TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A court in Belarus has convicted a journalist and sentenced him to 3 1/2 years in prison in the latest step against free speech in the country, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reported Thursday.

Kiryl Pazniak, 49, who hosted a popular political show on YouTube, has been convicted on the charges of discrediting Belarus and forming an extremist organization, the group said — accusations widely used by authorities to stifle critical voices. Pazniak has also been ordered to pay a fine, roughly equivalent to $8,500.

Pazniak was arrested in September 2025. His ex-wife Elena said he has fallen seriously ill behind bars, suffering from pneumonia and COVID-19, and was placed in a prison hospital in serious condition.

He has been designated a political prisoner by human rights defenders.

Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has governed the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades. The country has been sanctioned repeatedly by Western nations — both for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb. 24, 2022.

Lukashenko’s government was challenged after a 2020 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest a vote they viewed as rigged. In an ensuing crackdown, tens of thousands were detained, with many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures fled the country or were imprisoned.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Lukashenko has released hundreds of political prisoners as part of American-brokered deals that lifted some U.S. sanctions, part of the isolated leader’s efforts to improve ties with the West.

Human rights groups say, however, that Belarusian authorities have continued their crackdown on dissent. Belarus still has 863 political prisoners, according to the Viasna human rights center.

“Pazniak nearly died behind bars, but was convicted and is forced to continue suffering simply for fulfilling his professional duty,” said Andrei Bastunets, leader of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. “Repressions against journalists in Belarus are not abating, and the situation with freedom of speech remains the worst in Europe.”

“While it can be difficult to pinpoint those responsible for DDoS attacks, editors and journalists at the outlets targeted in the recent wave told CPJ they believed Belarusian authorities might have sought to squash reporting on particular political topics, including events linked to Belarus’ exiled opposition,” CPJ said in an online statement.

NEW YORK (AP) — Jaelyn Chester will wait your tables or stock your shelves. She’ll wash your dishes or scrub your toilets. If only someone would give the 17-year-old a chance.

“I’ve been looking everywhere,” says Chester, an A+ student, high school basketball star and aspiring engineer who has blanketed her community with dozens of applications. “I’m not unemployed because I’m incompetent. I’m unemployed because nobody’s hiring.”

The summer job, a rite-of-passage for generations of American teenagers, isn’t so easy to come by.

About one-third of 16- to 19-year-olds in the U.S. were employed last summer, federal data show, down from a peak of about 60% in the late 1970s. Experts’ pessimistic forecasts are combining with reports from frustrated jobless young people around the country to form a seasonal outlook far from bathed in sunshine.

“The opportunities for workers at the start of the career ladder started to dry up,” says Nicole Bachaud, an economist for ZipRecruiter, saying teens are among the labor market’s “most marginalized groups.”

Without a job, Chester worries her summer will be ruined. She wonders how she’ll fill her tank with gas and what she’ll do if she wants to go to a concert. A trip to look at colleges in North Carolina with some friends would be destined to be canceled. So her hunt continues.

Chester keeps copies of her resume in her car and has a 30-second spiel memorized when she decides to pop into a restaurant or store and try to talk with a manager. She and her friends help ready one another when they set out on their job hunt, trading tips and professional-looking clothes from their closets. Positions that once sounded awful to her, like dishwashing, no longer seem so.

“At this point,” says the teen from Lake Mary, Florida, “it would be hard to say no to anything.”

Analyzing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas found the number of jobs secured by teens fell 25% last summer from the year prior. The firm says inflation, oil prices and cautious hiring are likely to lead to even fewer jobs this year, resulting in the lowest summer hiring total for teens since the federal government began tracking it in 1948.

Teens most commonly work in food preparation and serving jobs and sales, according to BLS data. But Jaune Little, director of recruiting services at the human resources company Insperity, says some entry-level jobs have been eliminated and teens now compete with more experienced candidates for the remaining ones.

Matt Sedensky can be reached at [email protected] and https://x.com/sedensky

13 is Taylor’s lucky number – and it’s been rumoured she’ll be having 13 bridesmaids.

“The bridesmaids are likely to be Lena Dunham. Taylor was a bridesmaid at her wedding in 2021, so she’s likely to return the favour,” biographer Anna Pointer tells us.

“Selena Gomez I think is a shoo-in for bridesmaid. They’re inseparable really. The Haim sisters, – Esther, Danielle, and Alana have all been mentioned as possible bridesmaids, as have Emma Stone and Gigi Hadid.

“And then the cutest I’m sure will be Jason and Kylie Kelce’s daughters. Taylor and Travis are both really close to their nieces. There are four of them, Wyatt, Elliott, Bennett, and Finley and they’re all super cute, and they’ll be the scene stealers.

“And then Taylor’s best friends from high school days. There’s Abigail Anderson. Taylor was a bridesmaid at her wedding and another of her best friends, Ashley Avignone is likely to be there as well. That takes you to the magic number 13.”

Hello and welcome to coverage from Wimbledon as Arthur Fery plays Finnish qualifier Otto Virtanen.

Frey earned his place in the second round after beating Bosnian opponent Damir Dzumhur ‌3-6, 6-2, ​6-2, 6-1. The match ⁠was overshadowed by Fery being called dishonest by Dzumhur.

But Fery, one of 12 British wildcards, kept his cool and even used earplugs while Dzumhur complained to the umpire. 

“It was expected, to be honest,” said Fery, who is through to the second round for a second straight year. “He does that with everyone. I guess I was just ready for it before the match. If it’s a let, it’s a let for everyone, right, it’s not just a let for him. Whether the point carries on or not, it’s the same for both of us.

“He obviously wants to make a problem with the umpire and then is trying to speak to me about it. But there is nothing to really speak about. Just trying to get the other player involved for no reason.”

Fery is now on the verge of breaking into the top 100 after also reaching the quarter-finals at Queen’s Club earlier this month.

The British No 3 is the higher-ranked player but Virtanen has also shone on grass this summer and knocked out fourth seed Ben Shelton in the biggest upset of the tournament so far.

“It’s a surprise, definitely,” said Fery. “But it’s an opportunity. He’s obviously a great grass-court player.”

Fery grew up five minutes from Wimbledon and would often visit the tournament as a child. He is the heir to an estimated £275m fortune thanks to his father, Loïc Fery, a hedge fund manager and president of Brittany-based Ligue 1 club FC Lorient.

Did a major epidemic of plague trigger a prolonged collapse in Europe’s population in late neolithic times – from around 5,600 to 4,000 years ago?

In Europe, the neolithic is part of the stone age, spanning the time from the introduction of agriculture by migrant groups from Anatolia, up until the bronze age.

Scientists now know that prehistoric plague infected neolithic farmers in Europe.

What hasn’t been clear until now is whether these early strains of the plague bacterium were even deadly. New evidence shows that they were, but other factors still don’t line up to support the evidence for a late neolithic epidemic.

Plague DNA found in human remains from over 4,000 years ago is genetically quite different to the plague strains which caused the Black Death in Europe. Prehistoric plague strains lack a gene that allows the bacteria to effectively hijack fleas, turning them into bubonic plague delivery systems.

They also have ancestral forms of other genes that are known to be important in promoting virulence. Detections of prehistoric plague cases were also quite scattered across archaeological contexts, without evidence of mass mortality accompanying outbreaks – until very recently.

All this has meant that researchers have hotly debated whether these infections caused by the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis would have been a death sentence in prehistory, or something more like a stomach bug that only occasionally causes severe complications, like plague’s ancestor, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.

Nonetheless, the detection of many cases of plague in Europe at around the same time as a major inferred population slump – the late neolithic demographic decline – has led some to implicate these plague outbreaks as the cause of around 500 years of prolonged population decline.

New results published in Nature show extensive plague outbreaks among prehistoric hunter-gatherers 5,000km east of Europe, at Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. The findings clearly show that early plague strains could indeed cause mass death.

Baffling deaths

The two outbreaks at Lake Baikal took place around 5,500 years ago and 5,000 years ago. The largest of the hunter-gatherer cemeteries analysed in the study, called Ust’Ida I, had previously baffled archaeologists.

Radiocarbon dating showed that the deaths occurred at the same time and that there was an unusually high proportion of dead children and adolescents. However there was no clear indication of a cause (such as mass violence).

Scientists retrieved plague DNA from the skeletons and carried out genetic analysis of the individuals buried in the cemeteries. The latter analysis revealed that small family groups were affected, which is indicative of human-to-human transmission of the disease.

The genetic findings emphasise the human impact of these outbreaks: young siblings died of plague infection and were buried in shared graves, with parents buried close to their children.

As far as we know, these hunter-gatherers were isolated from contemporary neolithic cultures in Asia, and certainly had no means of contact with late neolithic farmers in Europe. One interpretation, given in that study, is therefore that plague independently spilled over from wild animal “disease reservoirs” in both Europe and at Lake Baikal. Catching the disease from a wild animal still happens very frequently today (both in parts of Asia and in the US.

Discovering that the first evidence of deadly mass outbreaks of prehistoric plague comes from isolated hunter-gatherer communities is important because it challenges our assumptions about disease in the past. For one thing, it shows that plague infections by themselves were not a unique factor in the late neolithic decline. For an epidemic to have happened, other factors would have to be involved. People travelling around more would have spread the disease, and higher population densities would have maintained it in populations.

Yet while population densities were certainly higher in the neolithic, we know that overall mobility actually fell among neolithic farmers compared with the hunter-gatherer populations that preceded them, at an individual level (based on ancient genome data). It’s also puzzling that we don’t have similar evidence of mass mortality from plague in Europe yet, despite vastly more sampling for ancient DNA having been undertaken here than in Asia.

A drop in density?

The most obvious hole in the evidence for a late neolithic plague epidemic is that the dates of the plague cases detected so far don’t match the timing of the late neolithic decline. Based on thousands of radiocarbon dates, the modelled population density in the late neolithic follows a boom-then-bust trajectory in north west Europe, with a peak around 5,600 years ago, followed by a series of sharp declines.

If plague were the cause of this, then we would expect to find the most cases soon after 5,600 years ago, when population collapse is at its most dramatic. Instead, we still only have evidence of plague cases from around 400 years after this date.

Before plague was proposed, the main explanation for the late neolithic population decline across Europe was that it resulted from a decline in agricultural production associated with climatic deterioration. Researchers analysed data on the distribution of cereals and weeds across north west Europe during a period of boom and bust following the arrival of farming. They found a correlation between population decline and decreasing cereal production.

For different parts of the British Isles, the same pattern emerged in more detail, and its beginning coincided with a shift to cooler, wetter conditions. The fact that there has been no evidence of plague in Britain and Ireland at this time seems like further evidence against plague as an explanation.

However, a very recently discovered case of plague from Orkney, in Scotland, dated to between 4,961-4,833 years ago, might change that.

The population decline from 5,600 years ago is also not the only one archaeologists have found – earlier instances from central and south east Europe suggest that these could have been part of a more cyclical pattern of boom and bust across the neolithic.

Finally, another explanation for the late neolithic decline could also be that we’re interpreting the data for this incorrectly. A possibility, suggested by archaeologist Amy Bogaard, is that it could be evidence of prolonged population dispersal, rather than an absolute decline in numbers: people being forced to move elsewhere, into lower population densities, due to too much strain on resources.

There are also many other reasons why we should be cautious about inferring demographic processes based on substantial datasets of radiocarbon dates.

Right now, we think that a lot more evidence is still needed to support the idea that a plague epidemic lies behind a late neolithic decline in population, or population density.

It will mean that up to 1.5 million more children will be able to use eGates, therefore speeding up journeys for them and their families.

The change will help families returning from their holidays with young children.

Here is all you need to know and when the change takes effect.

eGates are used at airports across the UK and Europe for border control (Image: Getty Images)

eGate rules to change for children next week

Children aged eight and nine, who are at least 120cm (3ft 11in) tall and accompanied by an adult, will become eligible to use eGates in the UK.

Under current rules, children need to be 10 to use the eGates, and before 2023, it was 12 years old.

Height restrictions are due to children needing to be able to see and be captured by biometric screens.

The change will speed up the process for children and their families, as they typically have to see a border force officer.

Based on 2025 UK arrival figures, an estimated 1.5 million more children will be eligible to pass through eGates with their families over the next year as a result of the age change.

The expanded access is set to begin from next Wednesday (July 8).

Minister for Migration and Citizenship, Mike Tapp, said: “Travel with young children can be stressful for parents.    

“By expanding eGate access, more families can experience a swifter and smoother journey home – freeing up precious time this summer holiday season. 

“We are delivering continued improvement to the passenger experience, while keeping our borders safe and secure.”

The 13 UK airports that will have updated eGate rules

There are 13 airports that use eGates across the UK that will see the updated rules come into effect.

These are:

• London Heathrow
• London Gatwick
• London City
• London Luton
• London Stansted
• Manchester
• Birmingham
• Bristol
• East Midlands
• Newcastle
• Cardiff
• Edinburgh
• Glasgow

It will cover more than 290 eGates in the UK and accompanying ports where border checks take place in Europe.

There are also 48 EU airports that are allowing British holidaymakers to use eGates.

These include places in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal.

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The rules will also impact other travel methods such as Eurostar and the Eurotunnel.

People travelling from non-Schengen countries in Europe, along with the US, Australia and Japan, can also use the eGates.

What do you think about the new eGate change? Let us know in the comments.

The incident took place in the Donegall Quay area on Wednesday

A man has been arrested as police seized suspected drugs worth £225,000 after two police vehicles were involved in a collision as they stopped a vehicle in Belfast.

Officers from the PSNI’s Paramilitary Crime Task Force made the arrest on Wednesday, July 1, after they signalled for a vehicle to stop in the Donegall Quay area. The vehicle attempted to make off from officers and collided with two police vehicles.

Police say they then recovered a “large quantity of suspected Class A controlled drugs” from the vehicle with follow-up searches in the Newtownabbey and Mallusk areas uncovered further drugs.

Detective Inspector Maguire said: “While conducting a proactive policing operation yesterday in the Donegall Quay area in relation to the supply of Class A controlled drugs, officers signalled for a vehicle to stop. It failed to do so, attempting to make off instead, which resulted in a collision with two police vehicles.

“Thankfully, there were no reports of any injuries and a subsequent search of the vehicle uncovered a large quantity of suspected Class A controlled drugs, which were then seized.

“The driver, a man in his thirties, was arrested on suspicion of possession of a Class A controlled drug, possession of a Class A controlled drug with intent to supply, providing money or property for the purposes of terrorism, failing to stop for police and driving without due care and attention.

“He remains in police custody at this time.

“Follow-up searches conducted in the Newtownabbey and Mallusk areas resulted in further suspected drugs being seized, along with a number of vehicles, with the total estimated street value of all drugs seized as a result of the searches £225,000.

“These searches and the arrest demonstrate the PCTF’s commitment to tackling the harm caused by illegal drug use and supply in our communities.

“Our enquiries are ongoing and I would encourage anyone with information about the supply or use of illegal drugs to contact police on the 101 number.

“You can also report to police online, via www.psni.police.uk/report or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or online at http://crimestoppers-uk.org/. ”

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

The Prime Minister was asked whether he backed the England manager’s call for children to stay up for the Mexico game

Parents should ‘make their own decision’ as to whether schoolchildren should stay up to watch England’s 1am World Cup match on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson was asked whether Sir Keir backed England manager Thomas Tuchel’s call for children to stay up late and watch the match. The game against Mexico kicks off at 1am on Monday morning.

“We want everyone to enjoy the game but kids should be in school on Monday,” the Prime Minister’s spokeswoman said. Sir Keir will face the ‘same dilemma’ as other England fans over whether to stay up, she said.

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“The PM has his usual packed schedule on Monday, so he’ll be facing the same dilemma as everyone else on whether to stay up. Win or lose, I think millions of England supporters will be at work on Monday, and the PM will be doing the same.”

Skills minister Baroness Jacqui Smith earlier said she planned to take a ‘disco nap’ on Sunday afternoon and then stay up late to watch the match. Schools and employers have often allowed England games in the latter stages of major tournaments to be shown during working hours, but Monday’s early-morning kick-off poses a unique obstacle.

“Write an excuse for school and let them watch football,” Tuchel pleaded after Harry Kane’s two late goals saw England squeeze through the round of 32. “Come on.

“There’s so much school to go to, but the World Cup is every four years. Let them watch. There will be a big, big match on in four days and we need the support of everyone, and especially of the children.”

What do you think? Have your say:

Cambridgeshire Police were called to the A14 eastbound between J20 and J21, near Huntingdon, just before 10am today (Thursday, July 2). The crash involved “at least three vehicles”, a police spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that a woman was injured, but the detail of the woman’s injuries were unknown. Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue also attended the scene at around 10.30am.

National Highways reports there are around 60 minutes of delays along the road and around three miles of congestion. Traffic monitor site Inrix also reports there are “long delays” along the road.

CambridgeshireLive awaits further comment from the East of England Ambulance Service. More as we have it.

Astronomers have revealed new details about the make-up and age of a visiting comet that was born around a distant star. They conclude that the composition of 3I/Atlas is strikingly different from any object found in our solar system.

A trio of recently published studies shed light on the origins of this exotic comet. 3I/Atlas appears to have been born in a cold environment, possibly around 12 billion years ago.

The comet is an interstellar object (ISO), meaning an asteroid or comet that originated outside the solar system. It is the third such object found, after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. It was discovered almost exactly one year ago, travelling inbound on a trajectory that has taken it through the inner solar system and out the other side.

These distant origins make ISOs incredibly interesting to astronomers because they are physical pieces of other planetary systems, delivered to us on galactic tides so that they can be studied from the comfort of our own solar system.

As a comet, 3I/Atlas contained frozen ices that “sublimated” – turned directly from a solid to a gas. These escaped (outgassed) from the comet as it was heated by the Sun, creating a visually spectacular coma (bright atmosphere surrounding the object) and tail.

A comet has no internal light source of its own, instead dust in its coma reflects sunlight and its volatiles (chemicals that readily vaporise or sublimate) display fluorescence.

But this is no mere light show: each fluorescing molecule leaves a spectral fingerprint on the light reaching our telescopes. These fingerprints allow us to identify the chemicals contained within the comet.

They are revealed by splitting the light into its constituent wavelengths with a technique called spectroscopy, allowing astronomers to deduce the comet’s chemical composition.

Unique chemical cocktail

This revealed in 3I/Atlas a cocktail of water, carbon dioxide and monoxide, methane, cyanides, sulphides, and even free-floating iron and nickel atoms. These ingredients are actually quite expected, as each of them are regularly detected in our own domestic solar system comets. However, their relative abundances are different in 3I/Atlas: high levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and low levels of ammonia (NH₃) mark it as an outsider.

Additionally, molecules made up from atoms with different isotopes (distinct forms of the same chemical element) also have subtly different spectral signatures. With a bright comet such as 3I/Atlas, and with our largest and most sensitive telescopes, these signatures can be distinguished, allowing astronomers measure the comet’s isotope ratios.

One of the new studies, published in Nature, uses the spectral signatures of water and carbon dioxide measured with the James Webb Space Telescope to calculate 3I/Atlas’s ratio of two different isotopes of carbon, ¹²C and ¹³C, and its ratio of deuterium (a heavy form of hydrogen) to standard hydrogen – known as the D/H ratio.

These are very exciting results, because the isotope ratios present in an ISO such as 3I/Atlas should match the ratios in the protoplanetary disk in which it formed. This allows us to make detailed inferences about the conditions 3I/Atlas formed in and the star it must have formed around.

3I/Atlas’s water was found to have a D/H ratio of around 1%, significantly higher than all observed solar system comets. These high levels of deuterium are only found in very cold environments, with temperatures of less than 30 Kelvin (-243°C).

In these conditions, normal hydrogen atoms get replaced by heavier deuterium atoms in the water ice that coats tiny dust grains. Over time, these icy dust grains stick together to form comets.

Ancient traveller

3I/Atlas’ ¹²C/¹³C ratio was equally extreme, far above all solar system values. The ratio of these isotopes function like a cosmic clock. In the beginning, the first generation of stars produced carbon with a high ratio of ¹²C/¹³C, but subsequent cycles of star formation and death have lowered it. For 3I/Atlas to have formed with such a high value of ¹²C/¹³C, it must have formed in the very early history of the Milky Way, around 12 billion years ago.

Studies from shortly after its discovery suggested 3I/Atlas was likely to be at least 7 billion years old based on its velocity, meaning the ancient status of 3I/Atlas is now supported by multiple independent lines of evidence.

Though the night sky beyond the limits of our solar system can feel static and unchanging, both the universe and our galaxy do evolve on billion-year timescales.

When 3I/Atlas formed, the universe was just a fraction of its present age, and the Milky Way in which it formed was still in the process of assembling itself through violent collisions and mergers with other galaxies.

If the star that 3I/Atlas formed around was the same mass as our Sun, it is likely to have already reached the end of its life, outlived by the ISOs it released shortly after its birth.

Over the next ten years, cutting-edge discovery telescopes such as Nasa’s NEO Surveyor and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will increase the number of known ISOs by an order of magnitude. This will provide astronomers with a fossil record of the evolution of planetary systems across galactic history.