Browsing: International – UK/Europe
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech at London Tech Week in London Monday. (AFP) British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to announce a ban on “harmful” online platforms for children under 16 while maintaining access to some safer forms of social media, the Times newspaper reported Monday.Starmer, who is due to make a speech later Monday, is said to have decided to proceed with restrictions after speaking to bereaved parents and considering evidence from Australia, which brought in a ban for under-16s last December.Asked about the report, a source at Downing Street said: “The prime minister is not afraid about taking on the tech companies and their bosses to protect young people.”A source close to the matter said a formal ban was unlikely to come this week.Worries over the impact of social media on mental health and online safety prompted Britain to hold a consultation on children’s access to social media earlier this year, with curfews, time limits and curbs on addictive design features, all under consideration.France, Denmark and Poland are also considering tightening rules around social media use for children, while Greece in April announced it would ban access to those under the age of 15 from January 2027.Starmer is expected to focus on how the government can ensure technology brings positive change when he speaks later Monday, according to a statement released by his office on Sunday.Britain’s online safety law already requires social media companies to take measures to protect children from illegal and harmful online content.Experts are divided on how effective a total ban would be, while a group of young people in London recently told Reuters they were opposed to restrictions. Related Story Source link
A handout image from Ukraine’s Energoatom shows damage to a spent nuclear fuel storage facility, following what the company said was a drone strike, amid Russia’s…
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office yesterday denounced “people trying to interfere in our democracy” after US Vice-President JD Vance condemned Britain’s handling of the murder of a white student, Henry Nowak, by a Sikh man. The Downing Street statement followed comments by Vance on X linking the young student’s murder to what he said was civilisational decline caused by mass migration.“In recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets,” a spokesperson for Starmer’s Downing Street office said in a statement. “The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes. “Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country,” it added. Starmer on Thursday accused South African tech tycoon Elon Musk of “trying to whip up division” over the case, which has sparked public outrage. Eighteen-year-old Nowak, a first year finance and accounting university student, was put in handcuffs by police as he lay mortally wounded after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, 23, in the southern city of Southampton in December. Digwa lied and told police he was the victim as Nowak had racially insulted him.Far-right figures have claimed the murder is evidence that police forces in Britain treat white people and ethnic minorities differently — an allegation Starmer’s Labour government and police chiefs vehemently deny. Black people in England and Wales are more than twice as likely to be arrested as white people, according to government statistics. Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has posted numerous times on the platform about the police response to the stabbing. In one, he asked whether people knew that “official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites?” Musk has offered to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder and insulted the Hampshire Police force. Source link
Last month’s drone attack on the UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant was a “serious compromise of nuclear safety, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Friday, adding any such attack “is unacceptable, a no-go, taboo.” The May 17 attack hit an electricity facility at the plant, risking potentially shutting it down, and IAEA chief Rafael Grossi warned that “attacks on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes are unacceptable”. “The strike caused a fire in an electrical generator located outside the inner site perimeter of the NPP (nuclear power plant), prompting the need for emergency generators to provide power,” Grossi told an IAEA board meeting in Vienna. The meeting was held at the request of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. During a visit to the plant last Tuesday Grossi said the attack could have interrupted the external power supply. On Friday he hailed the “professionalism and alertness” of the IAEA-trained on-duty team at the site who he said were able to “respond promptly and effectively to the unthinkable: a direct impact caused by a drone with an explosive payload.” He said the IAEA would closely support the plant to ensure its safety, having during his visit said that the plant had been the victim of a “very carefully targeted operation” by attackers seeking to cause a major incident. In any case, “the incident was a serious compromise of nuclear safety and undermined several of the IAEA’s seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during an armed conflict,” Grossi said. Source link
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes the opening remarks to a meeting of Regional Mayors at the National STEM Learning Centre in York, yesterday. (AFP) UK leader Keir Starmer accused US tech tycoon Elon Musk yesterday of “trying to whip up division” in Britain following anger over the police handling of the murder of a white student by a Sikh man.The case of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who was put in handcuffs by police as he lay mortally wounded after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, 23, in the southern city of Southampton in December, has become highly politicised in the UK.Digwa lied and told police he was the victim as Nowak had racially insulted him.Far-right figures have claimed the murder is evidence that police forces in Britain treat white people and ethnic minorities differently — an allegation Starmer’s Labour government and police chiefs vehemently deny.Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has posted numerous times on the platform about the police response to the stabbing.In one, he asked whether people knew that “official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites?”Musk has offered to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder, and insulted the Hampshire Police force.”We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division. That is not who we are in Britain,” Starmer told reporters.”In Britain, we are reasonable, tolerant people,” he added ahead of a meeting with Nowak’s family at his official Downing Street residence.”When we have a terrible case like Henry’s case… we react calmly, as his family have done,” the prime minister said, referring to pleas from Nowak’s father that his son’s murder should not be used “to create further division, hatred or tension”.Digwa was jailed for at least 21 years on Monday for stabbing Nowak to death using a ceremonial knife with a 21-centimetre (eight-inch) blade following an altercation about a mobile phone.Starmer has said there was “no justification” for violence at a Southampton protest on Tuesday night attended by far-right agitators, which saw demonstrators throw bricks, flares and chairs at police officers.A 44-year-old man on Thursday pleaded guilty to violent disorder and carrying an offensive weapon. Another person has been charged with assault.— ‘Lies and misinformation’ —The prime minister said it was “unforgivable” that hard-right firebrand Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party leads opinion polls, had called for people to respond to the murder with “pure cold rage”.Farage, who has been accused of stoking racial tensions with his remarks, has defended his comments.Starmer has called bodycam footage of Nowak’s death, during which the victim can repeatedly be heard telling officers he could not breathe, as “harrowing”.He said “there are serious questions that need to be answered” about the police response.The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) watchdog is investigating and is expected to report back within the next three months.An inquest into whether police contributed to Nowak’s death will open in front of a jury in September 2027, officials announced yesterday.Musk has long been an outspoken critic of Starmer, who served as a chief state prosecutor before entering politics.The pair clashed last year over a decades-long “grooming gangs” sexual abuse scandal.In that case the prime minister accused the world’s richest man of “spreading lies and misinformation”. …
Demonstrators hold placards and flags outside Southampton Central Police Station following the conviction of Vikrum Digwa for the murder of student Henry Nowak, in Southampton, Britain,…
More than 200 people were injured and one person died in Paris following Paris Saint-Germain’s second consecutive Champions League win, the interior ministry said on Sunday, reviving France’s heated debate about street violence. A day after PSG beat Arsenal in a nail-biting Budapest penalty shootout, cementing their place on the throne of European football, fans were taking to the Champ de Mars open space near the Eiffel Tower to hail the players staging a victory parade on Sunday afternoon. But, as last year, the celebrations were partly overshadowed by hefty street violence in the night after the game in which 57 police were injured in Paris and over 400 people taken into custody, a few of them outside the capital, authorities said. Some storefronts in Paris were destroyed while rioters also torched cars and stands of rental bikes, police said.There was some vandalism against public buildings in provincial towns such as Orleans, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.Police were not specifically targeted in most places, but one police station in central Paris was the site of brief clashes on Saturday evening, Paris police said.One young man died following a motorcycle accident amid the unrest, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said.Nunez, a former Paris police chief, oversaw a huge security operation involving over 20,000 officers, and said the violence had been systematically addressed: “The situation was, overall, under control.”Politicians from the far-right National Rally, leading in opinion polls ahead of next year’s presidential election, seized on the occasion to reiterate calls for firmer law-and-order policies.”Only in France does a victory of a football club trigger riots,” said Marine Le Pen, the movement’s leader.But others highlighted deep social divides as the cause of repeated violence and unrest, saying that those who had wreaked the most havoc were not representative of football fan culture.”France is living under strain. Society is becoming increasingly brutal. We are a pressure cooker ready to explode anytime,” said Raphael Glucksmann, who is mulling standing in the presidential election on a centre-left ticket.Last year, similarly chaotic celebrations following PSG’s first Champions League title led to two deaths. (reporting by Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Kevin Liffey)Paris, France, May 31, 2026 (AFP) -French authorities announced Sunday that 780 people were arrested across the country when overnight celebrations of Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League victory over Arsenal were marred by violent clashes, and a road accident that killed a young man.Thousands of people poured into the streets of Paris for the match and to revel in PSG’s triumph in the final held in the Hungarian capital Budapest late Saturday.But some mobs clashed with police, around 22,000 of whom were deployed across France after unrest last year when PSG also won the competition.Highlighting an increased use of fireworks directed at law enforcement, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said in a press briefing 57 security forces were injured and that there had been “219 participants injured in France, including eight seriously”.The Paris public prosecutor’s office announced the death of a young man in his twenties after he crashed head-on into concrete blocks on a Paris ring road exit ramp on his motocross bike.Another young man was seriously injured in a knife attack in Paris allegedly over a robbery, the prosecutor’s office added.Nunez said a small number of thefts and lootings had taken place in around fifteen cities across the country and incidents of violence were recorded in 71 municipalities.The 780 arrests was a 32 percent increase compared to the celebrations of PSG’s Champions League win last year, the minister noted.- Victory parade -Around 100,000 people are expected to gather for a parade including the players on Sunday afternoon on the Champs-de-Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower, before being received at the Elysee Palace by President Emmanuel Macron.Nunez promised “a strong law enforcement response” during the players’ return celebrations and fines for “obstructing traffic” in the event of any intrusion onto the Paris ring road.The district mayor of Paris’s 8th arrondissement — home to the famed Champs-Elysees where 20,000 people converged after PSG’s victory — called for “zero gatherings” on the iconic avenue as the only way to avoid further violence.On Saturday night, the “Champs-Elysees avenue and its surroundings ceased to be a place of celebration and became an arena of urban guerrilla warfare”, the town hall said in a statement.”Since it has become impossible to celebrate a match without descending into riots, the only common sense response is a new doctrine: ‘zero gatherings’,” it demanded.Nunez dismissed the idea saying it would “tie up almost half of the security deployment”. Nearly 6,000 police and gendarmes have been deployed for security during the celebrations on Sunday.sm-hdu/sw/ Source link
The UN warned on Friday that an Israeli plan to take control of 70 percent of Gaza will increase suffering among children already hit by the impacts of severe overcrowding.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to take control of more territory in the Gaza Strip, flouting the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.He said the military had controlled 50 percent of the Palestinian territory under the terms of the ceasefire, then advanced to take over 60 percent.”My directive is to move to… 70 percent,” he said.The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned that this would deepen the health crisis among children in the war-ravaged territory, suffering from acute lack of food, water and hygiene.Israel controls the flow of aid into the territory along with all entry points into Gaza, which has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007.Even before Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel triggered the war in Gaza, the territory was already very densely populated.Now “people have been crammed into around 40 percent of the space”, UNICEF spokesman Salim Oweis told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza.People there were left “sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste”, he said, adding “there is no accessible space left to clear” the waste.”The effects of this are now widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhoea, and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases.”- Rats biting children -“Fleas, lice and scabies are commonplace,” Oweis said, also pointing to numerous cases of rats biting young children and even babies.Oweis said a woman named Hind “hasn’t slept since her four-year-old daughter, Masa, was bitten by a rat during the night”.”Like many families, they sheltered wherever they could, in their case, the second floor of a building block where sewage water leaks through the ceilings, and rodents crawl through the cracks in the building and climb the exposed pipes,” he said.Rats are not the only menace.Oweis said he had spoken with another woman named Amani whose seven-year-old daughter had “developed deep lesions and sores on her head, back and legs due to a bacterial infection”.He warned that “increasing numbers of children are requiring hospitalisation, all without a single fully functioning hospital across Gaza.”The situation was “dire”, Oweis said, noting the overcrowding was already “creating more spread of diseases, straining the systems and of course cutting… services”.If Israel takes control of even more land, he warned, that “means that we will lose access to some of the service points, but also (to) some hard to reach places (where) children and families are living”.”This will just mean that more children will suffer,” he saidThe Palestinian foreign ministry slammed Netanyahu’s announcement as “a serious violation of the foundations of the ceasefire”.Since then, Gaza has been gripped by daily violence, with Israel killing more than 900 people there, according to Gaza’s health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.They are among the over 72,800 people killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the health ministry.The October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war meanwhile resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Source link
Britain risks creating a “lost generation” as the number of young people out of work and education surges, a government-commissioned review warned yesterday.The number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training — so-called “NEETs” — topped one mn in the first quarter of the year for the first time since 2013, separate official data showed.Without action, that figure could rise to 1.25mn, or one in six young people, within five years, the report said.”We are at risk of a lost generation,” said Alan Milburn, a former Labour cabinet minister who led the review and is due to propose solutions later this year.”It’s a warning that far too many young people are reaching adulthood only to find the door to opportunity closed,” he told a press conference.Calling the report “sobering” but vowing he would not allow a generation to be lost, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to work with Milburn “on what more needs to be done”.For Shana Fatahali, 23, who has spent the past two years searching for work in England’s West Midlands, “young people do want to get out there and have a job”.”A lot of the older generation are stuck in the mindset that you fill your CV out, hand it in and you’ve got a job just like that. But times have moved on since then,” she told AFP.— ‘Very anxious’ —Fatahali, who has a four-year-old child and holds a health and social care diploma, noted there were few jobs “that fit around my responsibilities as a parent”.She described feeling trapped, like many young people, in a cycle of being rejected for lacking experience while unable to gain it without an opportunity.Starmer commissioned the review last year to understand the causes of rising youth unemployment.While 84% of NEETs want to be employed or in training, the report found that many young people are struggling to reach “the first rung of the career ladder”.It blamed a “sharp decline” in entry-level roles such as hospitality jobs, weekend jobs and apprenticeships.”There is no shortage of effort on the part of young people. The shortage is of opportunity and of support,” Milburn said.Faith, a 22-year-old in southwest England, told AFP that she struggled to find even part-time work as she neared the end of her master’s degree in criminology.”I was applying everywhere in town, coffee shops, but they just ignore you,” she said, adding that the process made her feel “very anxious” about the future.”A lot of people go to university because it’s meant to help you get a job, but I haven’t seen that personally.”— ‘Multiple barriers’ —About a decade ago, Britain had a similar NEET rate to the European Union average. By last year, only Romania recorded a higher rate.The report found rising mental health problems played a key role in the increase in NEETs in Britain.”For the first time in perhaps two centuries, changes in health, especially in mental health, are impeding economic growth and causing a contraction in the supply of labour,” Milburn said.The economic cost of the youth unemployment crisis was estimated at around £125bn ($168bn) per year, taking into account lost tax revenue and higher health and welfare spending.”Behind the statistics are real young people facing real and often multiple barriers,” said Sarah Yong, deputy chief executive at Youth Futures Foundation.The British Chambers of Commerce said the issues identified have “long been reported by businesses”.The “report must be a wake-up call for policymakers about the crisis of young people not in employment, education and training”, said Shevaun Haviland, BCC director general. Related Story Source link
The World Health Organisation (WHO) chief has pledged to do ‘everything in my power’ to help conquer a deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), as he headed to the African nation yesterday.In lengthy message to the Congolese people, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted that ‘together, we will overcome this outbreak’.According to its latest figures, up to May 24, the WHO has recorded 10 confirmed and 223 suspected Ebola deaths in the DR Congo since the outbreak was declared on May 15, out of more than 1,000 confirmed and suspected cases.The WHO has warned that the true spread of the outbreak, thought to have circulated under the radar for some time, is likely much wider.’I want to be with you in these moments. And I want you to know that you are not alone,’ Tedros said in the message posted on X, having earlier said he was on his way to the DR Congo.’Ebola is now back. This time, the outbreak is hitting Ituri province the hardest,’ he said, with more than 90% of cases in the conflict-torn northeastern province. ‘I know how frightening that is.’Tedros said he would be going to Ituri's capital Bunia, ‘and doing everything in my power to help you. I will not be managing this from a comfortable office far away”.The UN health agency chief said the affected areas were already dealing with malaria, hunger, insecurity and now Ebola.’It is not fair, and I will not pretend otherwise,’ he said.According to Tedros, the Ebola response would be built on Ituri's in-built resilience.’We do not come to Ituri with only medicine and expertise. We come to join a community that already knows how to fight for its survival,’ he said.Tedros fears insecurity in the eastern DR Congo, which has been plagued by conflict for three decades, is making it harder to contain the outbreak.He urged the warring factions to give health workers the space to save lives.’Conflict and displacement make everything harder,’ he said. ‘I am making a direct appeal to all warring parties in this region: please, declare a ceasefire.”’People are dying from Ebola who do not have to die. Children are sick. Families are suffering,” Tedros said. “No cause, no conflict, no grievance is worth condemning innocent people to death from a preventable disease.’No vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which is behind the current outbreak.However, Tedros said the spread of the virus could still be prevented by early care in treatment centres.And he vowed that the authorities would help ensure loved ones are buried in dignity and safety.He urged young people to help break ‘the fear and the silence that allow this virus to spread’.Tedros said that he was no stranger to Ebola outbreaks in the DR Congo, recalling that from 2018-2020, he visited North Kivu province – the epicentre of that outbreak – 14 times.In that crisis, ‘trust grew slowly, then more quickly. People came forward. And together, we managed to contain the outbreak’, he said.This is the 17th recorded Ebola outbreak in the vast central African country of more than 100mn people.’Together, you have overcome every single one before,’ said Tedros. ‘We will get through this one too.”16 times, this country has defeated Ebola,” he stated. “The 17th will be no different. But we must act now, together.’Already facing a shortage of supplies, doctors there are also tackling attacks on their facilities caused by denial of the disease among some in the DR Congo.The WHO said yesterday that it was scaling up testing in the DR Congo in partnership with the country's national medical research organisation.MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo said it had shipped just under five tonnes of medical cargo to Ituri yesterday, the latest in a series of flights to deliver supplies.However, three humanitarian officials involved in the Ebola response in the DR Congo said that continued restrictions on flights in and out of Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, were hampering operations.One humanitarian official said that despite promising to grant ad hoc exemptions for aid workers, the ministry of transport was not processing them.The Congolese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on flight restrictions.In a bid to curb the spread, countries across the world have rolled out travel-related containment measures.The United States has temporarily banned the entry of green card holders who have been in the DR Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days.The US government, which has said that it ‘cannot and will not allow’ any cases of Ebola to enter the country, is hoping Kenya will host a facility there to quarantine American citizens who become exposed to the disease.It was not clear yesterday if Kenya would agree to the request. Source link