Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has warned Donald Trump against a “surrender” of Ukraine as the US president said Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal” that could include European peacekeepers.

The transatlantic rift over the war was apparent on Monday as Trump and Macron – the first European leader to visit the White House since Trump regained power – disagreed over aid and efforts to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine.

The meeting was cordial, at times even warm, but came just hours after the US voted against a United Nations resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia for its invasion.

Trump, who last week branded Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war, told reporters in the Oval Office that Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end the three-year conflict.

Trump said he saw no objection to such a move, adding that he had raised the idea with Putin. “Yeah, he will accept it,” the US president said. “I’ve asked him that question.

“Look, if we do this deal, he’s not looking for more war. He doesn’t mind. But I’ve specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it.”

Later, at a joint press conference in the east room, Trump touted his team’s positive conversations with Russia. “Before I came here there was no communication with Russia whatsoever and Russia wasn’t answering calls. They were not talking to anybody and people accepted that.

“But when I got here one of the first calls I made was to President Putin and we were treated with great respect and they want to end this war, so that’s a big thing.”

He added: “I really believe that he wants to make a deal. I may be wrong, but he wants to make a deal.”

The US president claimed he had made more progress in the past month than was made in the previous three years. “I believe that Emmanuel agrees with me on many of the most important issues,” he said. “Europe must take a central role in ensuring the long-term security of Ukraine.”

Macron acknowledged that he and Trump had “made very substantive steps forward” in their discussion. But he pointedly described Russia as the “aggressor” in Ukraine and was appreciably more cautious.

He told reporters: “This peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine. It must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees. This peace must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty and allow Ukraine to negotiate with other stakeholders.”

The French president added: “I think it’s super important to go to the peace. But my strong point was to say, let’s try to get something first which can be assessed, checked and verified … We want peace swiftly but we don’t want an agreement that is weak.”

Earlier, the pair clashed directly when Trump made false claims about the funding of the war. He said: “Just so you understand, Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They’re getting their money back.”

Macron leaned over to touch Trump’s arm and interjected: “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total effort. It was like the US: loans, guarantees, grants.”

Trump responded: “If you believe that, it’s OK with me. They get their money back, and we don’t. But now we do.”

Trump and his team have been negotiating a minerals revenue-sharing agreement with Ukraine to recoup some of the money that the previous administration had sent to Kyiv to repel Russia.

Trump described the minerals deal as “very close” and said he might meet Zelenskyy soon to seal the agreement. “He may come in this week or next week to sign the agreement, which would be nice,” Trump said, adding that he would also be meeting Putin at some point.

Zelenskyy last week rejected US demands for $500bn in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, contending that the US had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.

Asked if Ukraine should be willing to cede territory to Russia as part of a negotiated end to the conflict, Trump said: “We’ll see,” and noted that talks were just beginning.

In an interview with Fox News after his visit with Trump, Macron said a truce between Ukraine and Russia “could be done in the weeks to come”. He also praised Zelenskyy’s leadership and said it was crucial for Trump to meet with the Ukrainian president.

Meanwhile, Putin on Monday signalled that he was not opposed to Europe’s involvement in the talks. In a televised interview reported by Agence France-Presse, the Russian president said: “Not only European [countries] but other countries too have the right and can take part.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, is to visit Trump later in the week, amid alarm in Europe over Trump’s hardening stance toward Ukraine and overtures to Moscow on the three-year-old conflict.

That alarm deepened on Monday as the UN security council on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution that takes a more conciliatory position towards Russia. Previously, the 15-member body had been deadlocked because Russia holds a veto.

The US voted against a separate, Europe-backed UN general assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, siding with North Korea, Belarus and other Russia-aligned countries over European allies.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator who co-led a bipartisan delegation to the recent Munich security conference, said: “This vote is a disgrace. Trump’s senseless betrayal of the alliances that have kept Americans safe since world war two and his fealty to the murderous aggressor Putin are a national security threat.”

• Nordic and Baltic countries on Monday pledged to increase military aid to Ukraine, including training and weapons, as their leaders visited Kyiv. They pledged to provide additional support for Ukraine, including equipping and training a “scalable brigade-sized unit” and investing in Ukraine’s defence industry. A brigade was 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers, the Norwegian government said.

• In a separate statement, Norway said it was planning to use 3.5bn Norwegian kroner (€190m/US$315m) for purchases from the Ukrainian defence industry; and 600m kroner to buy drones and develop drone technology for Ukraine. Denmark said it was pledging €2bn Danish kroner (€169m/US$280m) in military aid to Ukraine. Sweden’s government announced a pledge of 1.2bn Swedish kronor (€68m/US$113m) for air defences. Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, announced it would up its aid to Ukraine by 25% including buying 10,000 mortar shells for an additional €25m, on top of €100m already pledged from its defence industry. Latvia pledged it would this year deliver to Ukraine armoured personnel carriers, drones and other equipment, having invested €500,000 into Ukraine’s defence in the last three years.

• Rheinmetall, Europe’s top ammunition maker, on Monday said it intended to repurpose two sites that make car parts, in Berlin and Neuss, to mostly make defence equipment. It said both plants would be made part of Rheinmetall’s weapon and ammunition division and serve as hybrid plants, ensuring some automotive production could still take place.

• Europe should use money from frozen Russian assets for further military support of Ukraine and relax its fiscal rules to boost defence spending, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, said on Monday. Czech defence spending must grow to 3% of gross domestic product in several years from about 2% in 2024, to reflect the new geopolitical reality, Fiala said in an address to the nation.

• The EU is still spending more money on Russian fossil fuels than on financial aid to Ukraine, a report marking the third anniversary of the invasion has found.

• The French president, Emmanual Macron, after meeting with Donald Trump, said Europe was prepared to provide security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire including peacekeepers, although they would not be sent to the frontline. Trump, the US president, claimed Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine.

• Next up to meet with Trump is Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, whose office said on Monday said Trump had changed the Ukraine debate “for the better”. Starmer told world leaders gathered in Kyiv: “It has created an opportunity. Now we must get the fundamentals right.”

• Ukraine must “definitely” participate in any talks, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Monday. “If results are to be obtained from the new process, Ukraine must definitely be included in the process and this war must be ended through mutual negotiations,” said Erdogan, who has insistently supported Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity since the Russian invasion.

• Britain announced new sanctions against Russia as David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, said history had shown that Moscow would respond only to strength, rather than “paper promises”. The Foreign Office said 107 new entities would face sanctions, including 40 “shadow fleet” ships and 14 “new kleptocrats”, as part of the largest package since 2022. Among those sanctioned was No Kwang-chol, the North Korean defence minister, because his country is sending troops to fight for Russia. Other targets include the Kyrgyzstan-based Keremet Bank, and companies in China, India and Turkey that supply tools and goods to Russia’s military. The UK Home Office widened travel sanctions for Kremlin-linked figures.

• Russia said it had struck a deal with Ukraine and the Red Cross to evacuate residents from the Kursk region, parts of which have been seized by Ukraine. Kursk people already in Sumy in Ukraine would be taken through neighbouring Belarus and then into Russia. The Red Cross said only that it was supporting evacuated civilians in the Sumy region, without confirming any agreement.

• The UN security council has adopted a US resolution on the Ukraine war that was supported by Russia because it contained no criticism of the illegal invasion. There were 10 votes in favour and none against; five abstentions included France and Britain, who could have vetoed the resolution. Earlier, the US was forced to abstain as the much larger UN general assembly passed a resolution that did condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The United Nations general assembly has backed a resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia on the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion, spurning a rival US resolution reflecting Donald Trump’s split with Europe and growing union with Vladimir Putin.

The United States, Russia, Belarus and North Korea all voted against the EU-Ukrainian resolution underlining an extraordinary shift in US policy since the US president’s election that has largely absolved the Russian president of responsibility for the invasion.

In the vote, 93 countries supported the joint European resolution that named Russia an aggressor state and called on it to remove its troops from Ukraine, while 18 countries including the US and Russia voted against.

The vote came as Trump met with Emmanuel Macron at the White House on Monday and the two spoke with G7 leaders to discuss peace talks to end the war and the growing gulf between Washington and European capitals over the future of the Nato alliance.

Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, warned this weekend that Europe should seek greater independence from the United States and said it was an “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA”.

Macron told reporters outside the White House that the G7 call was “perfect” but did not offer other details. Trump released a statement in which he said that all members of the G7 had said they wanted to achieve peace and that the war would never have happened if he had been president.

Trump has quickly moved to direct talks with Putin that have eschewed Ukraine and has also sought to strong-arm Kyiv into a “critical minerals and rare-earths deal” to recoup the cost of US support for Ukraine in the three years since Putin launched his full-scale invasion.

“I am in serious discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia concerning the ending of the War, and also major Economic Development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia,” Trump said on Monday. “Talks are proceeding very well!”

The UN votes on Monday were mostly symbolic. The US resolution was three paragraphs long and did not include any mention of Russia aggression, saying it “implores a swift end to the conflict and further urges a lasting peace between Ukraine and the Russian Federation”. The Russian ambassador to the UN had called the US resolution a “good move”.

The US sought a “simple, historic statement from the general assembly that looks forward, not backwards”, said Ambassador Dorothy Shea, the US chargé d’affaires at the UN. “A resolution focused on one, simple idea: ending the war. A path to peace is possible.

“Mr President, that is why the United States opposed putting forward another resolution,” she continued. “And that is why we cannot support Ukraine’s resolution, and we urge its withdrawal in favor of a strong statement committing us to end the war and work towards a lasting peace.”

The US proposal did not call for a ceasefire or any concrete action because it believed that would increase resistance from Russia and Ukraine. Asked by a reporter if the US was seeking “global support for vague peace”, one state department official responded: “Absolutely. That’s what the UN is all about.”

“This is a simple way to begin to acknowledge, and for everyone who agrees, that this is ending,” another official clarified.

The US had sought to kill the Ukrainian co-sponsored resolution, and US diplomats had pressured EU and Ukrainian officials in foreign capitals this weekend to withdraw their resolution before Monday’s vote, according to cables to US embassies and reports in US media.

State department officials speaking on background said that the US was in discussions with the UK and France just hours before a vote in the UN security council on a resolution calling for peace that has been broadly dismissed by Ukraine and European countries as whitewashing Russia’s invasion of the country.

“President Trump is committed to ending the Russia-Ukraine war and to a resolution that leads to a lasting peace, not just a temporary pause,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in a statement on Friday. “The United States has proposed a simple, historic resolution in the United Nations that we urge all member states to support in order to chart a path to peace.”

The UN vote was preceded by a diplomatic scramble that saw both EU and US diplomats seeking to shore up support from countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

“We have been doing what we do as diplomats, which is going to capitals, a lot of engagement over the weekend from our career professional diplomats who are in each one of the capitals,” said a state department official. “We have seen several countries switch from removing their co-sponsorship of the Ukrainian resolution to support for the United States resolution. We are continuing that diplomacy relentlessly, and that will continue until we have a vote.”

World leaders gathered in Kyiv on Monday to show their continuing support for Ukraine on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the “absolute heroism of our people”.

Thirteen leaders took an overnight train for a summit with Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital. They included the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb. Twenty-four joined online.

The coordinated Europe-led show of solidarity came after a torrid week, in which Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war against Russia, described Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections”, and made it clear Europe would have to enforce and pay for any future peace settlement.

There was strong collective pushback against the US president’s upside down version of recent history and a consensus that Ukraine had to take part in negotiations over its future. “The war is against Ukraine. So Ukraine has to be at the negotiating table,” Zelenskyy told the visiting leaders, saying Europe had to be there, too. He added: “Peace can’t be declared or announced.”

US and Russian negotiators are due to hold a second round of talks soon, after a meeting last week in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. The White House has said the war could end “this week” – raising fears that a quick US-Russia deal will echo Vladimir Putin’s demands that Ukraine cede territory and capitulate.

At least seven European countries announced significant new packages of economic and military support to Kyiv on Monday, with von der Leyen promising a €3.5bn (£2.9bn) payment. The Trump administration has indicated that US weapons deliveries will probably stop and has said Ukraine will have to repay any future military assistance at double the actual price.

Several EU leaders acknowledged the continent had to spend more on its own security and – as the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, put it – “do more and talk less”. Lithuania’s defence minister, Dovilė Šakalienė, said Trump’s repeated demand for greater spending from fellow Nato member states was a necessary but “painful kick”.

She added that the “unpleasant” events of the last week, when Trump repeated Kremlin talking points and apparently dumped Ukraine as an ally, had changed the psychology of European decision-making. “When you feel your own arse is on fire, you move faster,” she said.

There was also overwhelming support for Ukraine’s EU membership and for its attempts to join Nato. The country could join the EU before 2030, von der Leyen said, if Kyiv continued its reforms at their current speed and quality.

Sitting next to the Ukrainian president, Stubb, the Finnish president, said it was not up to Russia to determine which alliances Kyiv joined, or the shape of the European security order. “Putin lost this war. We will see Ukraine in Europe and in Nato,” he said.

Justin Trudeau reaffirmed Canada’s support “until the war is over and Ukraine wins”.

Hours after world leaders arrived, air raid sirens rang out across the capital. Early on Sunday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial raid since its 24 February 2022 all-out attack, sending 267 drones across Ukraine’s border. At least four people were killed in strikes across the country.

On Monday, Zelenskyy, his wife, Olena, and prime ministers and presidents laid candles at a popular memorial in the centre of Kyiv to soldiers and civilians killed in Russia’s war. Afterwards, politicians posed for a symbolic group photo on the steps of the Maidan, Kyiv’s independence square and a symbol of the country’s sovereignty.

“We are in Kyiv today, because Ukraine is Europe,” von der Leyen posted on X. “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny.”

Zelenskyy wrote in his anniversary address: “Three years of absolute heroism by our people. Eternal gratitude to the fallen heroes.”

Keir Starmer said the UK supported a “just and lasting peace for Ukraine”, adding that: “We face a once-in-a-generation moment for our collective security and values.” The British prime minister has said UK troops could be sent to Ukraine as part of a possible peacekeeping contingent, on condition the US provided a “backstop”. “Russia does not hold all the cards in this war,” Starmer told Zelenskyy by video.

The White House has categorically ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine and it is unclear what a backstop means. The Labour MP Alex Sobel said Nato countries could provide air support and impose a no-fly zone – an idea proposed in 2022. Starmer will hold talks with Trump in Washington on Thursday.

On Monday, Boris Johnson praised Starmer’s willingness to deploy Britain’s armed forces. “Keir Starmer said something very brave and right,” Johnson said while speaking at the Yes international conference in Kyiv, organised by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Troops would be “anathema” to Putin and therefore the right thing to do, he said.

Johnson also denounced the “nightmare of Orwellian language” in the US, and the “absolutely rubbish” claim that Ukraine attacked Russia first. He said Zelenskky should sign a $500bn (£395bn) minerals deal with the US, arguing this would give the White House a direct stake in protecting Ukraine and its own business interests. Zelenskky has so far resisted and on Sunday said he did not “recognise” the $500bn figure.

“Trump wants to show something to his Ukraine-sceptic Republican base,” Johnson said. He added: “The tragedy is that he [Trump] has been listening for too long to [the conservative political commentator] Tucker Carlson, who has been taking the Kremlin line. The deal is well worth the price for Ukraine.”

The US government’s human resources office has walked back an ultimatum issued by Elon Musk that would have forced its workers to resign if they did not submit a bullet-point list of their recent accomplishments, in one of the first signs of internal pushback to the Tesla billionaire’s campaign to downsize the federal workforce.

The demand, made in an email sent to million of government employees over the weekend and quickly sued over by a coalition of labor and advocacy groups, represented the latest salvo by the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the Trump-sanctioned cost-cutting initiative Musk chairs.

But in the days that followed, government departments gave their employees differing instructions as to whether they should respond to the message, and by Monday the office of personnel management (OPM), which manages the federal workforce, announced that responding to the email is not mandatory and that failing to do so by midnight would not be considered a resignation, as Musk had warned.

Musk, however, continued to insist that workers will be expected to respond or they will lose their jobs.

“Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” Musk said on Monday afternoon.

Earlier in the day Donald Trump had spoken in support of the demand.

“By asking the question, tell us what you did this week, what he’s doing is saying, are you actually working?” the president said. “They’re trying to find out who’s working for the government, are we paying other people that aren’t working, and … where’s the money going.”

Musk on Saturday gave all the US government’s more than 2 million workers barely 48 hours to itemize their accomplishments in the past week in five bullet points. In a post on X, Musk indicated that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation”.

The broad demand came after the OPM, one of the first offices Doge infiltrated following Trump’s inauguration, orchestrated the firings of probationary employees and those working on diversity initiatives, and offered deferred buyouts to workers across the government. This time, the ultimatum quickly ran into resistance, particularly in government offices that deal with law enforcement and national security matters.

The FBI’s new director, Trump loyalist Kash Patel, asked agents to “please pause any responses”, while at the homeland security department, employees were similarly informed that “no reporting action from you is needed at this time”. All employees at the Department of Defense, who now answer to the former Fox News host and Trump acolyte Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, were similarly ordered not to respond to the OPM’s missive.

Employees in other federal departments were told to await further orders or to simply ignore Musk’s edict. Workers in the Social Security Administration and the health and human services department were told to comply with the email, and CNN reported that the Department of Transportation ordered all its employees to respond to the Musk email by its deadline. That included air traffic controllers who are currently struggling with severe understaffing and a spate of recent accidents.

Unions and advocacy groups who were already suing over the mass firing of probationary employees quickly added Musk’s demand to their lawsuit, requesting that a judge prevent any retaliation against employees.

“This request, and the resulting confusion, is not just inappropriate – it is disruptive to essential government functions,” wrote Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal union and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in a letter to the OPM’s acting director.

He warned that the demand pulled “federal employees away from their critical duties without regard for the consequences. As just two examples, a VA surgeon’s attention belongs in the operating room and an air traffic controller’s attention on keeping the skies safe, not on dealing with this unclear and unlawful distraction.”

Government workers who spoke to the Guardian described the email as the latest in a string of disruptive messages from the OPM that have created a siege mentality in offices nationwide.

“I’m a frontline supervisor and haven’t received any communication as to whether or how to evaluate this,” said a Department of Education employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. At the US Forest Service, where thousands were dismissed last week, workers told the Guardian the email added new layers of fear and confusion, with no clear instructions on whether they needed to comply.

“I am afraid that if I answer wrong I will get fired,” said a forest service scientist, speaking on condition of anonymity.

James Jones, a North Carolina-based maintenance mechanic with the National Park Service and AFGE member, said he was on sick leave on Monday to take care of his son, but now had to decide whether to leave him and drive into his office to respond to the email.

“It makes me angry, but I was expecting it,” said Jones, who described the email as “another shenanigan” but said he did not think there would be repercussions for not responding.

Latisha Thompson, a social worker with the Department of Veterans Affairs and AFGE member, said the drumbeat of emails from OPM, including an attempt to coax federal workers to resign en masse, had undercut her productivity.

“This kind of onslaught of intimidation and bullying via email has caused me and my colleagues a lot of distress,” she said.

Lawmakers in Congress’s Republican majorities have mostly acquiesced over the past few weeks as Trump has appointed loyalists to key positions and attempted to dismantle entire agencies. But the latest salvo against federal workers prompted a rebuke from the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, who has a history of squabbles with Trump.

“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it,” she wrote on X.

At least 20,000 federal workers have so far been fired by the Trump administration, most of them recent hires on probationary periods who lack employment protections. In addition, the White House claims that more than 75,000 employees have accepted its offer of deferred resignations.

Gabrielle Canon and Michael Sainato contributed reporting

“The Chinese would shock me with electric probes almost daily. I endured this continuously for nine months,” claims Seye, a 27-year-old woman who is one of hundreds of alleged trafficking victims who streamed across the Thai-Myanmar border this month.

Seye was among 260 people, more than half of them Ethiopian, who were transferred across the border to Thailand this February by a rebel group. Several among the group agreed to be interviewed on the condition they use only their first name.

Carrying their belongings and stories of hell, the group alleged they were trapped in one of the region’s notorious scam compounds, where they were subject to frequent abuse and forced to scam people around the world.

The massive repatriation comes amid growing pressure to crack down on transnational online fraud operations, from romance scams to gambling and bogus investments. Known as scam centres, the industry has in recent years proliferated in lawless border areas, especially along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Many are lured by the promise of well-paying jobs, but instead end up enslaved secure compounds where they are forced to carry out online scams.

The operations have become increasingly globalised, with victims from across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. Research by the US Institute of Peace estimated these scams generate $63.9bn a year in global revenue, the majority of which ($39bn) is generated in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

At least 120,000 people across Myanmar and another 100,000 in Cambodia may be forced to work in the industry, the UN says.

‘Punishing people like animals’

Six months ago, Shazab, a 24-year-old man from Pakistan flew to Bangkok to take up what he thought was a job in IT. Instead, he says, his phone and passport were confiscated and he was unwittingly trafficked across the border to a scam centre in Myanmar.

At first, he says he refused to cooperate.

“When I refused, I was tortured. They tied both my hands to a pole. Then they beat me. Shocked me with electric probes,” says Shazab, who was among the cohort picked up along the border.

“Later they sold me to another compound for $10,000, saying I wasn’t working well. They exchanged money right in front of me,” he says.

Shazab was in the group was that was handed over by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBD), a Myanmar rebel group, to the Thai Army. The DKBD confirmed the group had been working at a scam centre in Kyauk Khet, a village in Kayin, also known as Karen, state along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Dozens in the group showed wounds they said were due to being repeatedly shocked with an electric prod. Beatings, they said, were also carried out using PVC pipes, ropes, and sometimes charging cables.

“They’re punishing people like animals,” alleges another Pakistani national named Salman. “Torturing without any reason.”

Among those released were nationals from more than a dozen countries, including China, Brazil, Cambodia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, India, Laos, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

‘They ordered me to torture my team members’

Thailand has in recent weeks launched a crackdown on the industry, with authorities cutting the internet, electricity and fuel to five areas where crime groups allegedly operate.

About 7,000 people have been rescued from allegedly illegal call centre operations in Myanmar and were waiting to be transferred to Thailand, prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said this month.

China has also been pressuring the region to rein in the clandestine operations, particularly after a high-profile kidnapping of a Chinese actor into Myanmar in January. The 22-year-old man, Wang Xing, was abducted after arriving in Thailand for what he believed was a casting call with film producers.

According to almost a dozen people interviewed on the border in February, victims were forced to work more than 15 hours a day without payment, and subject to frequent abuse.

Shazab, who worked as a team leader at the compound he was allegedly sold to, managed a team of 12 people, which he claims was tasked to scam $10,000 each day from online “clients”.

If they failed to meet their quota, he says, they were locked in a dark room for about a week, beaten, and forced to do more than 1,000 squats.

“They ordered me to torture my team members. When I said I couldn’t do it, I was beaten for three straight days,” alleges Shazab.

The foreign nationals interviewed described a compound that they said was made up of about 10 buildings, each about two storeys high.

Shazab and 10 other foreign nationals interviewed by the Guardian alleged that their torturers were Chinese nationals, who used translators as intermediaries.

In an interview with the Guardian, Thai police general Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Center, said it is believed that between 30 and 40 Chinese criminal gangs were running the centres.

Claims of violence and abuse should be examined carefully, said Thatchai.

“Some of them voluntarily go there and work, try to scam other people, get lots of money and go back,” he said, adding that in other cases people were forced into criminality and subjected to violence.

In the border town of Mae Sot, the group were interviewed to determine whether they were victims of human trafficking.

Desperate to escape, Shazab says he sent more than 30 emails to the embassies of Pakistan and China in Thailand asking for help but never received a reply.

Thousands of miles from home, Luckas, a 31-year-old from Brazil, tried the same but was caught. “After I secretly contacted home and told them about the conditions here … They beat me a lot,” he says.

“Now I feel good. I am not afraid,” he says after crossing the river and stepping on to Thai soil, “I know I am safe here.”

The man expected to be Germany’s next chancellor has said Europe must act swiftly to increase its defence capability in the face of a US administration whose motto is moving towards “America alone”, adding: “This is really five minutes to midnight for Europe.”

In a wide-ranging press conference after his conservative alliance’s victory in Sunday’s federal election, Friedrich Merz made it clear his focus was on the turbulent geopolitical landscape, saying that although he would seek good ties with the US he was also ready for “the worst-case scenario”.

Asked about the doubling of support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which came second with 20% of votes, he urged Germany’s political mainstream to recognise it as “the last warning”.

Effective leadership was urgently needed to combat the AfD’s further rise and solve the problems that had helped fuel its popularity, he told journalists. “This is really the last warning to the political parties of the democratic centre in Germany to come to common solutions.”

But, as the 69-year-old former banker prepared to begin the thorny task of forming a government with Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), his first comments on Monday – the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion – were directed at Kyiv.

He posted on X: “Europe stands unwaveringly by Ukraine’s side. Now more than ever, it holds true: We must put Ukraine in a position of strength.”

In an apparent sideswipe at Donald Trump’s administration after it began talks with Russia last week about ending the war that excluded Ukraine and Europe, he added: “For a just peace, the attacked country must be part of peace negotiations.”

Merz, a known transatlanticist – a proponent of a close relationship between the US and Europe – later said that “all the signals we are receiving from the United States indicate that interest in Europe is decreasing”.

“If those who really do not just make ‘America first,’ but almost ‘America alone’ their motto prevail, then it will be difficult,” he told reporters. “But I remain hopeful that we will succeed in maintaining the transatlantic relationship.”

For many years, Berlin had resisted calls from Paris to build up Europe’s defence capabilities, feeling secure under the protection of the nuclear-armed US.

However, Merz has made clear he felt Europe’s largest economy was facing a new era. “In particular following the announcements from Washington in the past few weeks, it’s clear that we Europeans now need to very hurriedly become capable to act,” he said.

He also made reference to interference from the Trump administration in Germany’s election campaign, calling it unacceptable. Elon Musk, the president’s close ally, congratulated the AfD’s candidate for chancellor after the anti-Islam party’s strong performance in the election. On Monday Musk posted on X: “It is only a matter of time before AfD wins.”

The AfD won about twice the vote share it garnered at the last election three years ago. But it will not be part of negotiations to form a coalition government because of the “firewall” that has historically existed between mainstream parties and the far right.

A jubilant Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader and candidate for chancellor, called her party’s performance “historic” and decried Merz’s refusal to enter into coalition with the AfD as a “democracy blockade”, arguing that millions of voters were in effect disfranchised by the decision.

The AfD did particularly well in the former communist east, where it secured 43 out of 48 available seats after campaigning vigorously on an anti-Islam, anti-immigration platform, and backing the “remigration” of immigrants and German citizens deemed to have poorly integrated.

On Monday Merz, whose CDU/CSU alliance won 28.5% of the vote, said: “We need to see that we solve the problems in Germany together so that we step for step, deprive this party of its breeding ground.” If that failed, he said, referring to the next election, “we’ll have very different problems”.

Merz said his own conservative party colleagues had warned him that the former east was “only a few years ahead of you in the west” and that “if you do not solve the problems, then you will have the same problem”.

With a particular focus on migration, which was the main topic of the election campaign, Merz doubled down on his view that “we need to retrieve control once again over those who enter our country”. The CDU leader provoked controversy in January by relying on AfD support to get a non-binding migration policy through parliament.

His hardline migration policies are diametrically opposed to those of the SPD, and the parties – who together would have a small majority in the Bundestag – are likely to engage in stormy negotiations as they try to thrash out a grand coalition.

Many Germans fear a re-run of the last GroKo, as they are known, led by Angela Merkel between 2018 and 2021, which critics accused of a lack of ambition and failing to tackle pressing challenges such as economic and bureaucratic reform, defence spending increases and an infrastructure overhaul.

Sunday’s election was bruising for all the parties in the incumbent government. The SPD, Germany’s oldest political party, received its worst ever result, with 16% of the vote share. Scholz, who will remain as chancellor until Merz has formed a government, called the result “bitter”.

The Greens garnered 11.6% of the vote, down three points from 2021. The market liberal FDP failed to reach the 5% threshold needed to get into parliament, as did the leftwing conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The leftwing Linke party garnered 8.8%.

Merz said he hoped to form a coalition by Easter in late April, stressing the urgency of the negotiations and saying: “The world is not waiting for us.”

In his press conference, Merz also said he would ensure that the Israeli prime minister would be able to visit Germany without being apprehended, after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

Merz called it “an absurd idea” that Benjamin Netanyahu should not visit Germany and said he had told Netanyahu as much by phone.

The man expected to be Germany’s next chancellor has said Europe must act swiftly to increase its defence capability in the face of a US administration whose motto is moving towards “America alone”, adding: “This is really five minutes to midnight for Europe.”

In a wide-ranging press conference after his conservative alliance’s victory in Sunday’s federal election, Friedrich Merz made it clear his focus was on the turbulent geopolitical landscape, saying that although he would seek good ties with the US he was also ready for “the worst-case scenario”.

Asked about the doubling of support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, which came second with 20% of votes, he urged Germany’s political mainstream to recognise it as “the last warning”.

Effective leadership was urgently needed to combat the AfD’s further rise and solve the problems that had helped fuel its popularity, he told journalists. “This is really the last warning to the political parties of the democratic centre in Germany to come to common solutions.”

But, as the 69-year-old former banker prepared to begin the thorny task of forming a government with Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), his first comments on Monday – the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion – were directed at Kyiv.

He posted on X: “Europe stands unwaveringly by Ukraine’s side. Now more than ever, it holds true: We must put Ukraine in a position of strength.”

In an apparent sideswipe at Donald Trump’s administration after it began talks with Russia last week about ending the war that excluded Ukraine and Europe, he added: “For a just peace, the attacked country must be part of peace negotiations.”

Merz, a known transatlanticist – a proponent of a close relationship between the US and Europe – later said that “all the signals we are receiving from the United States indicate that interest in Europe is decreasing”.

“If those who really do not just make ‘America first,’ but almost ‘America alone’ their motto prevail, then it will be difficult,” he told reporters. “But I remain hopeful that we will succeed in maintaining the transatlantic relationship.”

For many years, Berlin had resisted calls from Paris to build up Europe’s defence capabilities, feeling secure under the protection of the nuclear-armed US.

However, Merz has made clear he felt Europe’s largest economy was facing a new era. “In particular following the announcements from Washington in the past few weeks, it’s clear that we Europeans now need to very hurriedly become capable to act,” he said.

He also made reference to interference from the Trump administration in Germany’s election campaign, calling it unacceptable. Elon Musk, the president’s close ally, congratulated the AfD’s candidate for chancellor after the anti-Islam party’s strong performance in the election. On Monday Musk posted on X: “It is only a matter of time before AfD wins.”

The AfD won about twice the vote share it garnered at the last election three years ago. But it will not be part of negotiations to form a coalition government because of the “firewall” that has historically existed between mainstream parties and the far right.

A jubilant Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader and candidate for chancellor, called her party’s performance “historic” and decried Merz’s refusal to enter into coalition with the AfD as a “democracy blockade”, arguing that millions of voters were in effect disfranchised by the decision.

The AfD did particularly well in the former communist east, where it secured 43 out of 48 available seats after campaigning vigorously on an anti-Islam, anti-immigration platform, and backing the “remigration” of immigrants and German citizens deemed to have poorly integrated.

On Monday Merz, whose CDU/CSU alliance won 28.5% of the vote, said: “We need to see that we solve the problems in Germany together so that we step for step, deprive this party of its breeding ground.” If that failed, he said, referring to the next election, “we’ll have very different problems”.

Merz said his own conservative party colleagues had warned him that the former east was “only a few years ahead of you in the west” and that “if you do not solve the problems, then you will have the same problem”.

With a particular focus on migration, which was the main topic of the election campaign, Merz doubled down on his view that “we need to retrieve control once again over those who enter our country”. The CDU leader provoked controversy in January by relying on AfD support to get a non-binding migration policy through parliament.

His hardline migration policies are diametrically opposed to those of the SPD, and the parties – who together would have a small majority in the Bundestag – are likely to engage in stormy negotiations as they try to thrash out a grand coalition.

Many Germans fear a re-run of the last GroKo, as they are known, led by Angela Merkel between 2018 and 2021, which critics accused of a lack of ambition and failing to tackle pressing challenges such as economic and bureaucratic reform, defence spending increases and an infrastructure overhaul.

Sunday’s election was bruising for all the parties in the incumbent government. The SPD, Germany’s oldest political party, received its worst ever result, with 16% of the vote share. Scholz, who will remain as chancellor until Merz has formed a government, called the result “bitter”.

The Greens garnered 11.6% of the vote, down three points from 2021. The market liberal FDP failed to reach the 5% threshold needed to get into parliament, as did the leftwing conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The leftwing Linke party garnered 8.8%.

Merz said he hoped to form a coalition by Easter in late April, stressing the urgency of the negotiations and saying: “The world is not waiting for us.”

In his press conference, Merz also said he would ensure that the Israeli prime minister would be able to visit Germany without being apprehended, after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

Merz called it “an absurd idea” that Benjamin Netanyahu should not visit Germany and said he had told Netanyahu as much by phone.

A US-based nonprofit organization has urged the international criminal court to investigate former president Joe Biden and two of his cabinet members for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The request, submitted by the Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) last month but made public by the group on Monday, urges the ICC to investigate Biden, as well as former secretary of state Antony Blinken and former defense secretary Lloyd Austin, for their “accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza”.

Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, who was recently confirmed by Hamas to have been killed, for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war.

Dawn’s 172-page submission, which the group says was prepared with the support of ICC-registered lawyers and other war crimes experts, alleges that the former US officials violated articles of the Rome statute, the court’s founding charter, in their support for Israel.

According to a press release, the group’s submission to the ICC lays out what it describes as a “a pattern of deliberate and purposeful decisions by these officials to provide military, political, and public support to facilitate Israeli crimes in Gaza”, including “at least $17.9bn of weapons transfers, intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, diplomatic protection, and official endorsement of Israeli crimes, despite knowledge of how such support had and would substantially enable grave abuses”.

One passage from the submission alleges that “by continuously and unconditionally providing political support and military support to Israel while being fully aware of the specific crimes committed by Netanyahu, Gallant, and their subordinates, President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin contributed intentionally to the commission of those crimes while at least knowing the intention of the group to commit the Israeli crimes, if not aiming of furthering such criminal activity”.

Dawn’s executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a statement that “not only did Biden, Blinken and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel’s grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities”.

The statement also points to the political support the US provided to Israel through its veto of multiple ceasefire resolutions at the UN security council.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump signed an executive order that authorizes aggressive economic sanctions against the ICC, accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.

In the statement on Monday, Dawn also stated that Trump’s order against the ICC could subject him to “individual criminal liability for obstruction of justice”.

The group also added that if Trump were to implement his proposed plan to forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza and to take over the territory, it would also subject him to “individual liability for war crimes and the crime of aggression”.

Raed Jarrar, Dawn’s advocacy director, said the plan merited an ICC investigation, “not just for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes but for ordering forcible transfer, a crime against humanity under the Rome statute”.

A 74-year-old surgeon accused of abusing 299 people, most of them children, while they were anaesthetised or recovering from operations has told a French court he did “hideous things” and is prepared to take responsibility for them.

Joël Le Scouarnec is accused of raping or sexually abusing the victims, whose average age was 11, during a 30-year career, and detailing the abuse in notebooks.

“I’ve done hideous things,” the 74-year-old told a court in Vannes on Monday, the opening day of his trial. He said he was “perfectly aware that these wounds cannot be erased or healed” and he was ready to “take responsibility” for his actions.

Almost all the children were unaware of the alleged abuse until police knocked at their doors having discovered their names in the handwritten “black books” found at Le Scouarnec’s home.

The abuse is alleged to have taken place between 1989 and 2014, when Le Scouarnec worked at more than a dozen private and public hospitals in Brittany and other parts of western France.

In 2017, neighbours in Jonzac, north of Bordeaux, reported Le Scouarnec to police. In 2020, he was convicted for the rape or sexual assault of four children, including a young hospital patient. He was sentenced to 15 years and is currently in prison.

When detectives searched his home they found hard disks containing more than 300,000 photos and videos featuring child sexual abuse, as well as notebooks recording details of the alleged abuse of patients. Officers also discovered a collection of dolls, some lifesize, under the floorboards.

In one note, Le Scouarnec is alleged to have written: “I am a paedophile and I always will be.”

The trial, which is expected to last four months, will also focus on how Le Scouarnec was allowed to continue operating on children despite having been convicted and given a four-month suspended sentence for possessing child sexual abuse images in 2005.

His employers and the professional body for doctors, L’Ordre des Médecins, were informed, as was the French ministry of health. No action was taken.

More than 60 lawyers are representing the victims and their families, who will give evidence next month in the chronological order in which the abuse is alleged to have taken place. Two hundred and fifty-six of the victims were under 15, with the youngest aged one and the oldest 70.

One of Le Scouarnec’s lawyers, Maxime Tessier, told the court his client admitted to the “vast majority” of the charges. Le Scouarnec’s former wife and his three children are expected to give evidence on Tuesday. Other members of the surgeon’s family will be questioned the following day.

Marie, one of those seeking justice at the court in Vannes, said: “I want all our trauma to be recognised. They can tell us that it’s in our head, but it’s been there for years and even before we knew what he did to us.”

Before the trial opened, Frédéric Benoist, a lawyer for the child protection association la Voix de L’Enfant (Child’s Voice), a civil party in the case, said it was “scandalous” that L’Ordre des Médecins was included in the case along with the victims.

Negar Haeri, a lawyer representing the order, said they were “defending the collective interests of the profession that had been sullied by the alleged activities of Joël Le Scouarnec”.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Two people, in Wyoming and Ohio, have been hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a routine flu update on Friday.

The person from Wyoming is still in hospital, while the Ohio patient has been released, according to the report. Both patients experienced “respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms”, the report said, without detailing those symptoms.

“This shows that H5N1 can be very severe and we should not assume that it will always be mild,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.

The news comes amid one of the worst seasonal flu outbreaks in 15 years – raising the potential for the emergence of a more dangerous virus that combines bird flu and seasonal flu in a process called reassortment.

“I am very worried about H5N1 in patients that are being treated in hospitals where there are also many seasonal flu patients because this creates opportunities for reassortment, which could potentially produce a pandemic-capable H5N1,” Rasmussen said.

These are the first human H5 cases detected in Wyoming and Ohio.

An “older” woman from Platte county, Wyoming, was hospitalized in another state, according to a statement from the Wyoming department of health. She “has health conditions that can make people more vulnerable to illness”, the statement says.

The woman was exposed to poultry in a backyard flock that tested positive for H5N1, the CDC report said, adding that she remained hospitalized at the time of the report.

A man in Mercer county, Ohio, was infected while depopulating, or killing, H5N1-positive poultry at a commercial facility, according to a statement from the Ohio department of health.

The man has been discharged from the hospital “and is now recovering at home”, the CDC report said.

So far, there have been 70 confirmed cases of the highly pathogenic avian influenza in the US since it was first detected in cows last year.

There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission at this point. The majority of cases have been among people who have close contact with animals.

Previously, a patient in Missouri was hospitalized and tested positive for bird flu after no known exposure. And a man in Louisiana was hospitalized and died after exposure to backyard chickens and wild birds.

A 13-year-old girl was also extremely ill and in the hospital for months in British Columbia after no known exposure.

The Louisiana and BC cases were both caused by a variant of H5N1 that emerged in the fall and has quickly become dominant in birds – and has now spilled over, separately, into dairy cows in Nevada and Arizona.

The new spillovers come as the Trump administration weighs a strategy that wouldn’t seek to contain outbreaks in poultry through depopulation.

The new head of health agencies, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has reportedly stopped a seasonal flu vaccine campaign. A scheduled meeting of the CDC’s independent vaccines committee has also been postponed.

A new study, published by the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, offers some insight into why some cases may not be as severe as others.

Researchers infected ferrets with H1N1 and then, three months later, infected them with H5N1 or H7N9, a low-pathogenicity variant.

H1N1 was the swine flu responsible for the 2009-10 epidemic. It never went away – in fact, it’s one of two seasonal variants behind this year’s flu season.

The ferrets with recent H1N1 antibodies were able to neutralize H5N1 more quickly than H7N9, indicating some protectiveness from the previous infection.

Another new study in the same journal found that ferrets first infected with H1N1 had less severe disease from H5N1 – suggesting that some humans may experience the same, the authors wrote.

“This is evidence that prior H1N1 infection or vaccination may provide some level of cross-protection via anti-N1 immunity,” Rasmussen said.

But it’s not clear to what degree that protection might help people.

“We shouldn’t interpret this to mean protection will be absolute in the human population,” Rasmussen said.

Two people, in Wyoming and Ohio, have been hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a routine flu update on Friday.

The person from Wyoming is still in hospital, while the Ohio patient has been released, according to the report. Both patients experienced “respiratory and non-respiratory symptoms”, the report said, without detailing those symptoms.

“This shows that H5N1 can be very severe and we should not assume that it will always be mild,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.

The news comes amid one of the worst seasonal flu outbreaks in 15 years – raising the potential for the emergence of a more dangerous virus that combines bird flu and seasonal flu in a process called reassortment.

“I am very worried about H5N1 in patients that are being treated in hospitals where there are also many seasonal flu patients because this creates opportunities for reassortment, which could potentially produce a pandemic-capable H5N1,” Rasmussen said.

These are the first human H5 cases detected in Wyoming and Ohio.

An “older” woman from Platte county, Wyoming, was hospitalized in another state, according to a statement from the Wyoming department of health. She “has health conditions that can make people more vulnerable to illness”, the statement says.

The woman was exposed to poultry in a backyard flock that tested positive for H5N1, the CDC report said, adding that she remained hospitalized at the time of the report.

A man in Mercer county, Ohio, was infected while depopulating, or killing, H5N1-positive poultry at a commercial facility, according to a statement from the Ohio department of health.

The man has been discharged from the hospital “and is now recovering at home”, the CDC report said.

So far, there have been 70 confirmed cases of the highly pathogenic avian influenza in the US since it was first detected in cows last year.

There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission at this point. The majority of cases have been among people who have close contact with animals.

Previously, a patient in Missouri was hospitalized and tested positive for bird flu after no known exposure. And a man in Louisiana was hospitalized and died after exposure to backyard chickens and wild birds.

A 13-year-old girl was also extremely ill and in the hospital for months in British Columbia after no known exposure.

The Louisiana and BC cases were both caused by a variant of H5N1 that emerged in the fall and has quickly become dominant in birds – and has now spilled over, separately, into dairy cows in Nevada and Arizona.

The new spillovers come as the Trump administration weighs a strategy that wouldn’t seek to contain outbreaks in poultry through depopulation.

The new head of health agencies, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has reportedly stopped a seasonal flu vaccine campaign. A scheduled meeting of the CDC’s independent vaccines committee has also been postponed.

A new study, published by the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, offers some insight into why some cases may not be as severe as others.

Researchers infected ferrets with H1N1 and then, three months later, infected them with H5N1 or H7N9, a low-pathogenicity variant.

H1N1 was the swine flu responsible for the 2009-10 epidemic. It never went away – in fact, it’s one of two seasonal variants behind this year’s flu season.

The ferrets with recent H1N1 antibodies were able to neutralize H5N1 more quickly than H7N9, indicating some protectiveness from the previous infection.

Another new study in the same journal found that ferrets first infected with H1N1 had less severe disease from H5N1 – suggesting that some humans may experience the same, the authors wrote.

“This is evidence that prior H1N1 infection or vaccination may provide some level of cross-protection via anti-N1 immunity,” Rasmussen said.

But it’s not clear to what degree that protection might help people.

“We shouldn’t interpret this to mean protection will be absolute in the human population,” Rasmussen said.

Police searching for a British businessman missing in Kenya have recovered a body, found in a sack in scrubland about 60 miles from Nairobi, reports said.

Campbell Scott, 58, a senior director at the data analytics company Fico, went missing on 16 February after arriving in the Kenyan capital to attend a conference at the JW Marriott hotel.

The body was found by animal herders in the Makongo Forest, south-east of Nairobi, on Saturday, with initial investigations suggesting the deceased had been strangled.

The Nation Africa website reported that the body had been confirmed as that of Scott, originally from Dunfermline, by county police commander Alice Kimeli, and that a postmortem would be carried out at Makueni county referral hospital mortuary.

A taxi driver and nightclub waiter have been arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder, reports said.

Scott was reported missing by colleagues with whom he had been due to attend a three-day workshop beginning on 18 February, hosted by TransUnion, with senior officials from the UK, US and several African countries.

Local media reported Scott checked into his hotel room at around 1pm on Saturday 15 February and left an hour later. He returned at around 4pm. At about 11.15am on Sunday, Scott left the hotel again.

A colleague called Scott’s UK-registered phone number at around 6pm, but it was off. A missing person police report was filed on Sunday evening and a search began.

Capital News in Kenya reported that detectives from the country’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said Scott was last seen at a club in the upmarket Westlands area of the city before he vanished.

DCI believe Scott visited a bar in the area the day before his disappearance and that he returned to the venue on the day he disappeared to meet a friend, before taking a taxi to Pipeline, one of the city’s biggest slums, shortly after 7pm. Police believe Scott was held at a house in Pipeline, possibly while his abductors attempted to siphon money from his bank accounts.

Scott’s professional profile says he joined Fico in 2014, from Experian UK. He is described as being responsible for global regulatory and compliance product management, based at the company’s London office. He studied at Woodmill high school in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy technical college.

Before the discovery of the body, Fico said they were working with local partners and authorities to investigate the matter.

They added: “Our thoughts are with Campbell’s family and friends. Please respect his privacy and do not speculate about this situation. If anyone has information that may be helpful regarding his whereabouts, please contact local authorities or the Metropolitan police.”

The Foreign Office was contacted for comment.

A shimmery, slinky oarfish – a deep-sea creature that is rarely seen near the surface – was spotted in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, this month. A group of people visiting the area noticed the shiny, wriggling fish along the beach, and tried to guide it back into the water.

The slender creatures live at depths between 660 and 3,280ft underwater, and on the rare occasions that they have been seen by humans, they have usually been dead – washed ashore after storms. In Baja California Sur, Robert Hayes of Idaho, who was visiting the beach with his wife, saw a live fish and quickly began filming it.

Hayes told the Washington Post he had never seen an oarfish before, but recognized the species – which has inspired centuries of folklore and are sometimes referred to as “doomsday fish” due to their mythical reputation as predictors of natural disasters.

The fish spotted in Baja California Sur appeared relatively small. Oarfish are typically about 10ft long, though the largest recorded oarfish measured 36ft in length, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. They live in the mesopelagic region of the ocean, where light cannot reach, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes as the “least explored ecosystem on the planet”.

The oarfish Hayes came across appeared injured, he told the Post, and was reportedly taken to a marine biologist.

This oarfish was spotted not long after a black seadevil anglerfish – which also lives thousands of feet underwater – was observed near the surface off the coast of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Oarfish were spotted in California three times last year, and scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said that changes in ocean conditions could be partly responsible for the increase in sightings.

Historians have disputed the modern idea that Japanese folklore identified the fish as harbingers of doom, though one told NPR that they could be one of several creatures that people have identified as “messengers of the Dragon Palace” in fairytales.

The idea that they foretold earthquakes gained popularity after about 20 oarfish were found on beaches in Japan following the 2011 earthquake there. In 2019, however, Japanese researchers found no relation between oarfish sightings and earthquakes.

Mars may not seem like a prime holiday spot with its arid landscape and punishing radiation levels, but it once boasted beaches, researchers have found.

While previous discoveries of features including valley networks and sedimentary rocks has suggested the red planet once had flowing rivers, there has been debate among scientists over whether it also had oceans.

Now researchers say they have fresh evidence to support the idea after discovering buried beaches on Mars.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report how they made the discovery after they analysed below-ground imaging data from China’s Zhurong rover.

“Zhurong was sent to southern Utopia Planitia near locations where paleoshorelines have been mapped from satellite data,” said Dr Benjamin Cardenas, a co-author of the research from Penn State University.

The authors say the results from the northern lowlands of Mars are similar to those obtained at shorelines on Earth using ground-penetrating radar: both indicate features in the subsurface material that are tilted – and with a similar angle – towards the lowland, or ocean, direction.

“Typically the radar picks up on even subtle changes in sediment size, which is probably what’s happening here,” said Cardenas.

The researchers say this Martian beach appears to have shifted position over time. The data reveals a series of features dipping towards the north – something Cardenas said indicated the beach grew out into the ocean. “In fact, it grew at least 1.3km north into the ocean.”

Cardenas said the implications were exciting. “It’s a simple structure, but it tells you there had to be tides, there had to be waves, there had to be a nearby river supplying sediment, and all these things had to be active for some extended period of time,” he said.

While the researchers noted that tilted features could arise from other types of activity, they say none of these explain the data. “We rule out volcanic, rivers, and wind-blown sand dunes. All of these are pretty commonly seen on Mars, but the structure just doesn’t fit any of them,” said Cardenas.

He added that the discovery had implications for understanding the past habitability on Mars. “A beach is an interface between shallow water, air and land. It’s these sorts of environments where it’s thought life first came to be on Earth, and I think it would be a great place to send a follow-up mission looking for signs of past life,” he said.

But while the Martian shoreline may have been sandy, the similarities to beaches on Earth are limited: not only would there have been a lack of palm trees and gulls but, Cardenas said, it would probably have been fairly chilly.

“That said, I’d love to have seen it. Doing geology, reconstructing these ancient landscapes, it really is excellent daydream fuel,” he said.

The Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón is reportedly set to attend this Sunday’s Oscars after controversy over bigoted tweets.

The Spanish actor, who is nominated for best actress, had been removed from the campaign trail by Netflix after resurfaced tweets led to a backlash.

According to Variety, the streamer will now be paying for Gascón’s expenses as she prepares to travel to Los Angeles for the ceremony.

Gascón is the first out transgender actor to be nominated for an Oscar and had been a visible presence on the awards trail, featuring at events, Q&As and awards ceremonies after the crime musical Emilia Pérez became a darling of the season.

But at the end of January, resurfaced tweets showed the star to have expressed many hateful views in the past towards people of colour, Muslims and diversity at the Oscars. The film’s director, Jacques Audiard, called her tweets “inexcusable” while co-star Zoe Saldaña said she was “disappointed”.

Gascón released a number of statements and had an hour-long interview, all of which she reportedly managed herself without Netflix’s involvement. “As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain,” she said.

Earlier this month, the star pulled out of Spain’s prestigious Goya awards, with the country’s culture minister saying she had “tarnished” what had been seen as a great achievement.

She did not attend the Critics Choice awards, the Baftas or this past weekend’s Screen Actors Guild awards despite being nominated for best actress at all. Reportedly, Netflix had also removed her from many campaign ads.

There had been no official statement from Netflix but earlier this month, the chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, was asked about it on the podcast The Town. “I think it’s really a bummer for the 100 incredibly talented people who made an amazing movie,” Bajaria said. “And if you look at the nominations, and all of this awards love that it’s received, I think it’s such a bummer that it distracted from that.

Gascón released a final statement to apologise once again and also say she would pull back from speaking any further about the controversy, writing that she hoped her “silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is”.

It is unclear what her involvement will be on Sunday and whether she will walk the red carpet. Variety also reports that she will attend France’s César awards on 28 February.

Emilia Pérez is the most nominated film at this year’s Oscars with 13 nods. Gascón faces competition in her category from hot favourite Demi Moore, nominated for the body horror The Substance.