Added to the World Heritage list are two prisons: Tuol Sleng and M-13, as well as the execution site Choeung Ek.

Three notorious locations used by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime as torture and execution sites to perpetrate the genocide of Year Zero five decades ago have been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

Two prisons and an execution site were inscribed on the list by the United Nations cultural agency on Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris.

It coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to power by the communist Khmer Rouge, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, torture and mass executions during a four-year reign of violence from 1975 to 1979 before it was brought to an end by an invasion from neighbouring Vietnam.

UNESCO’s World Heritage list lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia’s Angkor archaeological complex.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message on Friday directing people to beat drums simultaneously across the country on Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO listing.

🔴 BREAKING!

New inscription on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Cambodian Memorial Sites: From centres of repression to places of peace and reflection, #Cambodia 🇰🇭.

➡️ https://t.co/seTyyVu3sT #47WHC pic.twitter.com/SPl7zlxeFh

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) July 11, 2025

“May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended,” Hun Manet said in a video message aired by state-run television TVK. “From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.”

Two sites added to the list are in the capital, Phnom Penh – the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocide Centre.

Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was converted into a notorious prison known as S-21, where an estimated 15,000 people were imprisoned and tortured.

Today, the site is a space for commemoration and education, housing the black-and-white mugshots of its many victims and the preserved equipment used by Khmer Rouge tormentors.

The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site and is among the first in the world to be submitted as a site associated with recent conflict, Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement on Friday.

‘The Killing Fields’

Choeung Ek – a former Chinese cemetery – was a notorious “killing field” where S-21 prisoners were executed nightly. The story of the atrocities committed there is the focus of the 1984 film “The Killing Fields”, based on the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg.

More than 6,000 bodies were exhumed from at least 100 mass graves at the ground in the early 1980s, according to Cambodian government documents filed with UNESCO.

Every year, hundreds hold remembrance prayers in front of the site’s memorial displaying victims’ skulls, and watch students stage dramatic re-enactments of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody crimes.

Another prison site, known as M-13 and located in a rural area in central Kampong Chhnang province, was one of the most important prisons of the early Khmer Rouge, where its cadres “invented and tested various methods of interrogation, torture and killing” but is today only a patch of derelict land.

A special tribunal sponsored by the UN, costing $337m and working over 16 years, only convicted three key Khmer Rouge figures, including S-21 chief torturer Kaing Guek Eav, before ceasing operations in 2022.

Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, died in 1998 before he could be brought to trial.

The preliminary report into last month’s Air India crash provides some insight into what caused it.

It says that both fuel control switches were moved to the cut-off position – a step that usually turns off the engines – moments before the plane crashed.

But as experts analyse the findings of the report, it provides little comfort to the families who lost their loved ones.

The BBC’s Samira Hussain met Shweta Parihar, whose husband died in the crash. “We trusted the airline. What is the point of the investigation now?” she said.

A farmworker has died from injuries he sustained in immigration raids on two California cannabis farms, as United States authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with protesters.

The United Farm Workers advocacy group confirmed the death of Jaime Alanis, who was injured after a 30-foot (nine-metre) fall during one of the raids, in a post on X on Friday.

“We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” it said.

Federal immigration authorities confirmed on Friday that they had arrested about 200 immigrants suspected of being in the US illegally in raids on Thursday at two cannabis farms in Carpinteria and Camarillo, Southern California.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that they also found at least 10 immigrant children during the raids who were rescued from “potential exploitation, forced labour, and human trafficking”.

The statement said four US citizens had been arrested for their role in violent confrontations between agents and protesters. Authorities are also offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of another person suspected of firing a gun at the federal agents.

“During the operation, more than 500 rioters attempted to disrupt operations. Four US citizens are being criminally processed for assaulting or resisting officers. The rioters damaged vehicles, and one violent agitator fired a gun at law enforcement officers,” the statement said.

One of the raids saw immigration agents clad in military-style helmets and uniforms storm Glass House Farms – a licensed cannabis grower which also grows tomatoes and cucumbers – in Camarillo on Thursday.

Agents faced off with the demonstrators outside the farm, as crowds of people gathered to seek information about their relatives and to oppose the raids.

Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department, said at least 12 people were injured as a result of the raid and protest.

During the raid, Alanis, who had reportedly worked at Glass House Farms picking tomatoes for 10 years, called his family in Mexico to say he was hiding from authorities.

“The next thing we heard was that he was in the hospital with broken hands, ribs and a broken neck,” said Juan Duran, Alanis’s brother-in-law, according to The Associated Press news agency.

In a statement, Glass House said immigration agents held valid warrants, and it is helping provide detained workers with legal representation.

“Glass House has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors,” the statement said.

United Farm Workers said in a statement that some US citizens who worked at the firm are not yet accounted for.

The raid is the latest to take place as part of the Trump administration’s controversial all-out campaign cracking down on immigration in the US.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has unleashed groups of immigration agents to round up undocumented migrants and sent accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without due process.

But in the wake of Thursday’s raids, Federal Judge Maame E Frimpong ordered a temporary halt to the Trump administration’s indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, including Los Angeles.

The Friday ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by immigrant advocacy groups in the US District Court last week, accusing the Trump administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people during immigration raids in Southern California.

The filing asked the judge to block the administration from using what they called unconstitutional tactics.

In her ruling, which remains in place for 10 days, Judge Frimpong agreed that “roving patrols” of immigration agents without reasonable suspicion violated the Fourth Amendment, protecting individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth Amendment, ensuring due process of law.

Frimpong directed agents to stop racially profiling people and ordered the federal government to ensure detainees have access to legal counsel.

Al Jazeera correspondent in Washington, DC, Shihab Rattansi, said the case gets to the “heart of whether we can have these marauding sort of gangs of ICE agents without any identification” sweeping people up.

“[The plaintiffs argue there is] no probable cause to suspect they’re breaking any kind of immigration laws. And we know a lot of people who are citizens are being swept up too,” Rattansi said.

A federal judge in New York has allowed a lawsuit to move forward from two voice-over artists alleging their voices were stolen by an AI voice startup.

The judge dismissed artists Paul Skye Lehrman and Linnea Sage claims that their voices were subject to federal copyright.

But claims from the artists of breach of contract and deceptive business practices, as well as separate copyright claims alleging that the voices were improperly used as part of the AI’s training data, will, however, move forward.

California-based Lovo Inc. had asked for the case to be dismissed entirely. The company has not yet responded to the BBC’s request for comment.

The judge’s decision comes after a flood of cases from artists against artificial intelligence companies alleging misuse of their work to train AI models.

The artists’ attorney, Steve Cohen, has called the decision a “spectacular” victory for his clients, saying he was confident a future jury will “hold big tech accountable”.

Lawyers for Lovo had called the artists’ allegations a “kitchen sink approach” saying the artists’ claims failed to make an actionable claim against the company.

The artists, a couple living in New York City, filed a proposed class action lawsuit in 2024 after learning alleged clones of their voices were for sale via Lovo’s text-to-speech platform Genny.

The couple claim they were separately approached by anonymous Lovo employees for voice-over work through the online freelance marketplace Fiverr.

Lehrman was paid $1200 (around £890). Sage received $800 (almost £600).

In messages shared with the BBC, the anonymous client can be seen saying Lehrman and Sage’s voices would be used for “academic research purposes only” and “test scripts for radio ads” respectively.

The anonymous messenger said the voice-overs would “not be disclosed externally and will only be consumed internally”.

Months later, while driving near their home in New York City, the couple listened to a podcast about the ongoing strikes in Hollywood and how artificial intelligence (AI) could affect the industry.

This episode had a unique hook – an interview with an AI-powered chatbot, equipped with text-to-speech software. It was asked how it thought the use of AI would affect jobs in Hollywood.

But, when it spoke, it sounded just like Mr Lehrman.

“We needed to pull the car over,” Mr Lehrman told the BBC in an interview last year. “The irony that AI is coming for the entertainment industry, and here is my voice talking about the potential destruction of the industry, was really quite shocking.”

Upon returning home, the couple found voices with the names Kyle Snow and Sally Coleman available for use by paid Lovo subscribers.

They later found Sage’s alleged clone voicing a fundraising video for the platform –while Lehrman’s had been used in an advertisement on the company’s YouTube page.

The company eventually removed the voices, saying both voices were not popular on the platform.

The case is now set to move ahead in the US District Court in Manhattan.

State Department head Rubio said he had sanctioned several senior officials and their ‘cronies’ for their ‘brutality toward the Cuban people’.

The US State Department has imposed sanctions on senior Cuban officials, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced as he marked the fourth anniversary of a brutal crackdown on historic antigovernment protests.

In a post on X, Rubio said the State Department would be “restricting visas for Cuban regime figureheads”, including President Diaz-Canel, Defence Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera, Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, and their “cronies” for their “role in the Cuban regime’s brutality toward the Cuban people”.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also announced that the State Department has added the Torre K hotel to its restricted list of entities in order to “prevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime’s repression”.

The Cuban government has promoted the luxury high-rise Torre K in central Havana as a symbol of modernisation. But the government has faced criticism for its large investment in luxury hotels amid a severe economic crisis in the nominally socialist one-party state.

“While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders,” Rubio said.

Ten other “regime-linked properties” were also added to the State Department’s List of Prohibited Accommodations, it said in a statement.

The statement said the sanctions were being enacted in “solidarity with the Cuban people and the island’s political prisoners”, citing the Cuban government’s brutal crackdown on the July 2021 demonstrations – the largest since the Cuban revolution in the 1950s.

The police crackdown resulted in one death and dozens of wounded protesters.

“Four years ago, thousands of Cubans peacefully took to the streets to demand a future free from tyranny. The Cuban regime responded with violence and repression, unjustly detaining thousands, including over 700 who are still imprisoned and subjected to torture or abuse,” the State Department said.

Rubio also accused Cuba of torturing pro-democracy activist Jose Daniel Ferrer, whose bail was revoked as he was taken into custody alongside fellow dissident Felix Navarro in April.

“The United States demands immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners,” Rubio said.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the latest measures as part of a “ruthless economic war” being waged by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

“The USA is capable of imposing migratory sanctions against revolutionary leaders and maintaining a prolonged and ruthless economic war against Cuba, but it lacks the ability to break the will of these people or their leaders,” he said on X.

In January, then-US President Joe Biden had removed Cuba from the blacklist of countries sponsoring terrorism.

But Trump returned the country to the blacklist immediately after returning to the White House as he resumed his “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba that typified his foreign policy during his first term.