By Jessie Yeung, CNN

(CNN) — The man who killed Japan’s ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The ruling concludes a yearslong trial over an assassination that shocked Japan – where gun violence is rare – and put the spotlight on an influential religious sect.

Tetsuya Yamagami shot Abe in broad daylight with a gun he fashioned at home, while the former leader was giving a campaign speech on a street in the western city of Nara in 2022.

Abe had stepped down as prime minister in 2020 over health reasons. But he was still politically active and wielded enormous influence as Japan’s longest-serving premier.

Yamagami, now 45, was arrested at the scene and indicted the following year on murder and firearms charges.

Hundreds queued up outside the court in Nara for a chance to witness proceedings, with officials resorting to a lottery to assign limited seats.

Abe, whose premiership is seen as Japan’s last period of political stability, held office from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. During his two terms, he transformed Japan’s security posture, raising questions over its status as a pacifist nation, and passed major security legislation in 2015 that expanded what Japan could do militarily to support the United States.

He also was a prominent figure on the world stage, cultivating strong ties with Washington and seeking better relations with Beijing – while also trying to counter Chinese expansion in the region by uniting Pacific allies.

His killing sent shock waves through Japan, which has one of the world’s lowest rates of gun crime due to its strict firearms laws.

Since his resignation the national political landscape has been in disarray, with a revolving door of different leaders. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan almost continuously for the last 30 years, became mired in crisis – facing fallouts over a slush fund scandal, an inflation surge and a rightward political shift across the country.

The current prime minister, Abe’s protege Sanae Takaichi, has called snap polls next month to capitalize on her rising popularity while hoping to rebuild the LDP brand.

The killing also brought scrutiny to the link between the LDP and the Unification Church. Yamagami blames the sect for bankrupting his family through excessive donations from his mother, a member. He had claimed he targeted Abe because he believed the former leader was associated with the church, which originated in South Korea.

A subsequent government investigation found that the group had violated Japanese regulations by allegedly pressuring followers to make exorbitant donations – prompting a court to order the church to dissolve last March. The sect is appealing that decision.

The Unification Church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, rose to prominence in the late 1950s and became a global organization by the 1980s.

It continues to make international headlines for its mass weddings, where thousands of couples tie the knot at the same time.

The LDP has borne much of the public backlash after an investigation

Por Fernando del Rincón y Rocío Muñoz-Ledo, CNN en Español

El presidente de Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, dijo este martes en una entrevista con CNN que la Fiscalía no presentó los cargos que corresponderían contra dos personas detenidas por su presunta participación en la reciente ola de violencia en el país centroamericano, desatada luego de que las autoridades retomaran el control de tres prisiones donde se registraron motines el sábado.

“El Ministerio Público se negó a hacer los cargos correspondientes y pidió que se los consignara solo por portación de armas y narcomenudeo”, dijo Arévalo en el programa Conclusiones.

Además, el mandatario acusó a la Fiscalía de estar “cooptada por redes político-criminales que no imparten justicia, sino que reparten impunidad para permitir que se continúe la corrupción en todos los distintos niveles”.

CNN contactó a la Fiscalía de Guatemala para solicitar comentarios y está a la espera de una respuesta.

Las declaraciones del mandatario —que representan una nueva confrontación entre él y la Fiscalía, con la que ha tenido tensiones incluso desde antes de asumir el cargo en enero de 2024— se producen después de un fin de semana marcado por una escalada de violencia que incluyó motines simultáneos en varias cárceles y ataques armados contra fuerzas de seguridad atribuidos a pandillas. Los hechos dejaron al menos nueve agentes de la Policía Nacional Civil muertos y varios más heridos, y obligaron al Gobierno a desplegar fuerzas del orden para recuperar el control de los centros penitenciarios.

Ante la crisis, el Gobierno de Arévalo decretó un estado de sitio por 30 días, que permite detenciones sin orden judicial, restringe la portación de armas y limita reuniones y manifestaciones públicas. El presidente señaló que, como parte de la medida, se intensificó el patrullaje conjunto en las calles, lo que —según dijo— ha evitado más víctimas.

Durante la entrevista de este martes, la primera que Arévalo da a un medio internacional en el contexto de la violencia que aqueja a Guatemala, el presidente dijo que las operaciones realizadas en el marco del estado de sitio ya han dado resultados para desarticular a las estructuras criminales. De acuerdo con el mandatario, 22 presuntos pandilleros han sido capturados, además de que se ha llevado a cabo la incautación de armas, 205 motocicletas y 73 vehículos.

El presidente sostuvo además que la violencia registrada fue una reacción directa a las medidas adoptadas por su Gobierno para retomar el control del sistema penitenciario y reducir la influencia que ejercían las pandillas Barrio 18 y Mara Salvatrucha dentro de los centros carcelarios.

Aseguró que el líder criminal Aldo Dupié Ochoa, “Lobo”, quería generar una “crisis” pero fue contenido.

“Él, que quería generar la crisis política tomando las cárceles y arrastrando seguramente una crisis de rehenes, tuvo en 24 horas una respuesta”, dijo.

Arévalo ha insistido previamente en que los ataques evidencian una acción coordinada de estructuras criminales con el objetivo de desestabilizar a su administración en un año clave para Guatemala, en el que se renovarán autoridades del Ministerio Público, la Corte de Constitucionalidad, la Contraloría General y el Tribunal Supremo Electoral.

El mandatario dijo que el control que, según él, ejercen estos grupos sobre algunas instituciones “se va a terminar en el próximo semestre”, ante la presión popular para elegir autoridades “decentes”, incluida la próxima fiscal general. En 2024, Arévalo impulsó una reforma de ley para des

By Will Ripley, CNN

(CNN) — A North Korean film is captivating audiences with scenes and storylines they have never seen before in a state-approved movie.

In “Days and Nights of Confrontation,” a man is suffocated with a plastic bag. A particularly unlucky character is stabbed by her own husband, later injured after being struck by a car, and ultimately murdered. A suicide bomb vest appears on screen, its wires exposed. There is an extramarital affair and even brief partial nudity.

After drawing crowds in North Korean cinemas last year, “Days and Nights” reached a far larger audience this month when it aired for the first time on state television, signaling official approval of a film that breaks long-standing cinematic taboos in the nation’s state-controlled entertainment industry.

The identity of film’s producer – the Korean April 25 Film Studio, which is responsible for North Korea’s most ideologically significant films – makes its embrace of graphic violence and thriller-style storytelling especially notable.

“A character getting suffocated with a plastic bag…that’s something I’ve certainly never seen in a DPRK movie,” said Justin Martell, an American filmmaker who attended the Pyongyang International Film Festival last year.

The sexual content – tame by global standards, is also strikingly explicit in conservative North Korea.

“And I will say there was some partial nudity as well, which I’ve also certainly never seen in a DPRK movie,” he added, using the initials of the reclusive nation’s official name.

North Korean movies are typically experienced collectively. Audiences watch in packed theaters or at workplace-organized screenings in cultural halls, where reactions are visible and shared. Laughter, gasps and applause are not uncommon, according to defectors and foreign visitors who have attended such events. In that setting, a film designed to shock carries added weight.

The story is set in the mid-2000s and centers on betrayal, both personal and political, culminating in a plot to assassinate late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il – father of current leader Kim Jong Un – by blowing up his train.

Because of the tightly controlled nature of North Korean society, independent accounts from ordinary moviegoers are impossible to obtain. But none of this would have passed censorship standards even a decade ago. Yet “Days and Nights” was promoted as a prestige production and honored at the Pyongyang film festival with awards for Best Actor and Best Sound Effects.

The film is provocative, but not subversive. It exists squarely within North Korea’s rigid moral universe: betrayal leads to ruin; loyalty to the state is the only safe refuge. What is new is the delivery. The production values are higher, the pacing quicker, the style unmistakably modern. It borrows the visual grammar of Hollywood thrillers in ways North Korean cinema long avoided.

That shift may reflect a realization inside leader Kim Jong Un’s government about who its audience is becoming, and what it now takes to hold the attention of younger people.

Martell said North Korea’s domestic film and television industry had changed little for decades.

“For the last 20-25 years, DPRK film production – domestic film production and TV production – has been fairly stagnant,” he said. “With a lot of episodic material but fairly low-budget.”

“In recent years the government has gotten much more involved and put a lot of money into these new productions,” Martell said.

The storyline of “Days and Nights” closely echoes a real explosion in 2004 at Ryongchon train station near the Chinese border. At the time, North Korean authorities described the blast as an accident. Outside the country, speculation spread that it may have been an assassination attempt. Inside North Korea, the subject remained largely unspoken in public.

By Tami Luhby, Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) — A Department of Government Efficiency employee shared Social Security data without agency officials’ knowledge and in violation of security protocols, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

The Social Security Administration is still unable to determine what information was shared through a third-party server that’s not approved to store agency records or whether that data still exists on the server, according to the filing.

The filing is the Trump administration’s first acknowledgement that DOGE employees inappropriately handled Social Security data – a charge that a high-level agency official levied last summer. DOGE had argued that it needed access to Americans’ records to root out fraud.

Charles Borges, who had served as Social Security’s chief data officer between late January and late August, warned in a whistleblower complaint that DOGE employees put the records of more than 300 million Americans at risk by creating a copy of the data in a vulnerable cloud computing server.

The copy of the agency’s database – which contains people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, citizenship status, parents’ names and other personal information – “apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data,” according to the whistleblower disclosure.

The agency denied the claim, and Borges was forced to “involuntarily resign” shortly afterwards.

Tuesday’s court filing also revealed that a DOGE employee agreed to help a “political advocacy group” review voter rolls in search of voter fraud as part of an effort to “overturn election results in certain States.”

The group that sought to partner with the DOGE employee was not identified by name in the court filing, nor did the filing specify which elections the proposal was targeting.

“Email communications reviewed by SSA suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls, but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group,” the filing said.

Referrals under the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from using their government roles to engage in election-related activity, were made to the government ethics office that investigates such allegations, the Justice Department said.

The anecdote was one of several examples highlighted by the Justice Department of DOGE employees handling sensitive of data in ways that went undisclosed to a judge who was scrutinizing whether DOGE’s access to that data was lawful, and in some cases, may have even run afoul of the judge’s orders limiting that access.

The existence of a “Voter Data Agreement” that the unnamed DOGE employee signed and sent to the group in March appears to undermine assertions the administration made about DOGE’s reasons for accessing the data last spring, when Judge Ellen Hollander was considering whether to limit that access. The case was brought by Democracy Forward — a legal group challenging several Trump administration policies — on behalf of unions.

The Social Security Administration only became aware of the agreement in November, when it was doing a review of internal records unrelated to the case before Hollander.

Hollander initially blocked DOGE team members from accessing Social Security’s records, but the Supreme Court later Read more

Por Adam Cancryn y Kevin Liptak, CNN

Una intervención diplomática urgente espera al presidente Donald Trump en Davos, después de lanzar, por varios días, amenazas contra aliados de Estados Unidos por Groenlandia.

Altos funcionarios europeos planean utilizar la cumbre anual de élites mundiales de esta semana como escenario para evitar una crisis en rápido crecimiento que ha puesto al continente en vilo y que ahora podría amenazar la supervivencia de su alianza de siete décadas con Estados Unidos, según informaron a CNN tres personas familiarizadas con las conversaciones.

Ese impulso por parte de los aliados se produce mientras incluso algunas personas del entorno de Trump han expresado en privado sus reparos sobre la retórica del presidente y han buscado una vía de salida.

En el corto plazo, el esfuerzo de emergencia de los europeos busca desescalar las tensiones tras la promesa de Trump de imponer nuevos aranceles a cualquier aliado que se oponga a su aspiración de lograr el “control completo y total” de Groenlandia. Pero también apunta, de manera más amplia, a desviar al presidente de su campaña por el territorio danés.

Entre las opciones en las que se han centrado asesores de Trump y diplomáticos occidentales figura ampliar tratados existentes que permiten a Estados Unidos instalar bases militares y otros recursos en la isla, además de sumar acuerdos comerciales y económicos. Ese resultado incluiría algún tipo de ceremonia de firma que permitiría al presidente exhibir un logro, según personas familiarizadas con el asunto.

Otra alternativa que se ha discutido es colocar a Groenlandia bajo un Pacto de Libre Asociación, lo que le permitiría mantener su estatus actual y, al mismo tiempo, otorgar a Estados Unidos un acceso ampliado en materia de seguridad a cambio de asistencia financiera. Palaos, las Islas Marshall y los Estados Federados de Micronesia mantienen acuerdos de ese tipo con Estados Unidos.

También ha habido conversaciones iniciales sobre sugerir la renegociación del acuerdo de 1951 entre Estados Unidos, Dinamarca y Groenlandia para dejar claro que no habría inversiones chinas en la isla, señalaron estas personas.

Y aunque Dinamarca ha mostrado poca disposición a ceder su territorio, algunos altos funcionarios del Gobierno de Trump han trabajado en las últimas semanas en una propuesta para comprar la isla, añadieron.

Trump, que llegará a Davos el miércoles por la mañana, dijo a los periodistas antes de partir el martes que mantendrá una serie de reuniones sobre Groenlandia mientras esté allí, y predijo que alcanzará un acuerdo “muy bueno para todos”. Afirmó que la OTAN estaría “muy contenta” y que los groenlandeses, que han protestado contra las amenazas de anexión estadounidense, estarán “encantados”.

El secretario general de la OTAN, Mark Rutte, que ha trabajado para establecer una estrecha relación con Trump, es uno de los que se espera que se reúna con el presidente en privado al margen de la cumbre, según informaron fuentes familiarizadas con los planes.

Sin embargo, a pesar de las optimistas previsiones de Trump, este ha seguido insistiendo en sus controvertidas demandas, reiterando el martes que “necesitamos” Groenlandia. Al ser consultado sobre hasta dónde estaría dispuesto a llegar para obtener el control de la isla ártica, Trump respondió únicamente: “Ya lo verán”, antes de sugerir que podría considerar opciones alternativas si la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos falla en contra del uso de aranceles.

En un comunicado, la portavoz de la Casa Blanca, Anna Kelly, presentó la adqu