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France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez on Friday pledged to stamp out drug crime after shooters killed a 15-year-old in the western city of Nantes in a suspected settling of scores linked to dealing.France is battling drug-fuelled violence in several cities, with dealing spots near residential buildings and gangs ensnaring teenagers into the trade.The shooting on Thursday evening, which also wounded a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old, is the latest deadly incident that could be linked to trafficking in France in a week.The 15-year-old was shot dead in the hall of a tower block in the working-class neighbourhood of Port-Boyer, the city’s prosecutor and a police source said.”We will not lose this war” against drugs, Nunez said at the scene on Friday morning.He told the press that the shooting was obviously linked to drug peddling, as it occurred on a “very sought-after” dealing spot.But only the investigation could determine whether the teens hit had any link to the trade, he added.”These dealing spots are set up in places where people live,” he said.”There are young people passing through, who sometimes wait in a building’s hall because it’s raining. And then you have people who show up and open fire to intimidate, to scare, and now to kill. Obviously this is unacceptable,” he said.- ‘Almost lost my son’ -On Thursday night, residents were in shock in the northern neighbourhood of Port-Boyer.”I’m so fed up,” said Paola, presenting herself as an aunt of the teen who was killed, urging the authorities to improve security.”It’s not normal for young people to lose their lives like this. It’s unacceptable, just unacceptable. They’re children,” she said.Stella, a 35-year-old who declined to give her surname, gripped the hand of her three-year-old son, whose trousers were dotted with blood.She said her 14-year-old nephew — who was wounded in the thigh — and young son had been on the way to see their grandmother without her when the shooting broke out.”I’m living a nightmare and furious that I almost lost my son,” she said.Angeline, an 18-year-old nail technician who did not give her surname for fear of reprisal, said she had been coming back from grocery shopping with her mother and dog when the shooting occurred.”We heard gunshots — about 10, twice — and I yanked my mother by the collar to get back into our building,” she said.”I just saw a lot of people — people in balaclavas and dressed all in black — running through the grass.”- Heavier fines for consumers? -The young adult said the neighbourhood felt increasingly insecure.”Things have been constantly getting worse here. People are afraid, shootings are frequent,” she said.”In the afternoons, the children’s playgrounds are deserted because parents are too scared,” she added.Nunez said police would continue to dismantle drug rings, but he would soon urge parliament to help increase fines against drug consumers.”At some point, consumers need to come to their senses,” he said.”When people use narcotics for recreational purposes, the end result is that one day we end up here… with a 15-year-old who has lost his life.”He said the plan would increase the fine for drug consumption from 200 to 500 euros, and even suspend or remove an offender’s driving licence in some cases.bur-ah/ekf/rlp Related Story Source link
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting walks on Downing Street, on the day of the State Opening of Parliament, in London. (Reuters/File Photo) Britain’s health minister Wes Streeting announced Thursday that he had resigned, paving the way for him to launch a leadership challenge against embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer.In his resignation letter to Starmer, which Streeting posted on X, he said: “It is now clear that you will not lead the Labour Party into the next general election”.He added that he had “lost confidence” in Starmer’s leadership, and a debate about what comes next for the ruling party “needs to be broad, and it needs to be the best possible field of candidates”.Streeting, 43, did not say whether he had the required support of 81 Labour MPs — 20% of the party in parliament — to trigger a contest.Starmer, who led his Labour party to victory in 2024 elections ending 14 years of Conservative rule, is fighting to save his job after disastrous local and regional polls last week.Four junior ministers have resigned and more than 80 Labour MPs have urged him to quit, but he has vowed to cling on and more than 100 lawmakers from the ruling party have called for him to stay.Thursday, his former deputy Angela Rayner announced that UK tax authorities had “cleared” her of deliberate wrongdoing in a tax affair, opening the way for her to compete in a potential leadership race.The 46-year-old insisted she would not be the one to trigger a contest, but told the Guardian newspaper she would play “whatever role I can” to “deliver the change”.Rayner, a left-wing figurehead hugely popular among Labour’s grassroots activists, also called on Starmer to “reflect” on his position.She was forced to step down in September for underpaying a property duty, but said Thursday the UK tax authority HMRC had exonerated her of “the accusation that I deliberately sought to avoid tax”.Rayner quit as deputy PM and housing, communities and local government minister after an investigation found she had breached the ministerial code over the purchase of a flat in southern England. Media reported she had paid off £40,000 ($54,000) in outstanding tax.Local poll drubbingStreeting is popular on the right of Labour, but is disliked by MPs on the left who would prefer Rayner or Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham as leader.Burnham is currently blocked from running as he does not have a seat in the Westminster parliament. His supporters want Starmer to set a detailed timetable for his departure that allows Burnham to stand.Starmer’s spokesman insisted Thursday that the prime minister was going nowhere.He “is purely focused on governing. He is getting on with the job of doing just that,” the spokesman told reporters.Voters last week punished Starmer over his 22 months in power in local ballots which saw huge gains for the hard-right Reform UK party and the left-wing populist Greens at Labour’s expense.The Labour Party lost control of the devolved Welsh parliament for the first time and failed to make up ground on the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) in the parliament in Edinburgh.Rayner earlier stopped short of calling for Starmer to resign, but said voters were frustrated with the way the government was being run.Starmer has vowed to fight any contest and came out fighting on Monday, pledging to do better and prove his doubters “wrong”.He has been backed by several senior cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Rachel Reeves, who urged colleagues Thursday not to put the economy “at risk” by “plunging the country into chaos” with a leadership challenge. Related Story Source…
A woman in evening attire stands in front of a Yves Saint Laurent shop during the official ceremony on the sidelines of the 79th edition of…
FILE PHOTO: The TikTok app icon on a smartphone in this illustration taken October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo The head of the European Commission yesterday called for more protections for children against the “addictive designs” of social media platforms like TikTok, Meta and X, raising the possibility of an age limit on teens accessing them. Europe is hardening its stance against social media, with nations from Norway and France to Turkey and Britain debating or rolling out legislation to ban or limit teenage social media use, looking to Australia’s early move for inspiration.“The question is not whether young people should have access to social media, the question is whether social media should have access to young people,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive Commission, said in Copenhagen. “Sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictive behaviour, cyberbullying, grooming, exploitation, suicide. Risks are multiplying fast.” Von der Leyen said the Commission would target “addictive and harmful design practices” in its Digital Fairness Act (DFA), to be proposed towards the end of the year, while an expert panel was preparing advice on how to proceed. “Without pre-empting the panel’s findings, I believe we must consider a social media delay. Depending on the results, we could come with a legal proposal this summer,” she said.The DFA would ban manipulative practices, addictive features and misleading influencer marketing on digital platforms. Digital world risks are “the result of business models that treat our children’s attention as a commodity,” von der Leyen said, calling for strict limits on AI use in social media. “We are taking action against TikTok and its addictive design, endless scrolling, autoplay and push notifications,” she said, adding: “The same applies to Meta, because we believe Instagram and Facebook are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13.” Spokespeople at TikTok, Meta and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The new regulation will strengthen and expand the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large platforms to do more to tackle illegaland harmful content, von der Leyen said. Under the DSA rules, the Commission is already investigating TikTok, X and Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Facebook. It has been investigating X over possible risks from deploying Grok in the EU, including the spread of manipulated sexualised images. Yesterday, Europe’s top court sided with Italy’s telecoms watchdog against Meta saying it should compensate publishers for using snippets of their articles. Source link
British Health Secretary Wes Streeting walks out of No. 10 Downing Street after attending a cabinet meeting, the day before the State Opening of Parliament, in…
Groups of passengers and crew disembarked from a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak yesterday to be evacuated to their home countries where they will isolate according to national protocols to prevent further spread of the disease. Government planes carrying Spanish and French nationals landed in Madrid and Paris yesterday afternoon, where the passengers were transported to hospital, according to the two countries’ governments.One of the five French passengers showed symptoms during the repatriation flight, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on X. Planes to Canada, the Netherlands, Turkiye, the UK, Ireland, and the US were due to depart by 2030 local time (1830 GMT) yesterday, with the final flights departing today by 1900 local time.The passengers will be tested upon arrival and then either taken to local hospitals or quarantine facilities or transported home for isolation. The World Health Organisation has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers from the boat from yesterday, its director of epidemic and pandemic management Maria Van Kerkhove said in a briefing. The Spanish passengers will be kept in hospital for the full 42 days, while French passengers will be hospitalised for 72 hours then allowed home to self-isolate for a further 45 days, according to the respective governments. “Our recommendation is daily health checks, at home or in a specialised facility. It’s up to countries to develop their policies but our recommendations are very clear,” Van Kerkhove said, highlighting that the incubation period for the virus was up to six weeks. The virus, usually spread by rodents but also transmittable person-to-person in rare cases of close contact, was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg on May 2 treating a British man who fell ill and was taken into intensive care, 21 days after another passenger had died. The man’s health has since improved, a WHO official said yesterday. The WHO said the first passenger who died on the ship may have been infected before boarding, possibly during travel in Argentina and Chile.Eight people no longer on the ship have fallen ill, according to a WHO tally from Friday, of which six are confirmed to have contracted the virus. Three have died – a Dutch couple and a German national. Four remain hospitalised in South Africa, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On the remote island of Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory, a suspected case is being treated by a team of medical specialists parachuted in by the UK military. Still, health officials urged calm, reminding a public scarred from the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic that this virus was far less contagious and posed little risk to the general population.A woman in Spain who was tested for the virus after sharing a flight with one of the victims tested negative. “This is not Covid and we don’t want to treat it like Covid,” acting US CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya said in an interview with CNN yesterday, adding the 17 US passengers from the ship would be given the choice of isolating at home or at a facility in Nebraska. Spain’s health ministry also downplayed the risk to the broader population. It added that rodents had not been detected aboard the ship.The luxury cruise ship left for Spain on Wednesday from the coast of Cape Verde after the WHO and European Union asked the country to manage the evacuation of passengers after the outbreak was detected. Passengers were taken from the ship to shore in small boats and transported to Tenerife airport in military buses, without coming into contact with the public.Thirty crew members will remain on board and sail to the Netherlands today evening where the ship will be disinfected.“Thank God we are all fine… I hope we’ll get through the quarantine process smoothly and be able to see family and friends again,” Turkish birdwatcher Emin Yogurtcuoglu, a passenger on the ship, wrote in a public post on Instagram. Source link
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer named former premier Gordon Brown as his envoy on global finance Saturday, turning to a man credited with shoring up banks during the financial crisis to bolster his support after a crushing local elections defeat. Starmer is on the back foot after his Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his own lawmakers to call on him to quit.Aiming to reset his leadership and win back party support, Starmer’s office announced the appointment of two Labour grandees, Brown, 75, and Harriet Harman, also 75, to his team as advisers.Brown will seek to drive new investment and hone relations with the European Union, in a bid to boost economic performance and win back votes, while Harman will focus on tackling misogyny and violence against women and girls, creating economic opportunities.Amid fresh calls for him to resign Saturday from several of his own lawmakers, as the extent of the defeat emerged, Starmer repeated: “I’m not going to walk away from this.”He said he will respond to the message from voters by seeking to convince them their lives will improve, adding that his new hires, Brown and Harman, were part of the plan.”They’re vital to how we strengthen our country and take it forward and provide the opportunities that give people that hope for a better future,” he said.Brown, 75, will join as an adviser on global finance and cooperation, while former Labour deputy leader Harman, 75, will become the prime minister’s adviser on women and girls.Brown’s task will be to develop new international finance partnerships that can support defence and security investment, including measures that underpin Britain’s relationship with the European Union, a statement said.As Tony Blair’s finance minister, Brown was a key architect of the New Labour project which won the party three consecutive general elections from 1997.Serving as prime minister himself from 2007-2010, Brown was instrumental in nationalising major banks and stabilising the financial system during the global financial crisis.Just under two years after a Labour landslide national election victory, voters have turned against Starmer.Labour losses stood at 1,425 seats as the final votes were counted on Saturday, a bigger defeat than the 1,330 seats lost by former Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party in 2019. May quit three weeks after that result. Against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis compounded by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, Starmer’s government has been beset by policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and scandal over the appointment of another Blair-era veteran, Peter Mandelson, as Britain’s ambassador to the United States.”We made unnecessary mistakes,” Starmer said on Saturday, before insisting that the right thing now was to “rebuild and show the path forward”. While an immediate challenge to Starmer’s leadership does not look likely, there are growing calls for him to resign.More than 20 lawmakers publicly and privately have called on him to set out a timetable for his departure, with former minister Catherine West joining the fray on Saturday.”His approach is not cutting through, and the results over the past 48 hours are nothing short of disastrous,” West said of Starmer on X.”I know I speak for more Labour people than just myself in wanting him to step aside as our Leader.”Another Labour lawmaker, Clive Betts, told BBC Radio Saturday that he wanted Starmer to step down “in the not too distant future”. Related Story Source link
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Libyan counterpart Abdulhamid Dbeibah discussed yesterday strengthening energy co-operation at a time when Italy is looking to diversify energy supplies due to the turmoil in the Gulf.Italy, highly dependent on imported energy, is particularly exposed to the surge in global fuel prices triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.”(The leaders) discussed ways to further strengthen the already solid bilateral co-operation, with particular reference to economic relations and investment in the energy sector,” Meloni’s office said after the talks in Rome.”The two leaders then reaffirmed their shared commitment to managing migration.”Libya is Rome’s biggest supplier of crude oil, accounting for nearly a fifth of Rome’s total crude oil imports. However, Libya’s gas exports to Italy dropped to around 1bn cubic metres in 2025, from 1.4 bcm in 2024.The drop was largely the result of supply-side constraints in Libya — including rising domestic demand, repeated disruptions to infrastructure and political instability — which kept the Greenstream pipeline to Italy running well below capacity.Members of Italy’s influential parliamentary security committee visited Libya in late April, and discussed with Dbeibah the importance of “increased investment to allow a significant rise in Libyan gas production and, consequently, exports to Italy”, according to a statement.Italian state-controlled Eni has been present in Libya since 1959 and is the country’s leading international operator, with an equity production of approximately 162,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025 and three development projects currently in execution, two of which will start up in 2026. Source link
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reach to shake hands as they meet in the Oval Office at the White House…
The British Department for Transport announced that airlines will be allowed to combine passengers from different flights onto fewer aircraft as part of temporary measures aimed at reducing jet fuel consumption.The department explained that the new amendment allows for the merging of flights on routes that have more than one flight per day to the same destination, allowing passengers to be transferred to similar flights if there are vacant seats, instead of operating flights that may be not full or are threatened with cancellation.The move aims to reduce fuel waste resulting from operating aircraft with fewer passengers than their operational capacity, as well as to enhance the operational efficiency of airlines.The Department for Transport confirmed that these amendments also aim to enhance the stability of flight schedules and give travelers greater confidence in the regularity of travel.These measures come at a time when warnings are increasing about a possible shortage of jet fuel as the holiday season approaches, amid supply chain disruptions linked to geopolitical tensions and their impact on fuel supplies from the Middle East. Source link