LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government will retain a ban on asylum seekers being able to claim protections under modern slavery and other human rights laws, even as its ministers have previously criticized those measures.
Starmer is under pressure to deal with tens of thousands of people who arrive to the UK each year on small boats, a key issue of concern for British voters, after he pledged in last year’s election campaign to “smash the gangs” controlling the people smuggling trade.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill introduced to parliament on Thursday will allow the police to seize the mobile phones of asylum seekers to help track down people smugglers, and target those suspected of supplying parts used in the small boats to transport people to England.
The Labour Party, which won power in July, also plans to retain parts of legislation passed by the previous Conservative government that will disqualify asylum seekers using modern slavery laws to challenge decisions to remove them, and the power to detain child asylum seekers for up to 28 days.
Labour had voted against those measures in parliament when legislation on them was passed in 2023.
Starmer said at the time that the decision to deny asylum seekers using modern slavery laws would “drive a coach and horses” through protections for women trafficked to Britain.
Jess Phillips, now a junior interior minister, said in 2023 the legislation was a “traffickers’ dream” because it would hide victims of modern slavery.
Starmer’s office and the interior ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Immigration and asylum are the second most important issue to voters after the economy, ahead of health, according to a tracker poll published by YouGov.
Government figures show that 36,816 people came to Britain via small boats last year, a 25 percent jump from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023.
The latest government statistics on Channel crossings make 2024 the second-highest year for arrivals since data was first collated in 2018.
Concern over immigration was a leading factor in Britain’s decision to vote to leave the European Union in 2016, but successive governments have failed to reduce both legal and illegal migration.
UK to keep ban on asylum seekers claiming modern slavery protections
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UK to keep ban on asylum seekers claiming modern slavery protections
- Labour had voted against those measures in parliament when legislation on them was passed in 2023
- Immigration and asylum are the second most important issue to voters after the economy
UK government to take control of British Steel under emergency law
- The Chinese owners of British Steel have said it is no longer financially viable to run the two furnaces at the Scunthorpe site, where up to 2,700 jobs have been at risk
- Jingye bought British Steel in 2020 and says it has invested more than £1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) to maintain operations but is losing around £700,000 a day
A view of British Steel's Scunthorpe plant in north Lincolnshire, northeast England, on April 10, 2025. (AFP)
LONDON : The UK government said it was taking control of Chinese-owned British Steel on Saturday after rushing an emergency law through parliament to avert the shutdown of the country’s last factory that can make steel from scratch.
The struggling plant in northern England had faced imminent closure and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his government “stepped in to save British Steel” with legislation to prevent its blast furnaces going out.
At a rare weekend session, parliament approved the law without opposition to take over the running of the Scunthorpe site, which employs several thousand people and produces steel crucial for UK industries including construction and rail transport.
The government saw its possible closure as a risk to Britain’s long-term economic security, given the decline of the UK’s once robust steel industry.
Officials were poised to take over the site after the emergency bill passed into law on Saturday evening, according to UK media reports.
Following its approval Starmer said his administration was “turning the page on a decade of decline” and “acting to protect the jobs of thousands of workers.”
He insisted “all options are on the table to secure the future of the industry,” after a government minister indicated nationalization could be a likely next step.
Earlier, as MPs debated in parliament, the prime minister made a dash to the region where he told steelworkers gathered in a nearby village hall that the measure was “in the national interest.”
He said the “pretty unprecedented” move meant the government could secure “a future for steel” in Britain.
“The most important thing is we’ve got control of the site, we can make the decisions about what happens, and that means that those blast furnaces will stay on,” he said.
It came after protests at the plant and reports that workers had stopped executives from the company’s Chinese owners Jingye accessing key areas of the steelworks on Saturday morning.
The Times newspaper said British Steel workers had seen off a “delegation of Chinese executives” trying to enter critical parts of the works.
Police said officers attended the scene “following a suspected breach of the peace,” but no arrests were made.
State ownership considered
Facing questions about nationalization in parliament, business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds said state ownership “remains on the table” and may be the “likely option.”
But he said the scope of Saturday’s legislation was more limited — it “does not transfer ownership to the government,” he explained, saying this would have to be dealt with at a later stage.
Ministers have said no private company has been willing to invest in the plant.
The Chinese owners have said it is no longer financially viable to run the two furnaces at the site, where up to 2,700 jobs have been at risk.
Jingye bought British Steel in 2020 and says it has invested more than £1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) to maintain operations but is losing around £700,000 a day.
Reynolds said “the effective market value of this company is zero,” and that Jingye had wanted to maintain the operation in the UK but supply it with slab steel from China to keep it going.
The Labour government came under fire from the opposition Conservative party for its handling of the negotiations and faced calls from some left-wing politicians to fully nationalize the plant, while unions also urged the government to go further.
Reynolds explained the government had sought to buy raw materials to keep the furnaces running with “no losses whatsoever for Jingye,” but met with resistance.
Instead Jingye demanded the UK “transfer hundreds of millions of pounds to them, without any conditions to stop that money and potentially other assets being immediately transferred to China,” he said. “They also refused a condition to keep the blast furnaces maintained.”
Saturday’s legislation allowed for criminal sanctions and gave the government powers to take over assets if executives fail to comply with instructions to keep the blast furnaces open.
Trump tariffs partly to blame
MPs had left for their Easter holidays on Tuesday and had not been due to return to parliament until April 22 when the rare session was called.
MPs last sat on a Saturday recall of parliament at the start of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1982.
Scunthorpe in northern England hosts Britain’s last virgin steel plant — which produces steel from raw rather than recycled materials — after Indian firm Tata’s Port Talbot site shuttered its blast furnace last year.
British Steel has said US President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on the sector were partly to blame for the Scunthorpe plant’s difficulties.
However, fierce competition from cheaper Asian steel has heaped pressure on Europe’s beleaguered industry in recent years.
British Steel has its roots as far back as the Industrial Revolution but took shape in 1967 when the Labour government nationalized the industry, which at the time employed nearly 270,000 people.
One million Bangladeshis make public pledge to boycott Israel-linked products
- Dhaka protest was the largest Palestine solidarity rally in Bangladesh’s recent history
- Protesters call for reinstating the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports
DHAKA: More than 1 million Bangladeshis assembled on the streets of Dhaka on Saturday to join the country’s largest Gaza solidarity rally and take a public oath to boycott products and entities linked to Israel.
Waving the flags of Bangladesh and Palestine and chanting “Free Palestine,” “Stop the Israeli aggression,” and “Boycott Israeli products,” residents of the country’s capital flocked to the Suhrawardy Udyan — the main public space — for the “March for Gaza” demonstration.
Organized by the Palestine Solidarity Movement Bangladesh, the event featured politicians, celebrities, artists, poets and popular social media influencers, who joined in a call on world leaders to bring to justice Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others responsible for Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
FASTFACT
The protesters called on the Bangladesh government to reinstate the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports, which had barred nationals from traveling to Israel.
Political leaders present at the event called for international accountability and immediate action to end Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, where over 50,900 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings, while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.
A joint declaration read during the rally called on the international community to “take effective and collective action to end the genocide,” and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to “impose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state” and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.
“We will boycott every product, company, and force that sustains Israel’s occupation ... We will start from our own homes, leaving an imprint of this pledge in language, history, education, economy, and society,” said the declaration read by Mahmudur Rahman, editor of the Amar Desh daily newspaper, who helped organize the event.
It was the largest Palestine solidarity rally in Bangladesh in recent history.
“More than a million people actually gathered today. According to the police, they have said probably it was 1.1 million,” Rahman told Arab News.
“It was a huge gathering, but it was so peaceful ... This is some sort of example for the entire world. It was peaceful and it was in favor of humanity. Because it’s not only a question of Islam — we were protesting against the inhuman genocide (perpetrated by) the Israeli regime. So, this protest is for the humanity. We have asked the Muslim Ummah to get united to free Palestine.”
The protesters also called on the government to reinstate the “except Israel” clause in Bangladeshi passports, which had barred nationals from traveling to Israel. Even though Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel, the clause was removed in 2021 by the previous administration of Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in a popular uprising last year.
Participants at the rally said they already follow many aspects of Saturday’s declaration — especially the boycott call.
“I stopped buying Israeli products from the very beginning of this latest round of Israeli aggression, which started about a year and a half ago. I even stopped buying Coca-Cola, though it’s a very popular and well-known drink here. This is my personal way of protesting against Israel — as an individual,” said Arman Sheikh, a businessman in Dhaka.
“This kind of boycott can definitely make a difference. There’s nothing stronger than the power of the masses.”
Nasrin Begum, a teacher, said she has been trying to avoid global brands for their possible links with Israel, instead choosing local alternatives.
“Before purchasing cosmetics, now I always google about their origin. If anything in my search shows a connection to Israel, I avoid those products,” she said.
“It’s not very difficult to find a suitable substitute for Israeli-linked goods. It’s an open market economy. We can get any products from anywhere in the world. It’s all about our mindset and determination. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I continued purchasing Israeli-linked goods after all the atrocities they are committing.”
Asiatic Society employs AI to decipher ancient Indian manuscripts
- Society has 52,000 rare manuscripts, many of which still have not been deciphered
- Project Vidhvanika in collaboration with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
NEW DELHI: The Asiatic Society in Kolkata is using AI transcription and machine learning to decipher ancient manuscripts in its archives and make them accessible to scholars worldwide.
Founded in 1784, during British colonial rule, the Asiatic Society is one of India’s oldest research institutions and is dedicated to the study and preservation of history, culture, and languages.
Many of the society’s more than 52,000 rare manuscripts and historical documents have not previously been deciphered. The society launched its Vidhvanika (“decoding knowledge”) project in December to digitize them and to develop language models for ancient scripts.
“Work needs to be done on the majority of the manuscripts,” Anant Sinha, administrator of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, told Arab News. “We are working with three scientists. Besides that, I have my reprography team involved in the scanning, and then there’s the expert team, which includes specialists in different languages, scripts, and subjects.”
The project is also being supported by the Center for Development of Advanced Computing, India’s premier IT research and development organization.
The society’s manuscript collection spans a wide range of subjects — including Indian history, literature, philosophy, religion, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and art — and of languages, including Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, Bengali, and other regional languages of India.
Decoding the manuscripts requires an understanding of the scripts, their language, the styles used in historical documents, the historical context, and the subject matter. There are few active, specialized paleographers and manuscript scholars conducting such work and research, not only in India but across the world.
“The motive behind this project is very simple and clear: the language, the script and the subject — generally you require knowledge of these three to understand a manuscript, (and) the people who have (that) knowledge are very few. We are developing machine language (models), so that you can use software or an app to read the manuscripts,” Sinha said.
He estimated the current accuracy of the models at about 40 percent, as the machine learning process continues.
“Our plan is to take it to 90 percent to 95 percent. It will never have 100 percent accuracy,” Sinha said. “It is a machine, it’s not a human. It’s learning what you are teaching it, so you have to give that leeway ... It will be an ongoing process because the machine language (model) keeps improving itself.”
The Vidhvanika project was launched on the 225th anniversary of the birth of James Prinsep, an English scholar and a former secretary of the society who is credited with deciphering the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts of ancient India.
That feat played a crucial role in uncovering the history of the ancient Mauryan Empire that ruled over much of the Indian subcontinent during the 4th century BCE.
Vidhvanika, Sinha believes, may help save other languages that played a role in the region’s history from being forgotten.
“We must make an effort to understand what is in those manuscripts and what our ancestors have left for us,” he said. “Brahmi and Kharosthi are languages of this continent, and we ourselves have forgotten that. If we (are again at risk of losing) some script or some language, then we will require another James Prinsep to decipher it.”
Indian army officer, 3 suspected militants killed in Kashmir fighting
- India says militants were trying to infiltrate from Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir
- India, Pakistan each administer parts of Kashmir but claim territory in entirety
SRINAGAR, India: Three suspected militants and an army officer have been killed in two separate gunbattles in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the Indian army said Saturday.
Army soldiers laid a cordon in a forested area in southern Kishtwar district on Wednesday following a tip that a group of insurgents was operating there, an army statement said.
A search in the area by soldiers led to a firefight with militants, initially leaving one militant dead late Wednesday, the statement said.
It added that despite inclement weather, troops maintained their cordon in the area, triggering more exchanges of gunfire that resulted in the killing of two more militants on Saturday.
The army did not report any casualties on its side.
However, in another incident, the Indian army said its soldiers in southern Akhnoor area intercepted a group of militants close to the heavily militarized Line of Control dividing the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan late Friday.
Fighting ensued during which one army officer was killed, it said.
The statement said militants were trying to infiltrate into the Indian side from Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir.
There was no independent confirmation of either of the incidents.
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.
Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989.
Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored “terrorism.”
Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
The territory has simmered in anger since 2019 when New Delhi ended the region’s semi-autonomy and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms while intensifying counterinsurgency operations.
Bomb strikes near the Athens offices of the Greek railway company. No injuries reported
- The explosion comes amid widespread public anger over a 2023 railway disaster, Greece’s worst, in which 57 people were killed
ATHENS: A bomb planted near the offices of Hellenic Train, Greece’s main railway company, exploded Friday night in a busy district of central Athens, authorities said. There were no reports of injuries.
The explosion comes amid widespread public anger over a 2023 railway disaster, Greece’s worst, in which 57 people were killed and dozens more injured when a freight train and a passenger train heading in opposite directions were accidentally put on the same track.
Local media said a newspaper and a news website had received an anonymous call shortly before Friday’s blast, with the caller warning that a bomb had been planted outside the railway company offices and would explode within about 40 minutes.
In a statement, Hellenic Train said the explosion had occurred “very close to its central offices” and said the blast had caused limited damage and no injuries to any employees or passers-by.
It said authorities had acted immediately upon receiving information about the warning call, and that the company was cooperating fully with authorities and ensuring the safety of its staff.
Police cordoned off the site along a major avenue in the Greek capital, keeping residents and tourists away from the building in an area with several bars and restaurants. Officers at the scene said a bag containing an explosive device had been placed near the Hellenic Train building on Syngrou Avenue.
Police forensics experts wearing white coveralls were collecting evidence at the scene.
Criticism over the government’s handling of the Feb. 28, 2023 collision at Tempe in northern Greece has mounted over the last few weeks in the wake of the second anniversary of the disaster, which killed mostly young people who had been returning to university classes after a public holiday.
The crash exposed severe deficiencies in Greece’s railway system, including in safety systems, and has triggered mass protests — led by relatives of the victims — against the country’s conservative government. Critics accused authorities of failing to take political responsibility for the disaster or holding senior officials accountable.
So far, only rail officials have been charged with any crimes. Several protests in recent weeks have turned violent, with demonstrators clashing with police.
Earlier Friday, a heated debate in Parliament on the rail crash led to lawmakers voting to refer a former Cabinet minister to judicial authorities to be investigated over alleged violation of duty over his handling of the immediate aftermath of the accident.
Hellenic Train said it “unreservedly condemns every form of violence and tension which are triggering a climate of toxicity that is undermining all progress.”
Greece has a long history of politically-motivated violence dating back to the 1970s, with domestic extremist groups carrying out small-scale bombings which usually cause damage but rarely lead to injuries.
While the groups most active in the 1980s and 1990s have been dismantled, new small groups have emerged. Last year, a man believed to have been trying to assemble a bomb was killed when the explosive device he was making exploded in a central Athens apartment. A woman inside the apartment was severely injured. The blast had prompted Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis to warn of an emerging new generation of domestic extremists.
