British PM May says terrorists will be defeated as Daesh claim responsibility for attack near parliament

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May. (Reuters)
Updated 23 March 2017
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British PM May says terrorists will be defeated as Daesh claim responsibility for attack near parliament

LONDON: Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday terrorism would not prevail as she rallied the country to carry on with its everyday business and stick to British values in response to an attack on parliament.
"At this time it is so important that we show that it is our values that will prevail, that the terrorists will not win, that we will go about our lives showing that unity of purpose and the values that we share as one nation going forward and ensuring that the terrorists will be defeated," she told parliament.

The attacker was British-born and was once investigated by MI5 intelligence agents, the prime minister said. Daesh said it was responsible for the attack near Britain's seat of power, the group said in a statement.

Earlier, police arrested seven people in the investigation into the lone-wolf attacker who killed three people and injured 40 before being shot dead by police near parliament in London, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer said on Thursday.
Mark Rowley said there were four dead including the attacker and 29 people still being treated in hospital, seven of whom were in a critical condition.
Police had said on Wednesday that the death toll was five in the worst such attack in Britain since 2005.
The attacker sped across Westminster Bridge in a car, mowing down pedestrians along the way, then ran through the gates of the nearby parliament building and stabbed a policeman before being shot dead.
Authorities have said they are working on the assumption that the attack was Islamist-related.
Britons have been shocked by the fact that the attacker was able to cause such mayhem in the heart of the capital equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a hired car and a knife.
“The police and agencies that we rely on for our security have forestalled a large number of these attacks in recent years, over a dozen last year,” said defense minister Michael Fallon.
“This kind of attack, this lone-wolf attack, using things from daily life, a vehicle, a knife, are much more difficult to forestall,” he told the BBC.
Police believe they know the identity of the attacker but have not named him.
“We’re dealing with an enemy, a terrorist enemy, that is not making demands or taking people hostage, but simply wants to kill as many people as possible. This is a new element to international terrorism,” Fallon said.
Rowley said police had searched six addresses in London, Birmingham and other parts of the country in their investigation.
“It is still our belief ... that this attacker acted alone and was inspired by international terrorism. At this stage we have no specific information about further threats to the public,” Rowley said.
He said there was a mix of nationalities among the dead but gave no details. The victims were the policeman, Keith Palmer, who was stabbed and two members of the public, a woman in her mid-40s and a man in his mid-50s. The fourth dead was the assailant.

Vigil
Three French high-school students aged 15 or 16, who were on a school trip to London with fellow students from Brittany, were among the injured.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault was expected to arrive in London to visit them at hospital, French media reported.
There were also five South Koreans among the injured, South Korea’s foreign ministry said in Seoul.
A minute of silence to honor the victims will be held at 0933 GMT in parliament, outside police headquarters at New Scotland Yard, and in the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.
Prime Minister Theresa May was due to make a statement to parliament on the attack at 1030 GMT.
A vigil was planned in London’s Trafalgar Square at 1800 GMT.
Fallon said security arrangements at parliament would be reviewed.
Westminster Bridge remained cordoned off with a strong police presence. The nearby Westminster underground rail station, normally a busy hub in the morning rush hour, was not accessible from the street as it was within the cordon.
May said on Wednesday the location of the attack was not an accident. She said any assault on British values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech was doomed to failure and Britons would not be divided by such acts.
But anti-immigration groups were quick to make links between immigration and the attack.
Leave.EU, a group that has campaigned for immigration to be severely restrained as part of Britain’s exit from the European Union, accused mainstream politicians of facilitating acts of terror by failing to secure borders.
“We are sick, tired but perhaps even more so we are angry that recent governments across Europe have enabled these attacks through grossly negligible policies that have left us vulnerable,” the group said in a statement.
In France, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also drew a link, saying that events in London highlighted the importance of protecting national borders and stepping up security measures.


Anger and resentment rise in Los Angeles over fire response

Updated 57 min 22 sec ago
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Anger and resentment rise in Los Angeles over fire response

  • For Los Angeles residents, the arrival of National Guard soldiers is too little, too late
  • Multiple fires that continue to ravage Los Angeles have killed at least 11 people, authorities say

ALTADENA, United States: After being largely reduced to ashes by wildfire, Altadena was being patrolled by National Guard soldiers on Friday.
For residents of this devastated Los Angeles suburb, the arrival of these men in uniform is too little, too late.
“We didn’t see a single firefighter while we were throwing buckets of water to defend our house against the flames” on Tuesday night, said Nicholas Norman, 40.
“They were too busy over in the Palisades saving the rich and famous’s properties, and they let us common folks burn,” said the teacher.
But the fire did not discriminate.
In the upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the first to be hit by the flames this week, wealthy residents share the same resentment toward the authorities.
“Our city has completely let us down,” said Nicole Perri, outraged by the fact that hydrants being used by firefighters ran dry or lost pressure.
Her lavish Palisades home was burnt to cinders. In a state of shock, the 32-year-old stylist wants to see accountability.
“Things should have been in place that could have prevented this,” she said.
“We’ve lost everything, and I just feel zero support from our city, our horrible mayor and our governor.”
Multiple fires that continue to ravage Los Angeles have killed at least 11 people, authorities say.
Around 10,000 buildings have been destroyed, and well over 100,000 residents have been forced to evacuate.
So far authorities have largely blamed the intense 160 kilometer per hour winds that raged earlier this week, and recent months of drought, for the disaster.
But this explanation alone falls short for many Californians, thousands of whom have lost everything.
Karen Bass, the city’s mayor, has come in for heavy criticism because she was visiting the African nation of Ghana when the fire started, despite dire weather warnings in the preceding days.
Budget cuts to the fire department, and a series of evacuation warnings erroneously sent to millions of people this week, have only stoked the anger further.
“I don’t think the officials were prepared at all,” said James Brown, a 65-year-old retired lawyer in Altadena.
“There’s going to have to be a real evaluation here, because hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have just been completely displaced,” he said.
“It’s like you’re in a war zone.”
Mayor Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, have separately called for investigations.
Republican president-elect Donald Trump has fanned the flames of controversy, blaming California’s liberal leadership and encouraging his followers to do the same.
But the highly politicized attacks by Trump — who made false claims about why fire hydrants ran dry — have also frustrated some survivors in Altadena.
“That’s textbook Trump: he’s trying to start a polemic with false information,” said architect Ross Ramsey, 37.
“It’s too early to point fingers or blame anybody for anything,” he said, while clearing ashes from the remains of his mother’s house.
“We should be focusing on the people who are trying to pick up their lives and how to help them... Then we can point fingers and figure this all out, with real facts and real data.”


Malala Yousafzai ‘overwhelmed and happy’ to be back in Pakistan

Updated 11 January 2025
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Malala Yousafzai ‘overwhelmed and happy’ to be back in Pakistan

  • The education activist was shot by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl
  • Pakistan is facing a severe education crisis with more than 26 million children out of school

ISLAMABAD: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said Saturday she was “overwhelmed” to be back in her native Pakistan, as she arrived for a global summit on girls’ education in the Islamic world.
The education activist was shot by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl and has returned to the country only a handful of times since.
“I’m truly honored, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan,” she said as she arrived at the conference in the capital Islamabad.
The two-day summit was set to be opened Saturday morning by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and brings together representatives from Muslim-majority countries, where tens of millions of girls are out of school.
Yousafzai is due to address the summit on Sunday.
“I will speak about protecting rights for all girls to go to school, and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women & girls,” she posted on social media platform X on Friday.
The country’s education minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said the Taliban government in Afghanistan had been invited to attend, but Islamabad has not received a response.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from going to school and university.
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban government there has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has called “gender apartheid.”
Pakistan is facing its own severe education crisis with more than 26 million children out of school, mostly as a result of poverty, according to official government figures — one of the highest figures in the world.
Yousafzai became a household name after she was attacked by Pakistan Taliban militants on a school bus in the remote Swat valley in 2012.
She was evacuated to the United Kingdom and went on to become a global advocate for girls’ education and, at the age of 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner.


Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed

Updated 11 January 2025
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Jeju Air crash black boxes stopped recording before flight crashed

  • South Korean and US investigators are still probing the cause of the crash of Jeju Air flight 2216
  • Investigators have pointed to a bird strike, faulty landing gear and the runway barrier as possible issues

The black boxes holding the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for the crashed Jeju Air flight that left 179 people dead stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, South Korea’s transport ministry said Saturday.

The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, on December 29 carrying 181 passengers and crew when it belly-landed at the Muan airport and exploded in a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier.

“The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recorded during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft’s collision with the localizer,” the transport ministry said in a statement, referring to the two recording devices.

The localizer is a barrier at the end of the runway that helps with aircraft landings and was blamed for exacerbating the crash’s severity.

“Plans are in place to investigate the cause of the data loss during the ongoing accident investigation,” the statement added.

South Korean and US investigators are still probing the cause of the crash of Jeju Air flight 2216, which prompted a national outpouring of mourning with memorials set up across the country.

Investigators have pointed to a bird strike, faulty landing gear and the runway barrier as possible issues.

The pilot warned of a bird strike before pulling out of a first landing, then crashed on a second attempt when the landing gear did not emerge.


Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit

Updated 11 January 2025
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Text messaging scammers stole $2m in cryptocurrency from victims, says NY lawsuit

  • Scammers used unsolicited text messages to target people looking for remote work
  • Victims were told to review products online in order to help generate “market data”

NEW YORK: Scammers stole millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from people seeking remote work opportunities as part of an elaborate scheme, according to New York’s attorney general.
Attorney General Letitia James said Thursday that she’s filed a lawsuit in order to recover more than $2 million that she said was stolen from New Yorkers and others around the country.
James said the unknown network of scammers used unsolicited text messages to target people looking for remote work.
They told victims that the job involved reviewing products online in order to help generate “market data,” James’ office said. But in order to begin earning money, victims were told they had to open cryptocurrency accounts and had to maintain a balance equal to, or greater than, the price of the products they were reviewing.
The victims were assured they would get their investments back plus commission, but the funds simply went into the scammers’ crypto wallets, James’ office said. The product reviews were also conducted on a website set up as part of the scheme.
The suit cites seven victims, identified by pseudonyms, residing in New York, Virginia and Florida. One New York victim lost over $100,000, according to the suit. A Florida woman lost over $300,000.
“Deceiving New Yorkers looking to take on remote work and earn money to support their families is cruel and unacceptable,” she said in a statement. “Scammers sent text messages to New Yorkers promising them good-paying, flexible jobs only to trick them into purchasing cryptocurrency and then stealing it from them.”
James’ suit seeks to return the stolen funds.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said her office’s cryptocurrency unit traced over $2 million in stolen crypto and identified the digital wallets where the coins were being held. Then, working with James’ office, they were able to have the currency frozen until they could be returned to victims.
“Work scams that prey on those seeking legitimate employment not only rob victims of their hard-earned money but also shatter their trust in the job market,” she added.


UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade

Updated 11 January 2025
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UK finance minister seeks ‘pragmatic’ relations with China to boost trade

  • Rachel Reeves is seeking to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019
  • China is Britain’s fourth-largest trading partner, accounting for goods and services trade worth almost $138 billion

BEIJING: British finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Saturday during a visit to Beijing that she intended to have “pragmatic” relations with Chinese leaders to boost exports to the world’s second-largest economy.
Under pressure from market turmoil at home, Reeves is seeking to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019.
She joins the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue meeting in Beijing with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Saturday, before traveling to Shanghai, accompanied by Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and other finance leaders.
She is due to discuss financial services, trading ties and the importance of cooperation on issues like climate change, the Treasury said.
Her appearance offers a chance to persuade investors that she has plans to deal with a sharp increase in British government borrowing costs, due in part to a global bond selloff which threatens to derail her budget plans.
“The fiscal rules that I set out in my budget in October are non-negotiable and growth is the number one mission of this government to make our country better off,” Reeves told reporters after visiting a Brompton bicycles shop in Beijing.
“That’s why I’m in China to unlock tangible benefits for British businesses exporting and trading around the world to ensure that we have greater access to the second-largest economy in the world.”
Reeves’ visit follows a dialogue opened last year between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Xi Jinping, the first between the two countries’ leaders since 2018.
The approach taken by the Labour government, elected in July, contrasts with the previous Conservative administration which took a robust approach to differences with China — particularly over human rights, Hong Kong and allegations of Chinese espionage.
Asked on Thursday if Reeves would raise human-rights issues, Starmer’s spokesperson said her visit would fit with London’s stance that it would take a strategic approach to China and challenge it “robustly” when necessary.
Starmer has long described his desire to build a relationship with China that is “rooted in the UK’s national interests” by boosting trade, a task that may become more difficult if US President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on all imports.
Asked whether Britain would follow Washington and Brussels in imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Reeves said: “We keep issues under review but we make decisions in our national interest.”
British car manufacturers “like Jaguar and Land Rover export substantially to Chinese markets, and we want to help them to grow.”
China is Britain’s fourth-largest trading partner, accounting for goods and services trade worth almost 113 billion pounds ($138 billion).