UK police hunt suspects after anti-migrant protests turn violent

UK police hunt suspects after anti-migrant protests turn violent
Police promised Friday to track down suspects behind violence at a protest outside a southeast England hotel believed to house asylum seekers, after officers and vehicles were attacked. (X/@OneSixTwoThree1)
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Updated 18 July 2025
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UK police hunt suspects after anti-migrant protests turn violent

UK police hunt suspects after anti-migrant protests turn violent
  • Eight police officers were injured and three vehicles were damaged, Essex police said
  • Essex police on Friday insisted officers would “continue to support those communities that want to peacefully protest“

EPPING, UK: Police promised Friday to track down suspects behind violence at a protest outside a southeast England hotel believed to house asylum seekers, after officers and vehicles were attacked.

The violence followed several demonstrations in recent days in the town of Epping which flared after police charged an asylum seeker with sex offenses.

Eight police officers were injured and three vehicles were damaged, Essex police said.

The unrest, which police blamed on people from “outside of our community,” comes a year after anti-immigration riots rocked the UK in the wake of the fatal stabbings of three young girls in the northern town of Southport.

Then, rioters targeted hotels housing asylum seekers in several different English cities, infamously attempting to set fire to one in Rotherham, northeast England.

Essex police on Friday insisted officers would “continue to support those communities that want to peacefully protest” but would not tolerate “acts of violence and vandalism.”

“After last night I’ve got a team of specialist detectives today that are combing through the body-worn video CCTV to identify those who are responsible,” Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper told AFP.

“And what I can say is if you’re one of those individuals you can expect a knock on the door.”

Hooper said the “selfish individuals” behind the violence were mostly “from outside of the area” and had traveled to Epping “intent on causing criminality.”

Right-wing agitators, including far-right activist Tommy Robinson, have been sharing posts and videos about the situation on social media.

Footage of Thursday’s protests showed masked people pelting police vans and jumping on them, as well as clashing with officers.

The disturbances came after police charged 38-year-old asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence.

The charges stem from allegations he tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl as she ate pizza at a restaurant in Epping, just northeast of London, on July 7 and again the following day.

He has pleaded not guilty, and appeared in court for a hearing on Thursday.

An asylum seeker from Ethiopia, he arrived in the UK irregularly after crossing the Channel on a small boat at the end of last month.

In the wake of the incident, local officials have called for the Bell Hotel to no longer house asylum seekers.


Trump doubles reward to $50 million for arrest of Venezuela’s president to face US drug charges

Trump doubles reward to $50 million for arrest of Venezuela’s president to face US drug charges
Updated 08 August 2025
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Trump doubles reward to $50 million for arrest of Venezuela’s president to face US drug charges

Trump doubles reward to $50 million for arrest of Venezuela’s president to face US drug charges
  • Trump accuses Nicolas Maduro of working with drug cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine
  • Maduro was indicted in Manhattan in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies

MIAMI: The Trump administration is doubling to $50 million a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narco-traffickers and working with cartels to flood the US with fentanyl-laced cocaine.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday in a video announcing the reward.

Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the US offered a $15 million reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25 million — the same amount the US offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the US, the European Union and several Latin American governments who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president.

Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in Caracas in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed US oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by US sanctions.

Bondi said the Justice Department has seized more than $700 million in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7 million tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader.

Maduro’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.


Trump defends the US economy with charts after job reports showed warning signs

Trump defends the US economy with charts after job reports showed warning signs
Updated 08 August 2025
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Trump defends the US economy with charts after job reports showed warning signs

Trump defends the US economy with charts after job reports showed warning signs
  • While the stock market has been solid, job growth has turned sluggish and inflationary pressures have risen in the wake of Trump imposing a vast set of new tariffs, which are taxes on imports.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump unexpectedly summoned reporters to the Oval Office on Thursday to present them with charts that he says show the US economy is solid following a jobs report last week that raised red flags and led to the Republican firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Joining Trump to talk about the economy was Stephen Moore, a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the co-author of the 2018 book “Trumponomics.”

Flipping through a series of charts on an easel, Moore sought to elevate Trump’s performance as president and diminish the economic track record of former President Joe Biden. Trump stood next to Moore and interjected with approvals.

The moment in the Oval Office spoke to the president’s hopes to reset the narrative of the US economy. While the stock market has been solid, job growth has turned sluggish and inflationary pressures have risen in the wake of Trump imposing a vast set of new tariffs, which are taxes on imports.

Moore said he phoned Trump because he put together some data that shows he was correct to dismiss Erika McEntarfer as the head of the BLS. He noted that’s because reports from the BLS had overestimated the number of jobs created during the last two years of Biden’s term by 1.5 million.

“I think they did it purposely,” said Trump, who has yet to offer statistical evidence backing his theory. Revisions are a standard component of jobs reports and tend to be larger during periods of economic disruption.

President Donald Trump, right, holds charts as he speaks about the economy with Stephen Moore, of the Heritage Foundation, at the White House on Aug. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP)

The economy has seldom conformed to the whims of any president, often presenting pictures that are far more mixed and nuanced than what can easily be sold to voters. Through the first seven months of this year, employers have added 597,000 jobs, down roughly 44 percent from the gains during the same period in 2024.

The July jobs report showed that just 73,000 jobs were added last month, while the May and June totals were revised downward by 258,000.

While Biden did face downward revisions on his job numbers, the economy added 2 million jobs in 2024 and 2.6 million in 2023.

The fundamental challenge in Biden’s economy was the jolt of inflation as the annual rate of the consumer price index hit a four-decade high in June 2022. That level of inflation left many households feeling as though groceries, gasoline, housing and other essentials were unaffordable, a sentiment that helped to return Trump to the White House in the 2024 election.

There are signs of inflation heating back up under Trump because of his tariffs. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs estimated that the upcoming inflation report for July will show that consumer prices rose 3 percent over the past 12 months, which would be up from a 2.3 percent reading in April.

Trump promised that he could galvanize a boom. And when nonpartisan data has indicated something closer to a muddle, he found an advocate in Moore, whom he nominated to serve as a Federal Reserve governor during his first term. Moore withdrew his name after facing pushback in the Senate.

Moore said that through the first five months of Trump’s second term in office that “the average median household income adjusted for inflation and for the average family in America, is already up $1,174.” Moore said his numbers are based on unpublished Census Bureau data, which can make them difficult to independently verify.

“That’s an incredible number,” Trump said. “If I would have said this, nobody would have believed it.”


Lawsuit accuses Apple of stealing trade secrets to create Apple Pay

Lawsuit accuses Apple of stealing trade secrets to create Apple Pay
Updated 08 August 2025
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Lawsuit accuses Apple of stealing trade secrets to create Apple Pay

Lawsuit accuses Apple of stealing trade secrets to create Apple Pay
  • Lawsuit filed by Fintiv says Apple Pay’s key features were based on technology developed by CorFire, which Fintiv bought in 2014
  • It said Apple stole the technology by luring away CorFire employees, abandoning licensing talks with the Texas-based Fintiv company

Apple has been sued by a Texas company that accused the iPhone maker of stealing its technology to create its lucrative mobile wallet Apple Pay.

In a complaint made public on Thursday, Fintiv said Apple Pay’s key features were based on technology developed by CorFire, which Fintiv bought in 2014, and now used in hundreds of millions of iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and MacBooks.

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fintiv, based in Austin, Texas, said Apple held multiple meetings in 2011 and 2012 and entered nondisclosure agreements with CorFire aimed at licensing its mobile wallet technology, to capitalize on fast-growing demand for contactless payments.

Instead, and with the help of CorFire employees it lured away, Apple used the technology and trade secrets to launch Apple Pay in the United States and dozens of other countries, beginning in 2014, the complaint said.

Fintiv also said Apple has led an informal racketeering enterprise by using Apple Pay to generate fees for credit card issuers such as Bank of America, Capital One, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, and the payment networks American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

“This is a case of corporate theft and racketeering of monumental proportions,” enabling Cupertino, California-based Apple to generate billions of dollars of revenue without paying Fintiv “a single penny,” the complaint said.

In a statement, Fintiv’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz called Apple’s conduct “one of the most egregious examples of corporate malfeasance” he has seen in 45 years of law practice.

The lawsuit in Atlanta federal court seeks compensatory and punitive damages for violations of federal and Georgia trade secrets and anti-racketeering laws, including RICO.

Apple is the only defendant. CorFire was based in Alpharetta, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb.

On August 4, a federal judge in Austin dismissed Fintiv’s related patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, four days after rejecting some of Fintiv’s claims, court records show.

Fintiv agreed to the dismissal, and plans to “appeal on the existing record,” the records show.

The case is Fintiv Inc. v Apple Inc, US District Court, Northern District of Georgia, No. 25-04413.

 

 


Kosovo ex-guerrillas rally against war crimes court

Kosovo ex-guerrillas rally against war crimes court
Updated 07 August 2025
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Kosovo ex-guerrillas rally against war crimes court

Kosovo ex-guerrillas rally against war crimes court
  • Hysni Gucati: ‘The court has deviated from its mission and is distorting history’
  • Special court was set up in The Hague due to the difficulty in securing witnesses for trials against prominent KLA leaders at home

PRISTINA: Thousands of Kosovo war veterans staged a protest rally Thursday against a war crimes court in The Hague that they accused of “distorting history” over its prosecution of former guerilla leaders.

Chanting the Kosovo Liberation Army name and waving flags bearing the symbols of ethnic Albanian guerrillas, protesters filled a central square in Pristina and streets around the government headquarters.

“The special court is biased, anti-KLA and anti-Kosovo,” Hysni Gucati, head of the veterans organization, told the crowd.

“The court has deviated from its mission and is distorting history,” he said.

Several ex-military figures, including former Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, are being prosecuted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during and after the 1998-1999 Kosovo war between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian forces.

The conflict, which ended after a NATO air campaign ousted Serbian military and police from the territory, left around 13,000 people dead, mostly ethnic Albanian civilians.

Kosovo courts have prosecuted war crimes by Albanians and Serbs in the past, but the special court was set up in The Hague due to the difficulty in securing witnesses for trials against prominent KLA leaders at home.

A court in Pristina is preparing to try dozens of Serb police and military officers for one of the worst massacres of the war, in which 370 civilians were killed.

Opponents of the special court decry the use of evidence supplied by Serbian authorities however.

The tribunal, staffed by international judges, has pursued several KLA members since 2023. Apart from Thaci, other senior figures being prosecuted include former intelligence chief, Kadri Veseli, a regional commander Rexhep Selimi and KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi.

All are considered KLA founders and enjoy great popularity within the ranks of the former guerrillas, but are accused of war crimes.

“Our history is being rewritten by the court,” said Gazmend Syla, vice president of the War Veterans Organization. “This shakes the foundations of our state.”

Serbia has never recognized Kosovo’s independence, and talks to normalize relations between the neighbors have all but collapsed.


US establishing migrant detention center at base near border

US establishing migrant detention center at base near border
Updated 07 August 2025
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US establishing migrant detention center at base near border

US establishing migrant detention center at base near border
  • President Donald Trump has made combating illegal migration a central part of his second term
  • “Beginning mid-July, we have begun working on establishing a detention center at Fort Bliss,” Wilson said

WASHINGTON: The United States is setting up a migrant detention facility at the Fort Bliss military base near the Mexico border with an eventual capacity of up to 5,000 people, the Pentagon said Thursday.

President Donald Trump has made combating illegal migration a central part of his second term, and declared an emergency at the southern US border on his first day back in office.

“Beginning mid-July, we have begun working on establishing a detention center at Fort Bliss. Since then, work has begun for initial detainment capacity of 1,000 illegal aliens, with initial operating capacity likely to be achieved by mid-late August,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told journalists.

“We will finish construction for up to 5,000 beds in the weeks and months ahead,” she added.

It will not be the first time a US base has been used to hold migrants during Trump’s presidency:

he ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” at the notorious Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba earlier this year, though it has not held anywhere close to that number of people.

The Trump administration’s efforts to curb undocumented immigration have also included immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.