Comments come after wave of false claims online about suspect in killing of 11-year-old boy
A Spanish judge has called for an end to social media anonymity in the wake of a wave of online disinformation after the killing of an 11-year-old boy.
Miguel Ángel Aguilar, a judge from the court that handles hate crimes and discrimination, wants to oblige platforms to reveal users’ true identity in cases of suspected hate crime so the law can impose digital restraining orders.
Continue reading...Youthful, growing cities expected to create wealth and opportunities but stretch public and utility services
Six African cities will have more than 10 million people by 2035, with the continent’s booming young population making it the world’s fastest urbanising region, according to a report.
Angola’s capital, Luanda, and Tanzania’s commercial hub, Dar es Salaam, will join the metropolises of Cairo, Kinshasa, Lagos and Greater Johannesburg with populations of more than 10 million, the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report on African cities.
Continue reading...Arakan Army targeting Muslim minority as Myanmar’s military are driven out of Rakhine, UN official says
Thousands of Rohingya are being forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar and escape on dangerous boat journeys after being targeted by armed rebels, activists and officials say.
Having seized control of much of Myanmar’s Rakhine state from the military, the rebel Arakan Army has turned on the Rohingya minority in areas it controls, shelling villages, forcing them to leave their homes and reportedly rounding up groups of men.
Continue reading...Nearly 10,000 workers locked out at Canada’s two major rail freight firms in dispute over working conditions
Both of Canada’s major rail freight companies have shut down their rail networks in the country and locked out nearly 10,000 workers after unsuccessful negotiations with a major union.
The decision, confirmed by the Teamsters union, sets the stage for an unprecedented rail stoppage that could badly damage the Canadian economy and have a significant effect on cross-border trade with the US.
Continue reading...Thai parliament to investigate Prawit Wongsuwon after he repeatedly hit a journalist as she tried to ask him questions
Thailand’s parliament has said it will investigate a senior politician and former army chief after he was filmed slapping a reporter as she tried to ask him questions.
Prawit Wongsuwon lashed out at a journalist from the public broadcaster ThaiPBS on Friday as she asked him about the appointment of Paetongtarn Shinawatra as the kingdom’s new prime minister.
Continue reading...Permits for coal-fired power plants drop by 83% despite leading world in construction as focus turns to renewables
Coal-fired power is still enjoying a construction boom in China, but a marked slowdown in the permitting of future plants has given experts hope that the world’s biggest emitter may be turning a corner.
China led the world in the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the first half of 2024, with work beginning on more than 41GW of new generation capacity, data published on Thursday showed.
Continue reading...Singer shares ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ at end of European leg of Eras tour, saying she is grateful ‘we were grieving concerts and not lives’
Taylor Swift has spoken for the first time about the three Vienna shows on her blockbuster Eras tour that were cancelled earlier this month after a foiled terror attack, saying she felt “a new sense of fear” and a “tremendous amount of guilt”.
The planned terror attack was uncovered by Austrian authorities who eventually arrested three teenaged suspects – aged 17, 18 and 19 – for allegedly planning an Islamist attack in the Vienna region, with Swift’s shows being the “focus” of the plot.
Continue reading...Independent candidate’s campaign says he will make address to nation on Friday in Arizona
Robert F Kennedy Jr is set to drop his maverick campaign for president, it has been reported, amid speculation the independent and environmental lawyer will throw his support behind Donald Trump.
The ABC network, citing “sources familiar with the decision”, reported that Kennedy would formally leave the race on Friday. The report followed an announcement on his campaign website that he would make a statement that day “about the present historical moment and his path forward” in Phoenix that would be live-streamed on X and other social media.
Continue reading...Mark Geragos says special counsel guilty of ‘character assassination’ by trying to bring salacious details into trial
An attorney for Hunter Biden has accused prosecutors of wanting to introduce salacious details about partying and spending by Joe Biden’s son to smear his character in front of jurors at his upcoming trial on federal tax charges.
During a lengthy hearing in Los Angeles federal court, Hunter Biden’s lawyer said special counsel David Weiss’s team was intent on “character assassination” by seeking to bring in evidence of spending on things like strippers in the case alleging a scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4m in taxes.
Continue reading...Victor Miller proposed customized ChatGPT bot to govern Cheyenne, Wyoming – but fared badly at the ballot box
A mayoral candidate in Wyoming who proposed letting an artificial intelligence bot run the local government lost his race on Tuesday – by a lot.
The candidate, Victor Miller, announced his run for mayor of Cheyenne earlier this year, and quickly made headlines after he decided to run with his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), and declared his intention to govern in a hybrid format, in what experts say was a first for US political campaigns.
Continue reading...Countries in south most at risk, with rise likely to outstrip fall in cold-related deaths if global heating hits 3C or 4C
Heat deaths in Europe could triple by the end of the century, with the numbers rising disproportionately in southern European countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, a study has found.
Cold kills more people than heat in Europe, and some have argued that climate change will benefit society by reducing those deaths. But the study, published in the Lancet Public Health, found that the death toll would respond slowly to warming weather and may even rise through people growing older and more vulnerable to dangerous temperatures.
Continue reading...With ‘hustle kingdoms’ teaching young people the tricks of the trade, there has been a surge in blackmailing crimes
In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.
Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakwa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.
Continue reading...Identities not disclosed but UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his daughter were among those onboard
Divers scouring the wreck of the luxury yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday have found the bodies of five of the six missing passengers.
The UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, his teenage daughter Hannah Lynch, the Morgan Stanley International chair, Jonathan Bloomer, his wife, Judy, and the Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda, have been missing since the vessel went down on Monday morning.
Continue reading...Bodies of missing people recovered as witnesses and experts ponder fate of ship hit by localised storm off Sicily
Fishers in the Sicilian village of Porticello who witnessed the Bayesian superyacht sink rapidly in a violent storm on Monday say that the vessel was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But for Italian prosecutors investigating the incident, their focus will be on whether the captain and crew took all the necessary safety measures to prevent the tragedy.
Continue reading...People of ancient Clovis culture could have impaled huge animals on pikes rather than throwing spears, finds study
When it came to taking down giant animals, prehistoric hunters would quite literally have faced a mammoth task. Now researchers have shed fresh light on how they might have done it.
Experts studying sharp stone points made by the Clovis people, who lived in the Americas from about 13,000 years ago, say that rather than hurling spears at enormous animals such as giant bison, mammoths or ground sloths, the tribes could have planted their weapons point-up in the ground to impale charging creatures.
Continue reading...Number of homes struck in Golan Heights, with one person wounded
Hezbollah has launched more than 50 rockets and a swarm of drones towards northern Israel, hitting a number of homes in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and wounding one person.
The strikes on Wednesday by the Lebanese militant group came the day after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met mediators from Egypt and Qatar, even as Hamas and Israel poured cold water on any prospect of any imminent pause in the fighting in Gaza.
Continue reading...Inquiry into eight EU countries is latest chapter in hostility between Beijing and EU over trade
Chinese authorities have launched an anti-subsidy investigation into European dairy imports, in the latest sign of escalating trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing.
The announcement from China’s commerce ministry on Wednesday came a day after the European Commission revealed revised duties on Chinese electric vehicles as part of its examination into what it viewed as artificially cheap cars that posed a threat to jobs in Europe’s motor industry.
Continue reading...De facto ambassador to Australia says opposition leader’s commentary ‘not evidence based, not verified and unacceptable’
Peter Dutton’s comments about people escaping the bloodshed in Gaza are hurtful and “very bad for cohesion and harmony”, according to Palestine’s de facto ambassador to Australia.
After a week of intense parliamentary debate about Australia’s use of visitor visas for Palestinians fleeing the conflict, Izzat Salah Abdulhadi called the opposition leader’s commentary “very political”.
Continue reading...Overcrowding in humanitarian zone dissuading those given evacuation orders by IDF from leaving, say UN officials
Thousands of people facing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have been forced to abandon plans to comply with Israeli evacuation orders telling them to move to a designated “safe humanitarian zone” because there is no space for them there.
At the weekend the Israeli military told residents of multiple neighbourhoods in and around the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah to leave their homes before planned attacks and go to the narrow strip of coast around the small town of al-Mawasi that was designated earlier in the war to receive displaced people.
Continue reading...Web developer in Lahore charged with cyberterrorism, after riots thought to have been fuelled by false reports online
Police in Pakistan have charged a man with cyberterrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation thought to have led to widespread rioting in the UK, a senior investigator has said.
The suspect was identified as Farhan Asif, 32, a freelance web developer, said Imran Kishwar, the deputy inspector general of investigations in Lahore.
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