We are all vulnerable to the rapid spread of phone scams – including, it seems, world leaders. Thailand’s prime minister has revealed she got a call from an AI system, demanding money in the voice of another famous head of government.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra did not reveal who the computer was mimicking, but said she received a message in a voice identical to a well-known leader.

“The voice was very clear, and I recognized it immediately. They first sent a voice clip, saying something like, ‘How are you? I want to work together,’ and so on,” Paetongtarn said.

She said she later missed a call from the same number, then received a voice message which cut to the chase: “They sent another voice message asking for a donation, saying, ‘You are the only country in (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) that hasn’t donated yet,’ emphasizing it. I was taken aback for a moment and realized something was off.”

She said whoever sent the message “probably used AI to take the voice” of the unnamed world leader.

Scams or scam centers are not uncommon in Southeast Asia. In recent years, investigators say transnational crime organizations have exploited technological advances and the civil war in Myanmar to build a billion-dollar industry scamming people across the world.

In January, a Chinese actor flew to Bangkok for what he thought was a casting call for a movie. Instead, he was picked up at the airport and driven to a scam center in Myanmar’s Myawaddy, a notorious cyber-fraud hub across the border from Thailand.

This is also a problem for thousands of ordinary people who are lured to Thailand with the promise of white-collar jobs, before ultimately being trafficked to criminal hubs in Myanmar where they are held against their will and forced to steal millions in cryptocurrency.

While many of the scams currently use phone calls and traditional messaging, there have been warnings that, as AI technology advances in leaps and bounds, millions of people could fall victim to scams using artificial intelligence to clone their voices.

Last year, OpenAI, the maker of generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, unveiled its voice replication tool, Voice Engine, but didn’t make it available to the public at that stage, citing the “potential for synthetic voice misuse.”

Paetongtarn, who began her political career in 2021 as the chief of the Pheu Thai’s party Inclusion and Innovation Advisory Committee, became prime minister in August 2024.

She is the third member in her family’s political dynasty to serve as prime minister following her father and aunt, who served for five and three years respectively.

Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan was out of danger, police said on Thursday, following stab injuries received in a scuffle with an intruder at his home in India’s financial capital of Mumbai for which he was undergoing surgery.

Among the country’s most bankable stars, Khan, 54, is the son of former India cricket captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and actress Sharmila Tagore.

“He (Khan) is being treated … and is out of danger,” senior police officer Gedam Dixit told Reuters.

Earlier, news agency ANI quoted hospital official Niraj Uttamani as saying, “He is currently undergoing surgery,” and adding, “The extent of the damage will be understood once the surgery is complete.”

A small piece of a foreign body had been identified close to the spine, added Uttamani, the chief operating officer of the hospital where Khan was taken at around 3:30 a.m.

Khan, who has featured in more than 70 films and television series, in some also as producer, lives in an apartment in the western suburb of Bandra, along with his wife Kareena Kapoor Khan, who is also an actor, and their two children.

Representatives of his wife confirmed Khan was undergoing a procedure after the burglary attempt, adding, “The rest of the family is doing fine.”

A female employee at their home was also attacked and was being treated, added police, who have launched an investigation and a search for the perpetrator.

Film stars and opposition leaders called for police to beef up security measures in the city.
“If such high-profile people with … security can be attacked in their homes, what could happen to common citizens?” Clyde Crasto, spokesperson of the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party, asked on X.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won November elections in the western state of Maharashtra, the capital of which is Mumbai.

Actor and filmmaker Pooja Bhatt also called for a greater police presence in the suburb home to many in the film industry.

“The city, and especially the queen of the suburbs, have never felt so unsafe before,” she said on X, using a popular description for the trendy area.

Reuters has a minority stake in ANI.

Pope Francis has fallen over and injured his right arm but did not suffer any broken bones, the Vatican says.

In a statement, the Holy See press office said that due to a fall Thursday morning in the Casa Santa Marta, the pope’s residence, the 88-year-old pontiff “suffered a contusion to his right forearm, without fracture.”

The statement added that his arm has been “immobilized as a precautionary measure.”

Official pictures showed the pope wearing a cloth sling as he held meetings.

Despite the fall, Francis held five meetings on Thursday according to the Vatican, including with Alvaro Lario, the President of the International Fund of Agricultural Development, and priests from an Argentine college based in Rome.

On Wednesday, the pope led his general audience in the Vatican and seemed in good spirits, throwing a tennis ball to a dog during a circus performance.

The pope has suffered a number of health problems in recent years and this is the second fall he has had in a matter of weeks. In early December, he appeared with a large bruise on his chin after falling and hitting his bedside table during the night.

Since 2022, the pope has made use of a wheelchair due to mobility problems caused by pain in his knee. In his recently published autobiography “Hope”, Francis said that he is in good health and ruled out resigning from his position, but said that “the reality is, quite simply, that I am old.”

He said it was “embarrassing at first to have to use a wheelchair, but old age never arrives by itself, and it must be accepted for what it is.”

He added: “the Church is governed using the head and the heart, not the legs. I do physiotherapy twice a week, I use a walking stick, do as many steps as I can, and I carry on.”

This story has been updated.

A woman in Australia has been charged with poisoning a child and allegedly posting videos of the infant suffering online in order to garner viewers and donations, police said Thursday.

The 34-year-old woman from the Sunshine Coast allegedly “administered several unauthorised prescription and pharmacy medicines to a one-year-old girl, who was known to her, without medical approval,” according to a statement from Queensland Police.

“It will be further alleged the woman, disregarding medical advice, went to lengths to obtain unauthorised medicines, including old medicines for a different person available in their home,” the statement said.

Police allege the woman, who has not been officially named, poisoned the child from August 6 to October 15, 2024, when medical staff at a hospital where the child was admitted reported their suspicions to detectives.

“While the child was being subject to immense distress and pain, it is alleged the woman filmed and posted videos of the child,” said police.

“It is alleged the content produced exploited the child and was used to entice monetary donations and online followers.”

Testing for unauthorized medicines returned a positive result on January 7 and the woman was arrested Thursday, said police.

She has been charged with five counts of administering poison with intent to harm, three counts of preparation to commit crimes with dangerous things and one count each of torture, making child exploitation material and fraud, said police.

Detective Inspector Paul Dalton of the Morningside Child Protection and Investigation Unit (CPIU) said that the unit deals with the “worst offences against children.”

“We will do everything in our power to remove that child from harm’s way and hold any offender to account,” said Dalton in the statement.

“There is no excuse for harming a child, especially not a one-year-old infant who is reliant on others for care and survival.”

The woman is scheduled to appear at Brisbane Magistrates court on Friday.

From Gaza to Greenland, the disruptive force of President-elect Donald Trump is being felt across the world, his incoming administration casting aside conventional diplomatic niceties in favor of an intensive global pressure campaign that already appears to be yielding results.

In the Middle East, Trump quickly took credit for the Israel-Hamas hostage deal resulting from months of painstaking negotiations involving Biden and Trump administration officials working alongside US allies.

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could only have happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

“We have achieved so much without even being in the White House. Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return,” he added.

It is hard to deny that Trump’s implicit threat that there would be “hell to pay” if there was no Israel-Hamas deal before his inauguration on January 20 appears to have focused minds, not least among those in the Israeli government keen to lock-in Trump’s enthusiastic backing as he is poised to start a second US presidential term.

Friend and foe alike appear to be approaching the mercurial, unpredictable Trump – bolstered by his resounding US presidential election victory in November – with trepidation, franticly working to appease the president-elect amid concern his praise and favor could rapidly turn to fury.

One Israeli diplomat told me it was in his countries’ national interest to “keep Trump happy” amid concerns his “unflinching support for Israel were to suddenly flinch.”

That certainly doesn’t sound like the traditional basis of a stable international relationship, but in the short term Trump’s Might is Right, America First rhetoric is already proving remarkably effective, not just in Israel but across the gamut of global affairs.

Take Trump’s recently revived offer to buy Greenland, the vast frozen territory owned by Denmark and sitting strategically between the US and Russia on giant mineral deposits. The same suggestion, made by Trump in his first term, was scoffed at.

This time, Trump’s offer was accompanied by a chilling threat of US military force, or at least a refusal by the next US commander-in-chief to rule it out. The Danish and Greenlandic answer, for the moment, is still that Greenland is not for sale. But the possibility, however remote, has been scrutinized far more anxiously this time. Trump is, whatever else, being taken seriously.

Elsewhere, some nations are taking pre-emptive steps to appease the concerns of the incoming Trump administration or to avoid direct negotiations over sensitive issues.

In South Korea, for example, a five-year deal was agreed ahead of the November US election to share the cost of keeping more than 28,000 US troops in the country. The negotiations concluded early amid memories in Seoul that Trump, during his first presidency, had accused South Korea, a key Asian ally, of “free-riding” on US military might, and demanded that it pay as much as $5 billion a year for the deployment.

But it is Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine where the Trump factor could next produce extraordinary results. The president-elect once suggested he would end the conflict in a single day, but is now pushing more serious proposals to force an end to the violence, if not the Russian occupation.

Both Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin strongman, and the beleaguered Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, have cautiously welcomed Trump’s blustering intervention. To not do so may trigger the Trump factor’s unpredictable wrath.

Seoul, South Korea (AP) — Lawyers for impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol failed in their court effort to secure his release on Thursday, a day after he was detained at his residence for questioning over rebellion allegations linked to his martial law declaration last month.

Yoon was sent to a detention center near the country’s capital, Seoul, after undergoing more than 10 hours of questioning on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, during which he exercised his right to remain silent. Yoon refused further questioning by the anti-corruption officials on Thursday as his lawyers maintained that the investigation was illegal.

Lawyers had asked the Seoul Central District Court to consider his release, questioning the validity of the detention warrant for Yoon issued by the Seoul Western District Court.

But the Central District Court denied their petition late Thursday.

Yoon had avoided several requests to appear for questioning before the anti-corruption agency and police carried out a major law enforcement operation involving hundreds of personnel to detain him at his residential compound in Seoul.

Investigators are expected to move to place him under arrest in the coming days.

The anti-corruption agency, which is leading a joint investigation with the police and the military over whether Yoon’s martial law declaration amounted to attempted rebellion, has 48 hours either to request a court order for his formal arrest or to release him.

On Thursday, his lawyers formally declared that Wednesday’s raid at the presidential residence, which led to the detention of a head of state, was illegal, in complaints filed with prosecutors.

Yoon didn’t attend a hearing at the Central District Court on Thursday, which was part of the review over his detention warrant, because of security concerns, according to Seok Dong-hyeon, one of the president’s lawyers.

Hundreds of Yoon’s supporters rallied for hours in streets near the court and the detention center where Yoon was being held, waving banners and chanting slogans calling for his release.

Yoon set off the country’s most serious political crisis since its democratization in the late 1980s when he attempted to break through gridlock in legislation by declaring martial law and deploying troops around the National Assembly on December 3. The standoff lasted only hours before lawmakers managed to get through the blockade and voted to lift the measure.

His presidential powers were suspended when the opposition-dominated assembly voted to impeach him on December 14, accusing him of rebellion. His fate now rests with the Constitutional Court, which has begun deliberating on whether to formally remove Yoon from office or reject the charges and reinstate him.

Yoon and his allies have defied efforts to investigate his role in the chaos of December 3. He ignored requests to appear for questioning for weeks, remaining in his official residence to avoid detention as his lawyers turned away police, citing a law that protects locations potentially linked to military secrets from search without the consent of the person in charge — Yoon himself. They also said that the anti-corruption agency had no legal authority to investigate rebellion allegations.

Yoon also resisted one attempt to detain him as the presidential security service barricaded the residence. He was finally brought into custody after hundreds of anti-corruption investigators and police raided the presidential compound for around five hours in a second attempt.

In a video message recorded shortly before he was escorted to the headquarters of the anti-corruption agency, Yoon lamented that the “rule of law has completely collapsed in this country.” He echoed the arguments of his lawyers that the anti-corruption agency doesn’t have the authority to investigate his actions, but said that he accepted detention to prevent violence.

The Constitutional Court rejected a request by Yoon’s lawyers to postpone a hearing on his case scheduled for Thursday. It remains possible for Yoon to exercise his right to attend, even while under detention.

If a court grants a warrant for Yoon’s formal arrest, the anti-corruption investigators can extend his detention to 20 days, during which it will transfer the case to public prosecutors for an indictment.

If prosecutors indict Yoon on the possible charges of rebellion and abuse of power, he could remain under arrest until the first court ruling, which is typically made within six months, said Park Sung-bae, an attorney specializing in criminal law. Under South Korean law, the leader of a rebellion can face the death penalty or life imprisonment, if convicted.

The British prime minister’s visit to Kyiv, his first since taking office in July, caps a week of hurried diplomatic activity by Ukraine’s NATO allies, keen to prove their commitment as uncertainty hangs over the incoming Trump administration.

The “100-year partnership” – the centerpiece of Keir Starmer’s visit – did have an air of a PR stunt about it in a country that has no idea what will happen in one year, and the text of the agreement didn’t offer anything revolutionary. The UK is already the third biggest military donor to Ukraine (though it’s given just over 10% of what the US has) and the two countries inked a bilateral security cooperation agreement last year. The 100-year deal adds maritime security, social integration, and a new UK program to track stolen grain to the slate, but none of those comes close to the security guarantees Ukraine is looking for, a point Starmer indirectly acknowledged. “We will work with you and all of our allies on steps that would be robust enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security,” he promised in a press conference in Kyiv.

Ukraine is on the clock here. The Institute for the Study of War estimates Russia gained more than 4,000 square kilometers of territory in 2024 (some of it retaken from Ukrainian forces in its own Kursk region), more than 10 times its total gains in 2023, though it came at significant manpower cost. The Trump administration has made clear it will push for a diplomatic solution that may involve Ukraine accepting these losses.

And so “peace through strength,” as Starmer posted on X Thursday, has become the refrain. In other words, try to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position, economically, politically and militarily, to negotiate. The same motto was in used in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday when President Volodymyr Zelensky met Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who promised to accelerate Ukraine’s path to EU membership. Germany, Ukraine’s second biggest military backer, sent its defense minister to Kyiv Tuesday, with the promise of a brand-new artillery system.

Perhaps the strongest signal of support came from French President Emmanuel Macron, who called Zelensky on Monday to discuss, among other things, a French proposal to deploy “military contingents” in Ukraine – European boots on the ground – as a deterrent against any Russian effort to advance further into the country or beyond. “This is an issue that we are all discussing,” said Starmer Thursday, “but it must be capable of deterring future aggression. So that’s the test of any discussion, any conversation that we’re having.”

And perhaps in a sign of the diplomatic challenge ahead, Zelensky and Starmer did not shy away from discussing the elephant in the room – the imminent transfer of power in the US. For Zelensky, who has actively tried to charm the incoming administration in recent weeks, even endorsing Trump’s claim he can end the war quickly, there was no talk of managing without Washington’s help. “We do not consider security guarantees for Ukraine without the United States, so it is too early to talk about the details,” he told reporters.

Starmer took a conciliatory tone, paying tribute to the US contribution so far, and promising: “We can, we will continue to work with the US on this. We are working today. We will work tomorrow.”