LONDON: Over 700 migrants in small boats crossed the Channel to Britain on Sunday, the highest number on a single day since Prime Minister Keir Starmer took power vowing to tackle people-smugglers.
Two migrants who attempted the crossing died, French authorities said earlier, taking the number of people to lose their life on the dangerous sea journey to 25 since the start of the year.
Some 703 people arrived on Sunday on 11 boats, according to provisional interior ministry figures released Monday.
Stopping the small boat arrivals was a key issue in Britain's general election in July.
Within days of taking power, Starmer scrapped a controversial scheme to deport migrants to Rwanda.
The plan was a flagship policy of the last Conservative government.
Starmer has instead pledged to dismantle the people-smuggling gangs who organise the crossings and are paid thousands of euros by each migrant.
The latest figures come after the UK has been rocked by anti-migrant unrest, following a knife attack on July 29 that killed three children and was falsely linked on social media to a Muslim immigrant.
Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators rallied across Britain on Saturday against riots that targeted mosques and hotels linked to immigration.
Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron have pledged to strengthen "cooperation" in handling the surge in undocumented migrant numbers.
The latest crossings take the number to make the journey since the start of 2024 to 18,342, 13 percent higher than at the same time last year.
700 migrants cross Channel to Britain in small boats
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700 migrants cross Channel to Britain in small boats
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Russia puts Navalny lawyers on trial
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- The trial of the three – Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin – opened in the Vladimir region east of Moscow
- Arrested in October 2023, the trio are accused of participating in an ‘extremist’ organization
Navalny died in unclear circumstances in an Arctic prison colony in February, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for leading an “extremist” organization.
Since his death, Russian authorities have escalated a campaign against the Kremlin critic’s backers, allies and family — arresting journalists who covered his court hearings and adding his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, to a “terrorists and extremists” blacklist.
The trial of three of his former lawyers — Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin — opened Thursday in a court in the Vladimir region east of Moscow, AFP journalists in the courtroom reported.
The three stood in a metal cage for defendants at the start of the hearing, before the judge granted the prosecution’s request to move the session behind closed doors, ejecting public spectators and journalists from the hall.
Arrested in October 2023, the trio are accused of participating in an “extremist” organization, charges which carry a maximum of six years.
Investigators say they passed messages between Navalny and his associates in the outside world, helping the Kremlin critic continue his outlawed political activity from behind bars.
At the time, Navalny’s team alleged the arrest of the lawyers was an attempt to isolate Navalny even further in prison, where he spent most of the time in solitary confinement.
At a pre-trial hearing, Sergunin pleaded guilty, independent media reported, while Kobzev and Liptser rejected the charges.
The Kremlin has rejected accusations from Navalny’s allies that President Vladimir Putin ordered him killed in jail.
The West and Moscow were in talks about freeing Navalny in a prisoner exchange when he died.
Over a decade of opposing the Kremlin, the charismatic opposition leader drew tens of thousands to anti-government street demonstrations.
He nearly died in 2020 after being poisoned on a campaign trip to Siberia ahead of regional elections.
An investigation by Navalny’s team, Western and Russian media outlets connected the assassination attempt to Russian FSB agents.
Most of his former allies, including his wife Navalnaya who has pledged to continue his work, live in exile.
Thailand’s new PM outlines policies to parliament as consumer mood drops
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- Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra highlights signature plan for a ‘digital wallet’ handout of 10,000 baht to 50 million people
- The scheme has been criticized by economists and former central bank governors as fiscally irresponsible, which the government rejects
BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Thursday outlined her government’s policy agenda to parliament, headlined by plans to give away 450 billion baht ($13.4 billion) in handouts to jumpstart Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.
Political newcomer Paetongtarn’s cabinet was sworn in this month, after parliament elected her Thailand’s youngest premier following the shock removal of predecessor Srettha Thavisin by a court decision.
The polices largely continue ally Srettha’s agenda and that of their populist Pheu Thai party, including debt restructuring and legalizing casinos to draw in investment and more tourists.
Paetongtarn told parliament her government was facing challenges, including structural economic problems, and said the government would act with urgency to stimulate growth.
“If there are no financial and fiscal measures to support economic growth, it is expected that the country’s economic growth rate will not exceed 3 percent per year,” she said.
That would result in the public debt level approaching the ceiling of 70 percent to gross domestic product (GDP) in 2027, she said. Public debt stood at 63.74 percent of GDP at the end of July.
“Therefore, it is a great challenge that the government must urgently restore the country’s economy to quickly grow strongly again,” Paetongtarn said.
While she highlighted the signature plan for a ‘digital wallet’ handout of 10,000 baht ($300) to 50 million people, some of which Paetongtarn has previously said will be given in cash, there were no updates on how or when it would be rolled out.
The government had said this week it would distribute 145 billion baht ($4.2 billion) of the program to support vulnerable groups later this month.
The scheme has been criticized by economists and former central bank governors as fiscally irresponsible, which the government rejects. It has struggled to find sources of funding.
The government insists the policy is necessary to energize the economy, which the central bank expects to grow 2.6 percent this year, up from 1.9 percent in 2023 but far adrift of most regional peers.
Consumer confidence dropped for a sixth straight month to a 13-month low in August, a survey showed on Thursday.
Paetongtarn, 38, made her debut appearance in parliament as Thailand’s second female prime minister. She is the fourth member of her family to hold the top job.
Among those was her father, the billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s most influential and divisive politician over the past two decades, who has backed the stimulus plan and is a key figure behind her Pheu Thai party.
Starmer to say UK’s national health service needs ‘major surgery’
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- His speech in central London follows the publication of a 142-page investigation which found that the health of Britons had deteriorated over the past 15 years
LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer will warn Thursday that Britain’s state-run National Health Service must “reform or die” after an independent report said the venerated institution was in a “critical condition.”
Starmer, whose Labour party was elected by a landslide in July, will promise “the biggest reimagining” of the NHS since it was founded 76 years ago.
His speech in central London follows the publication of a 142-page investigation which found that the health of Britons had deteriorated over the past 15 years.
The report’s author, Ara Darzi, an unaffiliated Lord in parliament’s upper chamber, said the NHS had fallen into “disrepair” due to a lack of investment, top-down reorganization and the coronavirus pandemic.
“What we need is the courage to deliver long-term reform — major surgery not sticking plaster solutions,” Starmer was due to say, according to excerpts of his speech released to reporters.
“The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands.
“Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of aging population — or reform to secure its future.
“We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so it’s reform or die,” Starmer was expected to say.
Health minister Wes Streeting told Sky News there would be “three big shifts” — moving certain services from hospitals to the community, fully switching from analog to digital and “giving staff the tools to do the job, so that we tackle that productivity challenge.”
He said the government would not “do as the Conservatives did, which is just pour more money into a broken model, and fail to reform.”
Labour dumped the Conservatives out of power on July 4 in part on a pledge to “fix” the NHS, accusing the Tories of having “broken” it during their 14 years in power.
Darzi’s report notes that the NHS is seeing a surge in patients suffering multiple long-term illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
It says the UK has higher cancer rates than other countries and is lagging behind in its treatment of major conditions.
It also notes that waiting lists have swelled to 7.6 million and that a tenth of patients at accident and emergency wards now wait 12 hours or more before being seen.
Darzi said that he was “shocked” by what he discovered but added that the NHS’s vital signs “remain strong.”
Starmer was expected to outline the three areas of reform for a 10-year plan to “turn around the NHS,” whose universal model is a source of British pride, despite its shortcomings in meeting demand.
Just over a year ago, his Tory predecessor Rishi Sunak announced a 15-year drive to recruit more than 300,000 staff to deal with a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses.
At the time, it was estimated that the NHS would have a staff shortfall of 360,000 by 2037 because of an aging population, a lack of domestically trained health workers and difficulties recruiting and retaining staff, in part because of new visa rules.
“The challenge is clear before us; the change could amount to the biggest reimagining of our NHS since its birth,” the prime minister was set to say.
Starmer, whose mother was an NHS nurse, has spent much of his first two months in power blaming the Tories for leaving Labour a dire inheritance in sectors ranging from health to the economy and prisons.
The Conservatives, whose leader Sunak is the son of an NHS doctor and a pharmacist, accuse him of exaggerating the country’s problems as a way of laying the groundwork for future tax increases.
Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military
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- Hundreds of people turned out at a beach in Washington for an evening vigil remembering Aysenur Ezgi Eygi
SEATTLE: For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.
As the sun set, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.
Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israeli agression on Gaza at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.
“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”
Ukraine businesses hire more women and teens as labor shortages bite
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- Companies hire more women and young people to fill gaps
- War and mobilization have hollowed out workforce
KYIV: After spending years in what she described as “boring, sedentary” roles in the offices of several Ukrainian companies, Liliia Shulha landed her dream job as a truck driver with Ukraine’s leading retailer, Fozzy Group.
“I always dreamed about big cars. Instead of (playing with) dolls, I drove cars when I was a child,” she told Reuters.
“Now the situation is such that they take people without experience and they train. I was lucky,” said Shulha, 40, wearing a company uniform in front of a large truck.
As the war with Russia drains the labor force, businesses are trying to cover critical shortages by hiring more women in traditionally male-dominated roles and turning to teenagers, students and older workers.
With millions of people, mostly women and children, abroad after fleeing the war, and tens of thousands of men mobilized into the army, the jobs crisis could endanger economic growth and a post-war recovery, analysts say.
Ukraine has lost over a quarter of its workforce since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, central bank data showed.
Nearly 60 percent of businesses said finding skilled workers was their main challenge, an economy ministry survey of over 3,000 companies showed.
“The situation is indeed critical,” said Tetiana Petruk, chief sustainability officer at steel company Metinvest, one of Ukraine’s largest employers with a workforce of about 45,000. It has about 4,000 vacancies.
“The staff deficit that we feel has an impact on our production,” Petruk told Reuters in an online interview.
“We are not the only ones who feel the staff shortages, all companies in the regions feel that, including our contractors.”
Reuters spoke to representatives of nine Ukrainian companies, from big industrial firms to retail groups and small private entrepreneurs. All said staff shortages and a growing mismatch of skills were big challenges.
Businesses said they were changing recruitment and business practices, automating, rotating existing staff and expanding their job descriptions, re-hiring retirees and offering more benefits, especially for younger workers.
They have also had to increase wages. The average monthly wage is now about 20,000 hryvnias ($470) compared to about 14,500 a year ago.
“There is a noticeable shift away from gender and age bias in candidate selection as employers adjust criteria to attract needed employees,” said the Kyiv School of Economics. “This trend also extends to entrepreneurship, where the share of female entrepreneurs is growing significantly.”
More women
Male-dominated industries are more affected by staff shortages, the central bank said.
The construction sector, transport, mining and others have all suffered because of military mobilization, for which men aged 25 to 60 are eligible. To keep the economy running, the government provides full or partial deferrals for critical companies.
In the energy and weapons production sectors, 100 percent of staff are eligible for draft deferral. In some other sectors, firms can retain 50 percent of male staff. But the process to secure deferral is long and complicated.
As the government toughened mobilization rules this year, the number of men preferring informal employment — allowing them to stay off public data records — grew, some enterprises said.
In the agricultural southern region of Mykolayiv, women are being trained as tractor drivers. Women are also increasingly working as tram and truck drivers, coal miners, security guards and warehouse workers, companies say.
“We are offering training and jobs for women who have minimal experience,” said Lyubov Ukrainets, human resources director at Silpo, part of Fozzy Group.
Including Shulha, the company has six female truck drivers and is more actively recruiting women for other jobs previously dominated by men, including loaders, meat splitters, packers and security guards.
The share of female employees is growing in industries such as steel production. Petruk said female staff accounted for about 30-35 percent of Metinvest’s workforce and the company now hired women for some underground jobs. Metinvest was unable to provide comparative figures for before the war.
Some other women are unable or unwilling to join the workforce because of a lack of childcare. Shulha, who works 15-day stretches on the road, has moved back in with her parents to ensure care for her 14-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter.
Young people
Businesses and economists expect labor market challenges to persist. Employers are turning their attention to young people by offering training, job experience and targeted benefit packages.
Metinvest, which previously focused on students, is now increasingly working with professional colleges, Petruk said.
Silpo is more actively hiring teenagers for entry-level jobs in supermarkets and has launched a specialized internship program for students.
Mobile phone operator Vodafone repackaged its youth program, creating an opportunity for about 50 teenagers in 12 cities to get their first job experience.
“We want to offer the first proper experience of the official job to this young audience. Another objective is to build a talent pool,” said Ilona Voloshyna of Vodafone Retail.
“Also we want to understand the youth,” she said in a Vodafone shop in Kyiv as six teenagers consulted with visitors.
The government and foreign partners have launched several programs to help Ukrainians reskill.
“We provide the opportunity for everyone at state expense to obtain a new profession which is in demand on the labor market, or to raise their professional level,” said Tetiana Berezhna, a deputy economy minister.