Immigration agents in New York and protests in London: photos of the day
Steve Lewis, 64, from Tottenham, takes part in a protest outside the Houses of Parliament from his home via an LED screen as he is unable to leave his caring duties. The protest, part of a campaign by Carers Trust and Uncommon Creative Studio, takes place after figures revealed that one in three unpaid carers are rarely able to leave their responsibilities and have no legal right to time off Photograph: Matt Alexander/PA
People carry items that symbolise what is being lost or denied to Palestinians as a result of Israel's military campaign in Gaza Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
A cyclist passes a banner showing an image of destruction in Gaza which activists from the Led By Donkeys protest group installed over the Labour party's headquarters Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Reuters
At al-Shifa hospital Palestinians mourn over the body of a child who medics said was killed in an Israeli strike Photograph: Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters
Living in a tent in Gaza City, where basic supplies are lacking, 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq's weight dropped from 9kg to 6kg. Malnutrition is widespread in the territory. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Children hold empty pots as they gather in hopes of receiving food from a charity kitchen Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Palestinians walk among rubble and makeshift shelters as they head to collect aid supplies from trucks which entered central Gaza from Israel Photograph: Khamis Al-Rifi/Reuters
Federal immigration agents patrol the corridors of the Jacob K Javits federal building. Several undocumented immigrants were reportedly detained inside the courthouse during immigration proceedings Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
The Salvadoran navy escorts a semi-submersible carrying 1.3 tonnes of cocaine after arresting two Ecuadorians and a Colombian onboard. The vessel was intercepted 600 nautical miles (about 1,100km) south-west of the Jaltepeque estuary, and was carrying a cargo valued at $33m, El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, said Photograph: EL SALVADOR'S PRESIDENCY PRESS OFFICE/AFP/Getty Images
Arturo Suarez, who was held for months in an El Salvador prison after the US alleged he was a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, embraces family members after his release Photograph: Leonardo Fernández Viloria/Reuters
Emergency services personnel work to put out a fire after a Russian attack Photograph: AP
The tropical storm Wipha caused monsoon rains and flooding in the capital, and heavy rains continued even after the storm moved towards Vietnam Photograph: Aaron Favila/AP
Police detain an activist protesting against a bill to criminalise the search of 'extremist materials' on the internet, as the legislation was due to be read at The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament Photograph: AP
People look at the remains of a school that was hit by an air force training aircraft, killing at least 20 people Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters
A tractor cuts a fire line as a wildfire burns near the settlement of Beledie Han Photograph: Reuters
A coach driver takes a rest inside the luggage compartment on a warm day Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
Tourists watch the sunset at the Uyuni salt flat, which has an area of more than 10,000 sq km and is the biggest such landscape in the world
Photograph: Esteban Biba/EPA
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Times
4 minutes ago
- Times
Conned by the Tinder Swindler: how his victims took revenge
If Simon Leviev were to enter the busy north London café in which I'm sitting with Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm, 'He would wet his pants and run,' Sjoholm says. Posing as a diamond heir, Leviev — better known as the Tinder Swindler — has defrauded victims around the world out of more than $10 million. While the 2022 release of the smash hit Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler laid bare the women's devastation — the crippling debt they were left trying to escape, and, for Fjellhoy, the marriage and baby-filled future Leviev had promised being exposed as a sham — now they say the tables are finally turning. 'I have way more power than he does,' Sjoholm, 38, says with a smile. 'He's not a real man; he's scared of two blonde women.' The enormous reach of the documentary — the most watched in Netflix's history on its release, racking up 166 million hours of viewing time within its first month on the platform — made Leviev recognisable to many would-be victims. 'He's really angry with all the successes that we have had,' Fjellhoy, 36, says. 'I think he really wanted us to be miserable for the rest of our lives.' Instead, the women say they are in a strange way grateful for the Leviev-shaped wrecking ball that tore through their worlds nearly a decade ago. Both now travel the world giving talks about online safety and romance fraud, while Sjoholm has cofounded IDfier, an identity verification platform designed to weed out those lurking beneath AI and deepfakes. It has also strengthened their determination to seek better protections for victims. 'We want the laws to change. This is not just money loss,' Sjoholm says. It's on a par with 'murder, in my eyes. This is emotional abuse; people take their lives due to this. It's a serious, serious crime.' Fjellhoy says that the way the likes of banks and police treat victims of romance fraud can be worse than the original deception. 'A far tougher pill to swallow — and why I'm still traumatised — is the treatment of me after it,' she says. 'No victim should be placed into a courtroom and have to defend themselves. And the criminal who started everything, he's just been taken out of the equation.' • Read more expert advice on sex, relationships, dating and love Though it was affecting, the film inevitably couldn't capture the complexity of the women's relationships with Leviev — real name Shimon Hayut (he has no connection to the Leviev diamond dynasty after which he renamed himself to bolster his credentials) — nor the aftermath. And so Fjellhoy and Sjoholm have written Swindled Never After: How We Survived (and You Can Spot) a Relationship Scammer, an unflinching account of their brushes with suicide and bankruptcy, global fame and public blame, along with online safety tips and expert insight from criminologists and psychologists. The goal, the women say, is to try to stem the rapidly rising tide of romance fraud, which cost the UK £106 million last year. It is also their chance to reframe the victim-shaming that so often follows crimes of this kind. For them, the question is not why do people fall for such scams, but rather why do perpetrators prey on innocent victims in the first place? And why does it remain nigh-on impossible to bring them to justice? Fjellhoy was 29 when she swiped right on Leviev, who told her he was visiting London, where she lives, on a business trip. They met for coffee at the Four Seasons and, within 24 hours, she was boarding a private jet to his next meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, along with his young daughter, her mother and a smattering of 'business associates'. She liked his 'magnetism' and style, she says, and, having grown up on a diet of Disney fairytales, was earnestly looking for everlasting love. But her 'prince of diamonds', as he dubbed himself, would within months lose his sparkle, his penchant for Rolls-Royces and five-star hotel stays quickly becoming Fjellhoy's problem. Leviev, now 34, made her acquire a platinum Amex card — so former acquaintances wishing to do him harm, he said, couldn't track his movements — and maxed it out immediately. He urged her to meet him in Amsterdam with $25,000 (some £18,000) in cash, and requested similarly vast sums on so many occasions that she ended up taking out nine loans totalling $250,000. When he sent her a cheque for $500,000, which then bounced, it occurred to her that 'the man who held me in his arms, kissed me on the forehead, shared a bed with me and planned a future with me… All that was a lie.' That realisation 'makes me tear up, even today'. Fjellhoy, then working in tech with a full social life and strong support network back in her native Norway, considered herself an unlikely victim of such deception. But between the deep sense of violation at the hands of a master manipulator and being hounded by creditors (four took her to court), 'I felt like I was drowning; someone was dragging me to rock bottom,' she writes in Swindled Never After. In one particularly dark moment, a lorry driving towards her in the next lane gained a sudden appeal. 'Wouldn't it be better to end it here?' she wondered, before forcing herself to return home, visit the local hospital and get a referral to a psychiatric unit. After three weeks there, and seven years of therapy and medication, it is only in recent months that she has come off antidepressants. 'I never wanted to be on them,' she says. But, 'I needed them. I was thinking of stopping a couple of times, but then when you get hit with a lawsuit [by creditors], or police officers barging in, you need antidepressants,' she says. 'I tell you, that is not something that is for the faint of heart.' Sjoholm, the more voluble of the two, was also left contemplating suicide after learning of Leviev's lies. Their platonic nine-month relationship involved her being flown via jet to parties in Mykonos and Rome (in some cases, unknowingly paid for by Fjellhoy), and the offer of a $15,000 monthly rental budget so that they could move in together. Rather than being 'gold-diggers', as internet critics have suggested, Sjoholm says they were 'milking cows' for Leviev, whose network of victims doesn't discriminate against gender, individuals or companies, or global location. Sjoholm lost $45,000 funding his playboy lifestyle — the deposit she'd saved for a home — an amount then doubled by legal fees when she unsuccessfully attempted to take the bank who had wired her payments to Leviev to court. The course of their lives would be altogether different had Fjellhoy not contacted a Norwegian newspaper in 2019. Its journalists found Sjoholm waiting outside the Mandarin Oriental in Munich as she met Leviev. When he left and saw the cameras, he turned aggressive, issuing death threats that 'were not cryptic; they were spoken as if they were a done deal: 'I've paid a price for your head. It wasn't even that expensive — it only cost €1,000 because you aren't worth any more.' ' • Sweet Bobby and me: the catfishing that shocked the world The fallout left Sjoholm questioning not only 'what I would do to myself; I didn't know what Simon might try to do to me.' Those feelings worsened following the film's release. During what she now looks back on as 'the lowest point in my life', she began making fake posts on Instagram to mislead the now millions of people watching her every move, in case Leviev's threats — or the legions of 'incels' she says were now supporting him — led to a nasty end. Today Sjoholm, who is Swedish but lives in Spain, is in a far better place. She was introduced to her partner via mutual friends four years ago and, as mother to their two-year-old twins, has found her 'life's purpose'. (They call Fjellhoy, who spent three months at their home after they were born, 'auntie'.) Moving on has been crucial, she says. 'I don't let this consume my life. Because if I were to sit there and just look into what [Leviev's] doing every day, and be angry and be annoyed, then I am continuing to let him defraud me.' Although defiant, she concedes that the anger still eats at her sometimes. There are 'days where I feel like I'm struggling; that I would have loved to give all this money, for example, towards my children and their future. And I gave it away to a criminal instead.' She is, at least, free from the choppy waters of the online dating pool, which is 'definitely worse' now compared with when the women met Leviev. • The handsome army hero who turned out to be an AI dating scam Fjellhoy has returned to the apps — 'I still love love' — albeit with more caution. 'Of course, I have my guard up; I haven't been in a long-term relationship since then. So I think it has had a bigger impact than I would like to say,' she admits. Now, her swiping comes with extra mental gymnastics: is this person who he says he is? Or, 'Are they just going on a date because they think it's interesting to hear the Tinder Swindler story?' (She is not worried about being financially duped again, she says, as, 'There's nothing left. I'm bankrupt. I can't even get a credit card.') She toyed with avoiding mention of the documentary to potential suitors entirely, but has opted to list it on her dating profile — her way of avoiding what she thinks will otherwise lead to 'draining' conversations down the line. 'It's not baggage,' Fjellhoy says of her unique backstory — although one match did immediately block her on learning of her Netflix fame. 'But before this, it was just so much easier.' It is unclear what struggles, if any, Leviev has been left to face. In 2019, he was jailed for 15 months in his native Israel for using a fake passport, but was released after just five. Aside from a 2015 conviction for defrauding three Finnish women — one of whom Fjellhoy met on that first private plane ride — he has mostly evaded justice. He has repeatedly alleged that he is making a documentary with Netflix (the platform says this is not true), was selling personalised video messages on Cameo for $200 and has threatened to start a podcast. Last year he said that the women's claims were 'all a big show and will eventually fall apart… I'm like Trump. I can't be knocked down; I'm invincible.' His victims believe he has evaded prosecution and punishment thanks to the complex nature of his frauds, plus the fact that they span numerous countries and jurisdictions. That so many people continue to get in touch asking whether Leviev has finally been caught and charged only highlights how broken the system remains, the women feel. 'Not to have had justice in this case is a disfavour for the fraud community as a whole,' Fjellhoy says. 'Because if you can't even get him' — someone whose case is highly public and is known to authorities the world over — 'what are you even talking about?' All the while, his victims continue to contact Fjellhoy and Sjoholm — most recently, a man who said he'd been working as Leviev's driver in Dubai, where he now lives, posting photos of his lavish lifestyle. 'He [the driver] wrote to me in dire straits,' Fjellhoy says. 'And that's the issue. People reach out to us and then it's, 'Oh, shouldn't you just let it go, Cecilie? Shouldn't you not look up what [Leviev's] doing?' Well, we're being approached by his victims today,' she says of the dozens of other victims who have contacted her since The Tinder Swindler aired. 'So when people ask me to move on, I get a bit annoyed. Because it's impossible when you haven't received justice and he's still out there. I think there are very few victims who have their criminal so blatantly shaming them and going out in public, telling us that we're liars.' Neither of the women, who are in daily contact and consider themselves 'sisters', has spoken to Leviev for years. Sjoholm's last communication with him was before the documentary aired, while Fjellhoy confronted him in Israel in 2022. 'There have been no repercussions for him; he's never felt any uneasiness with anything. So to see him be that uneasy for once and not knowing what to do, for me that was more than enough.' What do they think drives him to pursue such an appalling line of 'work'? 'Narcissism', they speculate; and 'control… [to] hurt people'. They plan to continue campaigning for harsher punishments for fraudsters and for social media sites to better scrutinise those on their platforms. 'Everyone deserves to feel safe online,' Fjellhoy says. 'We have to fight. It's a marathon. In the end, we will win.' Swindled Never After: How We Survived (and You Can Spot) a Relationship Scammer by Cecilie Fjellhoy and Pernilla Sjoholm (Podium Publishing, £15.99) is published on August 19
The Independent
13 minutes ago
- The Independent
Civil service internships to be restricted to working class
The government will tighten eligibility criteria for Whitehall internships as part of a broader push to make the civil service more representative of the working class. According to the BBC, the main internship scheme will now be limited to students from 'lower socio-economic backgrounds'. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the minister responsible for civil service reform, said that Whitehall needed to reflect the broader community. 'We need to get more working-class young people into the Civil Service so it harnesses the broadest range of talent and truly reflects the country,' he told the BBC. ' Government makes better decisions when it represents and understands the people we serve.' The changes are expected to take effect from summer 2026 and will give young people experience writing briefings, planning events, conducting policy research and shadowing civil servants, according to the broadcaster. The existing work summer placement programme, which lasts up to eight weeks and is paid, is open to undergraduates in the final two years of their degree. The Duchy of Lancaster has been contacted for comment. The move comes after the Government announced plans to move thousands more civil servants out of London as part of plans to 'radically reform the state'. In May, the Government confirmed it would cut the number of civil servants working in London by 12,000 and shift jobs to a series of new regional 'campuses' across the country. Mr McFadden said at the time that the Government would be relocating a 'substantial number of roles'. 'The aim is to reduce the London count by about 12,000. That will save us £94 million in lease costs because the properties in London are very expensive. 'And we will move thousands – it's difficult to put a precise number – thousands of those jobs to new themed campuses around the country,' he told Times Radio. The changes will also see 11 Government office buildings in London close, including one of its largest Westminster sites, in a move expected to save £94 million a year by 2032. The move will see two new major 'campuses' created, one in Manchester focused on digital innovation and AI and another in Aberdeen on energy. Manchester is already home to major offices of the science and culture departments, while Aberdeen houses the new Great British Energy headquarters. Other roles will be created in Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow, Darlington, Newcastle and Tyneside, Sheffield, Bristol, Edinburgh, Belfast and York, with the changes expected to bring £729 million to the local economy by 2030.
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Erin Molan Stellar magazine cover sparks furious backlash over her views about Israel's war in Gaza: 'Never reading this publication again'
A magazine cover featuring Erin Molan has sparked a ferocious backlash over the TV presenter's strong stance supporting Israel in its conflict with Gaza. This weekend's edition of Stellar, which is published in News Corp's Sunday newspapers, is being promoted on Instagram and some readers are furious that Molan appears on the front. The former Sky News Australia host has publicly condemned Hamas since its raids on the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, and in recent months has been reporting from Israel on the Middle East war. While some fans - including model and influencer Bec Judd - were quick to congratulate Molan on taking out the cover position, others could not see past her pro-Israel views. 'No thanks Stella... No one I would support,' wrote one. 'So tone deaf,' said another. A third posted: 'Free Palestine ps never reading this publication again.' Several other users threatened to boycott Stellar. Some of the comments are too inflammatory to publish. The Times of Israel ran a profile piece on Molan in May under the headline 'Erin Molan vs. the world: From Australian news anchor to pro-Israel firebrand.' 'Molan has found herself increasingly recognized in Israel, where people on the street often flock to her, eager to thank her for her support,' it reported. The story quoted Molan, who is Catholic, describing her reaction to the October 7 outrages. 'It was never complex to me or grey or fuzzy,' she said. 'It was black and white as to who evil was in this scenario.' Molan has maintained that stance amid Israel's retaliation and the ongoing human crisis in Gaza. Former Sky News Australia colleague Sharri Markson moved quickly last year to quash a conspiracy theory that Molan had been sacked from the network for her pro-Israel views. In December, Markson wished Molan her well in her future pursuits and wrote on X that it was 'categorically untrue' the 41-year-old had been booted off Sky 'because of her Zionism'. in their reporting of the onetime Footy Show presenter's removal by Sky. Daily newspaper Israel Hayom referred to Molan's response to the October 7 massacre in which more than 1,200 Israelis - mostly citizens - were killed and 254 taken hostage. 'Molan has been a vocal supporter of Israel on her Sky News Australia program,' the newspaper stated. 'Strongly condemning both Hamas' actions against Israeli civilians and the pro-Hamas demonstrations that have erupted worldwide, repeatedly using her platform to address the ongoing war.' Israel National News covered the presenter's axing under the headline: 'Sky News Australia fires pro-Israel host Erin Molan.' 'Australian news anchor Erin Molan, who repeatedly defended Israel in the year since the October 7 massacre, has been fired by Sky News Australia,' its story began. Molan posted an impassioned nine-minute video to X in December, repeatedly mentioning the Middle East conflict and thanking everyone who had supported her. 'So that's done now,' she said of her Sky job. 'But I am not. In fact, I'm just getting started. 'So I'm sorry to those who had hoped otherwise. I'm somewhat surprisingly much harder to kill off than you'd think. 'You see the problem is - and it's always been this way with me - I just care too much. 'About you, about the world, about a peaceful existence for every single child.' Molan has called Hamas terrorists 'blood-thirsty killers' and said she would continue 'fighting for every single hostage still captive in Gaza'. Markson's post on X came shortly after Molan's video went live. 'I have to clear up this notion that her departure from Sky is because of her Zionism - this is categorically untrue,' she said. 'No media outlet globally has shown more leadership or clarity on Israel's fight against terrorism and our own battle against antisemitism than us at Sky News Australia and News Corp.' Although network insiders suggested Molan was caught off-guard by the decision to cancel her show, Sky insisted they had ended their partnership with the host on amicable terms. Molan presented her weekly news program, Erin, for the final time on November 29. The decision to cancel Molan's show comes just months after the breakfast radio program she co-hosted alongside comedians Dave Hughes and Ed Kavalee was scrapped by Southern Cross Austereo's struggling 2DayFM station in August. The cancellation of Molan's two key hosting roles is understood to have come at a significant financial cost to the journalist. Sources said she had been pulling in about $200,000 a year for her 2DayFM radio gig and a further $150,000 a year from her job with Sky. Molan joined Sky News Australia in July 2022 after parting ways with Nine after 11 years at the network.
