged Iranian intelligence-gathering efforts. Earlier this week, Israeli police arrested a 33-year-old Israeli citizen from the north who allegedly carried out tasks on behalf of Iran in exchange for thousands of dollars.

The arrests have made waves in Israel in recent months. Beyond the sheer numbers, the majority of those arrested have been Jewish Israelis – a shock in a country where Jewish citizens are imbued with a deep sense of patriotism and national pride.

“I wasn’t surprised – I was shocked. It was like thunder amid clear skies,” said Leonid Gorbachovsky, the next-door neighbor of the accused ringleader of the Haifa cell, Azis Nisanov.

“He didn’t have anything prominent in him, nothing that would make me or anyone from our house suspect that he would be connected to something illegal. He was an ordinary man.”

Gorbachovsky was home when police pried open Nisanov’s door with a metal bar and watched as police turned the apartment inside-out, finding piles of cash, he said.

Like most of the other Israelis arrested on charges of spying for Iran, Nisanov had immigrated to Israel. Combined with financial struggles, intelligence experts say that an immigrant background could make the accused easier targets for Iran’s recruitment efforts.

To Gorbachovsky, who moved to Israel 25 years ago from Belarus, it is unfathomable.

“How can a person come to a foreign country – to Israel – from a different state and hate it?” Gorbachovsky said. “Well, if it was because of money, then this is a rotten person. How can you sell your motherland for money, even if this is big money? This is your state. How can it be?”

The ‘Haifa Seven’

Israeli police allege that Nisanov, an Azerbaijani immigrant, began carrying out tasks for Iran more than two years before his arrest, after being contacted by an Azerbaijani national who was working as a foreign agent for Iran. According to the indictment, the foreign agent tasked Nisanov with photographing military bases.

For two years, Nisanov and six others he recruited photographed dozens of military bases, Iron Dome batteries and other strategic sites across Israel, receiving between $500 and $1,200 per task, according to the indictment. The indictment notes that several of the bases they photographed were later struck in missile attacks by Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

While the GPS coordinates of the bases are known to Iran, Israeli authorities say the zoomed-in images Iran received from these Israelis provided additional targeting intelligence.

“We can’t tell for sure if they are directly responsible for the hit, but we can say for sure that they were there before the attack… so you can say it at least helped, if not more,” Goren said.

Israeli police claim Nisanov and the six others knew they were working for Iran. All seven are still awaiting trial on spying charges. They have not yet entered a plea.

“He needed a lot of money. He owed money to a loan shark, and he had really bad financial problems,” Talhami said. “He never thought that he was doing something that is harming the security of the state of Israel.”

Others arrested by the Israeli police included a couple in the city of Lod in November for allegedly “conducting intelligence gathering missions” on behalf of an Iranian spying network.

A police statement, quoting a senior official in the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, said that these cases “add to a series of thwarted attempts exposed in recent weeks, during which Israeli citizens operated by Iranian intelligence elements were arrested.”

Alleged assassination plots

While many of the alleged Iranian spies were only tasked with photographing and filming strategic sites, others are accused of plotting to kill senior Israeli officials and other prominent Israelis.

In August, Israeli police arrested 73-year-old Moti Maman, an Israeli from the southern city of Ashkelon, for allegedly plotting to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar.

Maman was smuggled into Iran twice and met with Iranian intelligence agents who asked him to carry out attacks against Israel, according to his indictment. Authorities allege he received payments to carry out missions on behalf of Iran.

The indictment detailed Maman’s travel history as a businessman who lived for extended periods in Turkey, where he allegedly developed relations with Iranian nationals.

It alleged that Maman agreed, through Turkish middlemen, to meet with a wealthy Iranian businessman known as “Eddy” to discuss business in the Turkish city of Samandag. On two separate occasions in April and May, the businessman was unable to leave Iran due to “legal difficulties,” so Maman was then smuggled into the country through a land crossing in eastern Turkey.

In Iran, Maman allegedly requested an advance payment of $1 million, the indictment said.

According to the indictment, “Eddy” allegedly said the plots would be revenge against the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil in July, which would prevent the outbreak of all-out war with Israel.

In another case, Goren, the police superintendent, said police arrested a man who was suspected of plotting to carry out an assassination on Iran’s behalf with a gun and 15 bullets.

Iranian tactics

Iran and Israel have been waging a shadow espionage war for decades, using spies and informants to gather intelligence to carry out attacks against each other.

Israel’s intelligence capabilities inside Iran are understood to be vast and Israeli intelligence has carried out multiple successful assassinations inside Iran.

Following the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, that silent war was thrust out in the open, resulting in the first open military attacks carried out between the two countries.

Iran has also arrested several of its citizens over the last year, whom the regime and the Revolutionary Guard Corps accuse of spying for Israel or collaborating with its foreign intelligence agency Mossad, according to Iranian state media.

Israeli officials and intelligence experts say the uptick in Iranian spying activity that has been exposed in Israel reflects broad-based recruitment tactics employed by Iran.

Oded Ailam, the former head of counterterrorism for the Mossad, calls it “the theory of the big numbers.”

“They are not really discouraged by failure,” Ailam said. “And most important, they don’t really care what happens afterwards to their assets… they say to themselves, ‘OK, if we fail, here we go to the next one.’ And they don’t really care about the outcome.”

According to Goren, the police official, Israel’s Shin Bet was primarily responsible for uncovering and infiltrating the alleged Iranian spy rings, through a combination of digital surveillance and undercover operations.

Israeli authorities say while some of the accused spies were recruited through intermediaries, others were approached on social media platforms, including Telegram.

One message read: “I have various missions in the cities of Israel that not everyone has the ability to do. My missions have rewards from $100 to $100,000.”

Another said: “We just need brave men. Are you brave? For a lot of money?”

Goren said the Iranian recruiters often began by asking their targets to carry out small “test missions” for easy money, steadily increasing the seriousness of the missions and further compromising their targets. Goren said such a test mission could involve taking a picture of a building or spraying graffiti on a wall.

In one series of messages provided by the Shin Bet, the target was tasked with buying gasoline to set off forest fires.

“They want fast money,” Goren said of the accused spies. “They don’t care about the country, they don’t care about their own people, they just want money.”

‘Easy prey’

Ailam, the former Mossad official, said those who fall into the wide net cast by Iran are often “desperate people from the part of society that is usually neglected and overlooked.” Many of those arrested are also immigrants, who Ailam said may not have “the same affiliation and the same attitude towards Israel” as others.

“They are much more easy prey,” Ailam said.

Vyacheslav “Slava” Gushchin, alleged to be part of the “Haifa Seven,” appeared to fit this profile to a T.

When he was arrested, neighbors at first thought it stemmed from a fight he had gotten into with an attendant at the nearby convenience store.

None of them suspected he was allegedly spying for Iran. Gushchin’s attorney declined to comment.

His arrest sent shockwaves through a neighborhood that had sought to help him, giving him food, clothes and even lending him money.

“No one could believe it,” Moshe Yazdi said. “People here that know him – that also brought him food and everything – want to kill him. If he came here again, the neighbors would kill him.”

The bruised and battered bodies inside the morgue of Mujtahid Hospital are hard to look at — tangible evidence of the brutal regime of toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

But crowds of desperate people wait to see them, hoping finally for an answer to what happened to a loved one.

“Where are they?” pleads one woman. “My mother, she’s been missing for 14 years, where is she? Where is my brother, where is my husband, where are they?”

The 35 or so bodies were found in a military hospital in the Syrian capital of Damascus, days after the regime fell. They are believed to be among the last victims of Assad. A man points to their tattered clothing and suggests they were detainees at the notorious Saydnaya prison.

The bodies are identified only by number inside the fluorescent-lit morgue. But there isn’t enough room, so a makeshift area has been set up outside where families gather, using their cellphone lights to look at the faces of the dead, hunting for features they recognize.

But they also see the horrific wounds that seem to be consistent with torture. A woman searching among the bodies retches as she leaves the morgue.

Assad fled to Russia on Sunday after a lightning advance by Syria’s rebel groups, and the population’s anger against him is palpable. A woman, who says her only son was taken by the regime 12 years ago, shouts: “I ask Allah to burn him, him and his sons. I hope he burns, like he burned my heart.”

For so long there has been no information available at all to families about missing loved ones. The people gathered at this morgue just want answers, even in the form of a corpse.

The Assad government was known for keeping meticulous records. A defector who once worked as a photographer in the Syrian military police smuggled out almost 27,000 images in 2014, taken at a military hospital where he said “killed detainees” were brought. The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing, according to a report on the images compiled by a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts.

In an interview for a UN Commission report issued last year, a former detainee at the Palestine branch described regular beatings, beatings with a hosepipe and cigarette burns, according to. Other detainees described sexual abuse, and beatings that left prisoners unable to walk.

The UN report also said tens of thousands of people were buried in mass graves by the Syrian regime, and the US State Department released evidence in 2017 that a crematorium had been built at Saydnaya prison. A US official estimated at the time as many as 50 detainees a day could be being killed at Saydnaya.

Investigators now will have the official files to sift through for information on what happened in Assad’s prisons. The detainees themselves left their own clues, scratched into the walls of underground cells that are perhaps better described as dungeons.

The stolen people were likely trying to leave marks for someone to find. And now, their relatives are hoping finally to get some answers.

This story was reported by Clarissa Ward, Brent Swails and Scott McWhinnie in Damascus, and Lauren Kent in London, and written by Rachel Clarke in Atlanta.

A former Chinese soccer star and coach of the country’s national men’s team has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption, state media reported on Friday.

Li Tie, 47, who played for the English Premier League Everton alongside Wayne Rooney in the early 2000s, is the biggest name to fall foul of a sweeping crackdown on rampant graft in China’s professional soccer league.

Despite leader Xi Jinping’s vision to turn China into a “world soccer superpower,” Chinese professional soccer has been mired with poor financial decision making, deep-rooted corruption and disappointing performance.

In 2022, after China’s national men’s team suffered a disappointing elimination in the preliminary stage of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the country’s anti-graft agency launched a far-reaching investigation into bribery and match-fixing in Chinese professional soccer.

Li was the first among about a dozen soccer officials ensnared in the crackdown. In March, Chen Xuyuan, the former head of China’s official soccer association, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption.

On Friday, Li was sentenced for multiple counts of bribery by a court in the city of Wuhan, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

During his trial in March, prosecutors accused Li of accepting more than 50 million yuan ($6.8 million) in bribes between 2019 and 2021, when he served as the head coach of China’s national team and national select team.

In exchange, he granted favors to certain players to be selected into the national team and helped certain clubs to win matches, according to prosecutors.

To become the head coach, Li and the club he was coaching at the time arranged bribes totaling 3 million yuan (US$412,800) to help him secure the role, the court heard.

Li was also accused of fixing matches for the two clubs he coached in Chinese leagues between 2015 and 2019, according to the prosecutors.

In a documentary about the soccer sector anti-corruption crackdown aired by CCTV in January – weeks before the trial, a remorseful Li said he “deeply regretted” taking the wrong path.

“When I was a player, I despised people who played fixed matches the most,” Li said during the show. But after becoming the head coach of a club, he realized it was a shortcut to improve his club’s ranking.

“Achieving success through such improper means actually made me increasingly shortsighted and eager for quick results,” he said. “It became a habit, and eventually, I even started to rely on it.”

China’s Communist Party-controlled courts have a conviction rate above 99 percent and it is not uncommon for state broadcasters to air confessions before trial in high profile cases.

Li is considered among the best Chinese players of his generation, and one of the most recognizable names in Chinese soccer.

In 2002, Li, along with star defender Sun Jihai of Manchester City, made history as the first Chinese players to play in the English Premier League, securing his status as a national sporting icon.

Li made 29 appearances for Everton during his debut season in England, as part of a memorable side that included a young Wayne Rooney and former Nigerian captain Joseph Yobo.

That year Li also represented China at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the first and only appearance for the men’s team at the quadrennial tournament.

Following his successful first season, Li signed a three-year contract with Everton, but his time in the first team was marred by a series of Injuries and he returned to China in 2008 after a brief but unsuccessful spell with Sheffield United.

Many Chinese soccer fans had hoped that Li, once the pride of Chinese soccer, could lead the men’s national soccer team into the World Cup when he was appointed the head coach in January 2020.

But Li resigned barely two years later amid an outpouring of backlash from fans over the team’s lackluster performance in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.

The sentence was made on the grounds that the crime was a “major sexual infringement,” Judge Tetsuro Sato of Naha District Court said on Friday, according to public broadcaster NHK.

“The girl’s testimony that she told her age by gestures and other means is sufficiently credible from the security camera footage,” the judge said.

“The defendant was aware that the girl was under 16 years old. The defendant was aware that the girl may have said ‘stop’ and may not have consented. Given the relationship and age difference between the two, who had never met each other, it is a crime of great sexual violation that stands out for its maliciousness.”

The US Air Force member, Brennon R. E. Washington, was indicted on March 27 on charges of “non-consensual sexual intercourse” and “indecent kidnapping” after he was discovered to have taken a 16-year-old Japanese girl to his residence last December and sexually assaulting her, Japanese prosecutors said.

“We are heartbroken and deeply regret the damage done to the victims and their families,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans, commander of Kadena Air Base, told local media on Friday. “Sexual assault is a serious crime and in no way reflects the values of US military personnel.”

The incident is the latest in a history of criminal cases involving US personnel in Okinawa, home to several US military installations. It could exacerbate tensions with residents who have long opposed the presence of American troops and weaponry on the island.

It also comes nearly 30 years after three US servicemen raped a 12-year-old Okinawa schoolgirl in 1995, sparking a backlash against the US military on the island.

In 2016, the rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman by a former US base worker in Okinawa triggered mass protests in the island’s capital, with tens of thousands of residents demanding the US move its bases outside of Okinawa. The fallout resulted in curfews for US personnel on the island.

In another crime involving US personnel in Japan, a US Navy officer killed two Japanese nationals while driving down Mount Fuji in 2021.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters in June this year that the allegations of rape and kidnap against Washington were “extremely regrettable,” adding it was necessary “to strongly protest against the US military and other related organizations.”

The governor also said his office will “take a tough stance in dealing with the situation.”

“All US service members are expected to uphold the highest standards, and the US military is committed to holding accountable those who are convicted of criminal acts,” Nelson said.

France’s embattled President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Francois Bayrou as prime minister, he announced on Friday, as he seeks to calm a political crisis that has left his authority dwindling by the day.

Macron’s office made the announcement a week after the former office holder Michel Barnier lost a vote of no confidence, forcing him to submit his resignation.

But Bayrou must now look to pass a budget through a sharply divided parliament, where Macron faces an avowed opposition from both the left-wing and far-right blocs.

This is a breaking news story. More details soon…

NATO head Mark Rutte warned the US-led transatlantic alliance on Thursday that it was not ready for the threats it would face from Russia in the coming years and called for a shift to a wartime mindset – with much higher defense spending.

Rutte said future spending would have to be much higher than the current alliance target of 2% of national wealth as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said in a speech in Brussels.

“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years,” the NATO secretary-general said, adding: “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defense production and defence spending.”

The alliance estimates 23 of its 32 members will meet the 2% target this year.

“During the Cold War, Europeans spent far more than 3% of their GDP on defense,” Rutte said. “We are going to need a lot more than 2%,” he added.

NATO members are grappling with renewed pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump, who has called for America’s allies to spend 3% of GDP on defense.

Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, said that the alliance must step up on defense production, calling on governments to “stop creating barriers between each other and between industries, banks and pension funds.”

He sent a message to the defense industry: “There is money on the table, and it will only increase. So dare to innovate and take risks.”

The NATO chief also warned of a “coordinated campaign to destabilize our societies” including cyberattacks and assassination attempts.

Rutte also cautioned about China’s ambitions, saying that Beijing is substantially building up its forces “with no transparency and no limitations.”

Not many children can say they took their first steps on board a yacht in the Arctic’s northwest passage. But Tom can. He spent three of the first four years of his life at sea, with his parents Ghislain Bardout and Emmanuelle Périé-Bardout — ocean explorers and founders of Under The Pole, an organization on a mission to document the deep.

The Bardouts estimate that both their children — Tom and Robin, now aged 8 and 12 respectively — have spent around half their lives aboard the family’s expedition schooner, “The Why.”

They’ve explored the furthest reaches of the planet, from polar ice to tropical reefs, as part of a mission to document the ocean’s mesophotic, or “twilight,” zone, an area that lies between 30 and 150 meters (100 and 490 feet) below the surface.

The couple, both passionate divers, decided that they wanted a family but weren’t ready to give up on ocean expeditions. “So we invented the way we wanted to work and live,” says Emmanuelle.

When on land, the family is based in Concarneau, a small coastal town in Brittany, northwestern France. When at sea, the 18-meter-long yacht becomes their home, shared with around 10 other people, including scientists, doctors, a cook and a teacher.

Despite their unusual setup, Emmanuelle insists they still have a normal routine. “We work like normal people and have kids at school,” she says.

However, most ordinary people don’t do the same work as the Bardouts. In fact, few have seen what they have seen in the deep ocean – and that’s the point.

While oceans cover 70% of the planet, they remain some of the least explored and understood ecosystems on Earth. Less than 30% of the global seafloor has been mapped in any detail and experts estimate that up to 91% of marine species are still unknown to science.

What is known is that these ecosystems are coming under increasing stress, threatened by a rise in sea temperature, leading to mass bleaching events, as well as pollution and overfishing. The Bardouts believe that by documenting what lies beneath the surface, they may be able to raise awareness of the threats and aid its recovery.

“We go to places where nobody has been before,” says Emmanuelle. “I think when you are doing exploration like we are doing, it gives us a huge responsibility.”

Mediterranean forests

Most recently, the family were exploring waters a bit closer to home, in the Mediterranean Sea. For Under The Pole’s DeepLife program, which is part of the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, they went on a series of two to three-month missions, searching for what they call “marine animal forests” in Greece, Italy and France.

These are diverse ecosystems in the deep ocean, full of sponges and corals such as red gorgonia and black coral, that form something like a terrestrial forest, with its own microclimate that provides a refuge for a range of species.

However, like forests on land, they are fragile, and if disrupted the ripple effects are significant. “If you cut this habitat, all the other species are going to disappear and by the end you will just have a rocky desert,” says Ghislain.

He explains that in recent years the Mediterranean has suffered from more frequent and severe marine heatwaves that have killed a lot of surface ecosystems. It is also affected by bottom trawling, a fishing technique that tows a net along the ocean floor to catch fish.

Ghislain says the aim is to study the biodiversity, ecosystems and ecological function of these marine animal forests, in particular how the twilight zone is faring in comparison to shallower waters.

The team traveled to Fourni, Greece, because they had seen images of a potential forest captured by an underwater drone in 2021, which they wanted to document for the first time. After various unsuccessful dives and spotting signs of bottom trawling on the seafloor, they feared that it might have been destroyed altogether. Then, they discovered it: a rich marine animal forest about 100 meters (328 feet) deep.

“When you find a marine animal forest, you find an oasis, you find life, you find a very rich ecosystem that is living all together,” says Ghislain. “It’s really this oasis of life we want to show to the world.”

Over the weeks that followed, they collected data on every aspect of the ecosystem, from currents and acoustics to bacteria and sea life. They plan to collate all of this research and present their findings in June 2025 at the United Nations Ocean Conference in France. By proving the importance of these ecosystems, they hope to persuade governments to protect these areas and take action against the fishing practices that are damaging them.

Deep diving

It is only in recent decades that technology has advanced enough to enable dives into the twilight zone, and it is still an incredibly specialist operation, requiring years of training. Divers use “rebreathers,” originally designed for military purposes, which absorb carbon dioxide from exhalations and recycle it as oxygen. This allows them to stay underwater far longer than with scuba tanks, and because it doesn’t create bubbles, it causes less disruption to the sea life.

On a typical mission, lasting six or seven months, the team will complete between 300 and 400 dives, says Ghislain. Each one can last anywhere between three and six hours, with the majority of that reserved for the ascent, allowing the body time to decompress.

“When we are at 100 meters, time is running super fast,” he says. “We are focused on the mission, deploying samples, deploying sensors, taking some pictures… and then after 20 minutes more or less, it’s time to go up.”

It’s physiologically exhausting – you can lose 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of weight during one dive, says Emmanuelle – and it can lead to accidents, including decompression sickness and pulmonary overinflation syndrome, when the lungs expand beyond their capacity.

She admits her attitude to dives has changed since having children. There is more at stake, and sometimes she and Ghislain are cautious about diving at the same time. But despite this, she believes it is worth it.

She remembers as a young girl looking up to the French underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau. Now, she is living that very life, and so are her children. “I don’t think our kids realize how lucky they are,” she says, “we can nourish their curiosity.”

In some way, Robin and Tom also represent the future generation that the Bardouts are fighting for. Over years of expeditions, Ghislain and Emmanuelle have witnessed firsthand the consequences of climate change and understand the urgency of the situation.

“Humanity is destroying its environment, at sea, on land, everywhere,” says Ghislain. “This is a huge problem of this century and the one we have to try to solve for the next generation.”