this is bbc news. the headlines — the brazilian government has declared three days of national mourning following the death at the age of 82 of the footballer pele. he is widely considered to be the greatest player of all time and remains the only player to have won the world cup three times. ukrainian officials say a fresh barrage of russian missile strikes has inflicted "significant damage" to the national power grid. authorities say dozens of missiles were fired from the air and the sea during a five—hour onslaught. at least three people were injured by explosions in the capital kyiv. the british fashion designer

dame vivienne westwood has died at the age of 81. she made a name for herself in the 1970s as one of the creative forces behind the sex pistols and the punk rock scene in london. now on bbc news, our world. temples across cambodia have been looted, their ancient treasures torn away. wow, 0k. i've got exclusive access to the sites they were stolen from, and speak to the temple raiders who did the looting. this one? for many cambodians, these sculptures are much more than just stone objects.

now cambodia is fighting back, demanding that some of the biggest museums in the world return their antiquities. these museums and these individuals are in receipt of stolen property, and the stolen property needs to come back. angkor wat is the beating heart of cambodia. this temple has been in continuous use for over 900 years. cambodia is one of the poorest countries in asia, but many will spend what little

they have to come here. everyone, it's believed, has to make the journey to this complex at least once. but even though angkor wat is central to this population's identity, many of its greatest treasures are gone. so, this is a contrast you will see repeated over and over again in cambodia's most famous temple. here's a carving dating back to the 12th century in perfect condition, but, just one pillar over, this carving's been completely removed by looters and we simply don't know where it's gone. i mean, look at these bits. the head's been taken off, a hands been taken off, the fingers are gone. on this one, i mean, it's just been lopped off right at the top. i mean, you canjust imagine a looter would cut that, take it, smuggle it across a border, probably

into thailand, and then on into some auction house. we simply don't know where this has gone. the same thing has happened in thousands of temples, including this one, 100km to the east of angkor wat. for many cambodians, the missing statues are thought to have souls. they're notjust stone, are they, or bronze? they are definitely not just the stone for us. we never think this is only the statue, but the spirit of ancestor. sopheap meas is an archaeologist with the cambodian ministry of culture. when you saw the statue that's broken into pieces, how did you feel physically when you see something like that? ifeel pain, ifeel sad. ijust...sometimes ijust don't want to see it, too much to tolerate

in the feeling, you know? i just don't want to see something like that. itjust comes...it hurts me a lot. sometimes i heard people talk how they destroyed the temple. ijust feel like, oh, my god, that is so painful to hear. this is very beautiful male statue. he have four arms. sopheap is trying to make things right again. she's part of a cambodian government investigative team that's working to reclaim stolen statues. it's a mammoth task. they're tracing the histories of objects across hundreds of museums and private collections, from sydney to san francisco. leading the team is american lawyer brad gordon. we're tracking about 100 museums, and so we've compiled, based on publicly available information, we've compiled

lots of information about cambodian pieces that are out there, so there's a couple of thousand pieces we are tracking. we know that these statues were taken out of the ground, and we know the cambodian government didn't give permission, so we're now asking the museums and private collectors, "prove to us that you have a right "to have these pieces." we're doing targeted excavations, so the excavations are coming up with remarkable finds, like arms and legs and pedestals, which, in some cases, using modern technology, we know that it's most likely a perfect match. you know, like a foot matches a piece that's in a major museum. that's exactly what happened with these huge warrior statues, the team's biggest success to date. the tops of the statues were once on display in the us, but it was the perfect match of their feet left behind in cambodia that proved

they'd been stolen. they're now reunited, the pride of cambodia's national museum. the cambodian authorities are now on the hunt for more treasure. they're tracing the looters who originally dug up the antiquities. we have a whole network of informants who we're working with, and we are going site to site, where we understand they came from, and interviewing people in that area, and then collecting all that information. the former looters who've become government witnesses have all been given code names to try to protect their identities. right now, we're on our way to see a woman they call the �*iron princess'.

the iron princess doesn't want to be identified because she fears other looters may come after her for revealing crimes committed decades ago. the temple the iron princess looted stood for almost 1,000 years before being systematically dismantled in the 1990s.

the iron princess looted during the aftermath of a dark period in cambodian history. for centuries, angkor wat was a monument to the culture of the khmer people of cambodia, but, now abandoned, it's a signpost to khmer atrocities. the khmer rouge government claimed the lives of up to two million of its own people between 1975 and 1979. even after they lost power, their influence was felt in the country for another 20 years. when it comes to these objects, this, for me, is one of the strongest arguments — this is a time of conflict. you can argue that they're war crimes, that these objects were taken out during war, and the world made several attempts over the last couple of decades to stop this kind of practice.

this former looter, codenamed �*red horse', was a child soldier forced to fight under the khmer rouge. he's working with the cambodian team, revealing sites he used to pillage. we're searching for one of them, an abandoned temple. god, this is it. look, you can see the stone right there, the stone wall. it's right in the middle of this vegetation. so, this is it. wow, 0k. this temple is 800 years old. it's now been reclaimed by nature. 0w. these dead vines are covered in really sharp thorns. it's not easy to walk

through here. oh, and there are hornets, too. so, this was one of the top ten spots where the looters pillaged, really, up until the late �*90s. they hid here, this was a khmer rouge hiding spot. red horse shows me where he says he unearthed a statue in the 1970s. so, what exactly did you find and how did you get it out? i show red horse photos of objects from the british museum's collection. this thing, this is what you...

..took it from inside there? the investigative team has carefully traced the statue�*s likelyjourney. they're confident the one red horse identifies matches the artefact seen here on the british museum website. it's a cambodian priority to get it back. in response, the british museum told the bbc... i also showed the iron princess a selection of antiquities that are currently held in london.

0k, these are items in the victoria and albert museum. standing ganesha. 0h, 0k, first one. now, this is beautiful. it's a shiva statue, bronze, completely intact. i mean, how much would you have sold this for, do you know? 17,000 thai baht. that's around us$500. iron princess says she sold a statue that looks like this one in the v&a, but the team is yet to make a direct match. now, looters like the iron princess want to help fix what they've done. the v&a told the bbc...

and would welcome the opportunity... questions about cambodia's illicit antiquities trade have led investigators to some strange places. bangkok, 2010 — the latchford classic. the entire contest is named after this man, douglas latchford. he was also a high—profile art dealer, believed to be at the very centre of the trade in stolen antiquities. this latchford agreed to a rare interview in the 2014 documentary the stolen warriors. the film—makers asked latchford

about a civil complaint filed by the united states attorney's office in 2012. in the court files, they speak of smuggling networks, and you being a part of a smuggling network. what do you feel when you read it? um...their imagination has gone wild. they've seen too many indiana jones films. as far as i know, there is no such thing as a smuggling network, and i certainly don't belong to any smuggling network. despite latchford's denials, us prosecutors closed in. in 2019, latchford was indicted for art trafficking. he died a year later, before going to trial. this book, co—authored by douglas latchford, has become a valuable source of information for investigators. it contains many of

the masterpieces that were taken out of cambodia, things that most cambodians will never dream of seeing in person. and it's been used as proof that these items were at least known to latchford and his circle. investigators are still unravelling latchford's connections to objects that were auctioned off decades ago. we have a special report on the worldwide trade of illicitly exported art treasures. back in 1988, the bbc was asking questions about objects on the auction block. wesley kerr reports. at sotheby's biggest ever sale of the highly prized art of south—east asia, this four—armed vishnu sold for £209,000. but were the statues originally stolen? the cambodian royal family tried to stop the sale, but failed. now, brad is in london. the cambodian authorities are writing to major museums and the british government for help. i showed him the newsnight story from 1988. what was your gut

reaction to it? amazing that the bbc had picked up on this in �*88. we need to find this. this needs to come home. it's very important. so, we have the archival photographs from 1936, when the french inventoried it, and it was taken to the conservatory. the conservatory is a secret warehouse just outside angkor wat where statues are still stored for safekeeping today. that's just incredible. i mean, we've got an elephant, we've got a lion dog, we've got lintels from angkor. no—one�*s been granted access to see this complex in decades. brad thinks the four—armed vishnu was stolen from here and sold on. so, where is the statue now? the latest information we have is that we've been

going through the files of materials handed over to us by the latchford family and we found a photograph, and the photograph is an image that is identical to the statue that featured in the programme back in 1988, and so, we looked at that photograph and it actually had a label on it. latchford's photo is labelled with the name of one of his old customers. brad thinks this customer or the customer's family might still have the statue. we're not sure yet if they have it or not, but hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we will find out. what chance do you have of getting that statue back? i think we have a very good chance, and especially now that we understand a lot more of the history, i think we should get a good result. the cambodian authorities believe douglas latchford's

personal collection contained more than 100 pieces. so far, five major works and some smaller ones have been returned to cambodia. now, the cambodian government is eager to recover the rest. douglas latchford's daughter, julia, told us in a statement: there were more items on sale at sotheby's back in 1988.

this khmer sculpture of a five—headed shiva broke all records when it fetched a total of £319,000. brad and his team have tracked down the five—headed shiva. it was sold at sotheby's to a private collector. in 1993, it was donated to the met museum in new york, where it's on display today. what would you like the met to do? we would love it to come back next week, you know. i think it's an important piece for the cambodians and it needs to come home. a spokesperson for the met told us: retrieving the statues would look good politically for the cambodian government ahead of an election year in 2023. prime minister hun sen has been in power for three decades.

most of his rivals are in prison or in exile. i sat down with the cambodian minister of culture and fine arts. this week, she wrote to the uk government to demand their assistance. minister, some people will say your country has problems with corruption. it has a worsening human rights record. why should the uk authorities cooperate with cambodia? i think that every country has a problem about corruption, even in europe, in us, in asia. it's not... tell me one country don't have any corruption. i don't defend that. but don't confuse the corruption with something else. our own rights. this statue belongs to us, belong to cambodian people. we are driving to a village that lies in the shadows

of the scene of industrial scale looting. up here is the way that go to the market in the... satia was born here and comes from a family of looters who struggled to survive under the khmer rouge. my older generation, my grandfather, my father, they already did that, they don't have choice. at that time, it's a civil war in cambodia. like, if you are starving, then finding some statues to sell for them so you could have money to feed your family, and i think that's what my father think, and that's why he did that. satia now works as a key member in the cambodian investigative team, fighting for the return of the country's antiquities. i grew up in this village next to the temple. some of the older generation, theyjust to see the gods in the temple, so i want them to see that again.

i want them to see the beautiful temple with the god, with the statue. so, i think it is my obligation as a younger generation to bring those gods back home. in cambodia's capital, phnom penh, this dance was created to welcome some beloved statues that were returned last year. these dancers are hoping they'll have good reason to perform again. the statue just made for here, for this environment, for this temple, for these people. i think it's important that the statues are coming back to our country, our people, because people need to. . .to pray. they pray.

it's a living culture, it's a living god. hello there. the last few days of 2022 looking fairly unsettled. we have low pressure systems taking charge, bringing some wet and windy weather at times, particularly to the north and west. at times the south of the uk will be quite wet in the run—up to new year's day. we could see some snow on northern hills, and it will be windy too. low pressure over the next few days as we head into the new year weekend. some areas are seeing quite a lot of rainfall over the next

couple of days, particularly across southern, northern and western areas, so much so across parts of cumbria and scotland that the met office has an amber warning in force for the risk of localised flooding across the south and south west of scotland during the course of friday. certainly through the morning it will look very wet indeed across many souther, northern and western areas, but in particular across cumbria and south west scotland, some atrocious road conditions with surface water and spray. that rain will clear away quickly into the afternoon, brighter for many with sunshine, some blustery showers and it will be gusty day with gales for a time. temperatures are in double figures across much of the south of the uk, a bit colder across northern scotland. here are some of the rain will be falling as snow over the hills. as we move into new year's eve, low pressure is still nearby. it looks like it will be quite wet to start with, both in the north and the south, some wintriness across scotland for a while, and then it turns wetter and windy across

england and wales. it could be very mild, up to 1a or 15 degrees further north it will be colder. a bit of a question mark on the weather around midnight, you have to stay tuned to the forecast for that. as we head into sunday, new year's day, the 1stjanuary 2023, it looks like it will be unsettled across the south, milder here, colder across the north. for new year's day we start off with some sunshine, an area of low pressure moving across northern ireland, wales, northern england and scotland, will produce outbreaks of rain. some snow on the hills as it engages with some colder air. much milderfurther south. there will be some sunshine around, too. rain across the south and south—east will tend to clear away as we head into monday. this area of low pressure pushes off into the north sea. monday itself, we are in a ridge of high pressure with lighter winds, north—westerly winds, so it will be cooler, four to nine celsius, but quite a lot of sunshine around, just one or two showers across the far north—west.

monday and tuesday low pressure will push into the north and west of the country, high pressure trying to hold on across the south. it is a bit of a north—west, south—east divide on tuesday. windier, cloudier in scotland and northern ireland, northern western england and wales, outbreaks of rain here. dry and sunnier the further south and east you are. temperatures will rise slowly as winds pick up from the south—west. beyond tuesday, as we move through the first week of january, it looks like an active jet stream is going to bring more areas of low pressure to our shores. there is a potential of some deeper ones with the risk of gales and severe gales, and outbreaks of heavy rain, interspersed with sunshine and showers. generally we will be on the slightly milder side of the jet, temperatures will be above the seasonal norm across all areas, but particularly across england and wales. you can head online to view all the latest weather warnings.

at the very centre of the trade in stolen antiquities.

welcome to bbc news. i'm david willis. our top stories: brazil declares three days of national mourning following the death of pele — the footballer many consider the greatest player of all time. he won three world cups for brazil — a unique feat — and scored over 1,000 goals during his career. tributes from the world's top players, politicians and pundits have flooded in, describing pele as the magician, the inspiration and the greatest player of all time. we'll look at the legacy of the man who gave the world �*the beautiful game�* and did more than anyone to shape modern football. also ahead — ukrainian officials say a fresh barrage of russian missile strikes has inflicted "significant damage" to the national power grid.