“The new law will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns,” he told reporters on Friday, but did not provide any specifics for the envisaged legislation, including whether it will tighten gun ownership requirements

International News via Reuters:

Within hours of a shooting rampage on the outskirts of Bangkok that left at least eight dead, Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on Friday vowed to introduce a new firearms control law in Southeast Asia’s largest gun-owning nation.

Anutin, who previously tightened gun laws when he was interior minister, will now propose a law to restrict the carrying of firearms by the public.

“The new law will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns,” he told reporters on Friday, but did not provide any specifics for the envisaged legislation, including whether it will tighten gun ownership requirements.  

HIGH GUN OWNERSHIP

Under Thai rules, there are separate licenses issued for owning and carrying firearms.

In Friday’s incident, a Thai teenager fatally shot his grandparents before killing at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok.

Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms in civilian possession, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents — the highest rate in the region by a wide margin, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

Of these, a little more than 6 million were registered firearms, with another 4 million comprising unregistered weapons, the Geneva-based group estimated.

Mass-shootings have also regularly occurred in Thailand, including incidents at schools, a major Bangkok mall and a 2022 killing spree in the country’s northeast that killed 36 people including 22 children.

LACK OF STRICT REGULATIONS, EXPERT SAYS

In the wake of an October 2023 shooting at a Bangkok mall, Anutin — then serving as interior minister — ordered a raft of gun control measures, including a short-term ban on new licenses, import restrictions, and the banning of people under 20 years old from shooting ranges. 

Longer-term measures proposed included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners as well as a specified validity period for some gun licenses.

Thailand’s current licensing regime still lacks mental health screening for people applying to possess a gun, allows people as young as 20 to hold weapons and does not require periodic reassessments for licence holders, said Piyaporn Tunneekul, an associate professor at Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University.

“We only look at things like: Do you have money? Do you have a necessary reason to protect your property? Do you want it for self-defence? But in other countries, authorities say those are not good reasons,” she told Reuters.

“We need intervention, a process like other countries have. There are red-flag laws abroad,” Piyaporn said, referring to legal provisions that allow for the removal of a firearm from the environment of a person deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.

“So these events repeat, but the state does nothing.”

Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Hugh Lawson

France’s chief prison inspector, Dominique Simonnot, said her office was inundated with complaints from detainees when a severe heatwave hit in June, so many that her independent public office had to take on an extra employee

International News via Reuters:

On a day when temperatures were soaring past 37 degrees Celsius outside, the prisoner sat in his cell with wet towels around his window bars, trying to explain to the visiting politician how it felt to be locked up in France during a heatwave.

Most days, 29-year-old Manu stayed on his bed, trying to move as little as possible. “You have to deal with it mentally,” he said in one of France’s newer jails — Orleans-Saran opened in 2014.

Reuters accompanied that July visit and spoke to more than 40 people in France, Italy and Belgium — inmates, activists, prison directors, doctors, union reps — many of whom described a crisis in jails where this summer’s heatwaves have exposed underlying problems with overcrowding and ageing facilities.

FRANCE MUST ‘FIGHT AGAINST PRISON OVERCROWDING’

France’s chief prison inspector, Dominique Simonnot, said her office was inundated with complaints from detainees when a severe heatwave hit in June, so many that her independent public office had to take on an extra employee. 

“Imagine — we are suffocating in our flats, and they are three to four people in one nine-metre-square cell, in a building that is not adapted, not air conditioned, old and where the heat is overwhelming.”

South of Orleans, in Limoges, another prisoner told his lawyer and his mother he had passed out from the heat, fallen and gashed his head as he got up to go to the toilet in the early hours of July 8 in the city’s prison. 

A representative of the prison officers’ union gave Reuters a different account, also linked to the heat, saying the inmate — who asked not to be named — had slipped while climbing up to get some fresh air at a window. Reuters did not speak to the prisoner and could not independently confirm either account.

His lawyer, Charly Salkazanov, said he had asked the prison to send the man’s medical file to get more details. “This kind of thing will happen repeatedly until the authorities wake up,” he added.

The Bordeaux regional prison service, responsible for Limoges prison, did not comment on the case. It said the institution had put in measures to deal with the heatwave, including increased access to showers and water and letting inmates buy fans and sun cream. 

The French justice ministry said it had offered inmates across the country extra showers and sun cream supplies, and increased access to water. 

“In the long and medium term we need to simply try and fight against prison overcrowding (which) accentuates the difficulties of the heatwave,” French justice ministry spokesperson Sacha Straub-Kahn said in late June.

ITALIAN ACTIVISTS STAGE MASS PRISON VISIT

Overall, French prisons had an average occupancy rate of 141.3% as of July 1, according to government figures. Italy had a rate of 139.7% in late July, prison rights group Antigone said, and Belgium of 121% in August, according to the country’s Conseil Central de Surveillance Pénitentiaire.

On July 14, an Italian coalition of prison rights activists organised simultaneous visits in 34 prisons across the country to raise awareness about what they described as inhumane conditions. 

“It’s absurd that there are no refrigerators in cells, it’s absurd that there aren’t fans everywhere, it’s absurd, for example, that inmates have to spend 20 hours (a day) in their cells,” Antigone head Patrizio Gonnella said outside Rome’s Regina Coeli prison.

Italy’s justice ministry has allocated €800,000 ($923,280) for prisons to buy fans and refrigerators for the summer and pledged to add an extra 10,000 prison spaces by the end of the year — but none have been created so far, ministry data shows.

In another bid to ease overcrowding, the Italian parliament passed a law in July allowing thousands of prisoners with drug or alcohol addictions to serve sentences at home while undergoing rehab programmes.

In the southern city of Cosenza, the government agreed in June to remove perspex screens from prison windows, which had been introduced to stop the delivery of banned items such as mobile phones via drones, but which seriously limited ventilation.

TENSIONS RISE WITH HEAT IN PRISONS

Belgium’s justice minister Annelies Verlinden said in July the government had offered prisoners more water and showers. In an email sent to prison directors on July 8, Belgium’s prison administration said heatwave measures should continue into September.

The directors of two of Belgium’s oldest prisons, in Ghent and Merksplas, said that heatwaves have led to a rise in tensions, with more fights among inmates and confrontations with staff.

In Ghent, director Pieter Van Caeneghem said the facility was housing 447 inmates despite a capacity of just 260.

“All the problems linked to overcrowding are twice or ten times more difficult when there is a heatwave,” he said.     

In Merksplas, director Serge Rooman said he had started overriding security protocols three years ago during heatwaves by leaving cell windows open at night and opening the doors of the prison to create airflow. Since then, those changes had been incorporated into official guidance.

“The fundamental problems are the buildings,” he said, pointing to single-glazed windows and a lack of ventilation.

“Nobody wins votes by saying they are going to build or renovate prisons because it’s too hot in the summer,” he added. “But in Belgium, the punishment is the deprivation of liberty — not exposure to inhuman conditions.”

($1 = 0.8665 euros)

Reporting by Layli Foroudi, Alvise Armellini and Amina Ismail; Editing by Andrew Heavens

A parliamentary panel warned last year that France’s existing fleet of aerial firefighters faced a “major crisis” and called for European alternatives to the rugged water-scooping Canadairs, which have dominated the market for decades

International News via Reuters:

Deep inside the carcass of a disused turboprop aircraft, engineer Jonathan Beck squeezes between rows of tanks as he demonstrates how his French startup plans to challenge ageing Canadair water-bombers in combatting European wildfires.

From the birthplace of Concorde to the laptops of a retired general in southern France or an architect in Belgium, designs for new or converted water-bombers have gained momentum after nearly 500,000 hectares burned across Europe this year.

A parliamentary panel warned last year that France’s existing fleet of aerial firefighters faced a “major crisis” and called for European alternatives to the rugged water-scooping Canadairs, which have dominated the market for decades.

At first glance, the task looks daunting. A water-scooper is partly a seaplane, the art of which has eroded over the years.

“We will have eight tons of water inside this aircraft,” former Airbus engineer Beck, who heads design at Positive Aviation, told Reuters, pointing to Y-shaped pipes that would draw water from new floats designed to skim over lakes or sea.

The Toulouse-based startup is using the dismembered ATR-72 fuselage as an early demonstrator or testbed, and giving a new lease of life to the historic Hangar 16 that spawned Concorde.

A few miles away, Kepplair is receiving an ATR-72 to test its vision of a ground-loaded tanker to replace Canada’s veteran Dash-8 on pre-emptive patrols to tackle initial outbreaks.

“It’s the difference between an uncontrollable fire and one that is halted quickly,” said Kepplair founder David Joubert.

Europe’s last serious effort to match Canadair by Germany’s Dornier and Italy’s Aeritalia in the 1980s, Advanced Amphibious Aircraft (AAA), never left the drawing board due to cost.

“Western nations… have lost their skills in professional seaplane design since the 1950s or even World War Two,” said former AAA project chief Elmar Welczek, a German professor widely seen as a leading expert in the mainly forgotten field of water flying.

Before they can quench a single flame, would-be water-bombers must scoop up significant amounts of capital to fund the R&D, certification tests and factories needed.

“What I think people under-estimate is the time to go from design to delivery,” said John Boag, CEO of top private Canadair operator Avincis.

Estimates of development costs by entrepreneurs run from tens of millions for a simple conversion to $1 billion for a new plane and analysts warn that could go far higher.

CONVERTED OR NEW PLANES

Positive Aviation hopes to tap a market for converting second-hand planes and be ready for 2028, company president Laurent Schmitt said. It has a provisional order for 10 planes from U.S.-based Bridger Aerospace.

Kepplair is raising a new round of funding and aims to start deliveries next year, Joubert said.

At least three other firms are touting even bolder plans to design and build planes from scratch, while so far giving few details in public about their backers.

The most prominent so far is French startup HYNAERO, which announced Latecoere – a pioneer of early boat planes and now an aerostructures supplier – as a provisional partner last week.

It says its Fregate-F100 scooper plane would hold 10 tons of water and cost the same as a Canadair – roughly $80 million with support – but be twice as efficient in fighting fires. 

In Italy, 19-01 Holding has been promoting since 2011 what it calls an integrated firefighting and emergency-response system centred on a new amphibious plane, WF-X.

CEO Renato Sacchetti said assembly would start in Italy from 2031. He added it would have entirely private funding worth €1.2 billion but declined to give details.

In Belgium, the amphibious Seagle is the brainchild of Gaetan du Four, an architect who aims to partner with industrial groups. He is candid about financial and industrial challenges.

“We are looking at the middle of next decade because we have to get funding. But I don’t think any other (new) plane will fly before then,” he told Reuters.

Startups must also compete with a new version of the Canadair, which resumed production this year subject to safety approval, after an 11-year gap.

Deliveries of the DHC-515 have been delayed three years to 2028, but owner De Havilland Canada argues alternatives carry more risk. “It’s a lot of years and a lot of engineering,” said Neil Sweeney, its corporate affairs vice-president.

Even so, Europe’s aspiring water-bombers see a window of support as politicians debate firefighting capacity.

“What worries me is that in four weeks’ time, nobody will talk about it, either media or politicians,” Schmitt said.     

Reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Giulia Segreti in Rome, Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Alexander Smith

Those killed at the school were all teachers and staff and police said the 14-year-old shooter, a student, fired at least 26 bullets using a gun that belonged to his grandfather

International News via Reuters:

A Thai teenager killed at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok on Friday after fatally shooting his grandparents, police said, in the Southeast Asian nation’s worst mass killing since 2022.

Those killed at the school were all teachers and staff and police said the 14-year-old shooter, a student, fired at least 26 bullets using a gun that belonged to his grandfather. An additional 34 rounds were found, police said.

Students streamed out of the Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the capital’s northwestern outskirts, as the wounded were loaded on to ambulances and teachers hugged each other and cried. In photos circulated by emergency workers, one person is seen lying down on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic.

Police said 23 people were wounded in the incident, the latest in a succession of high-profile shootings in recent years in Thailand, which has by far the largest number of guns in civilian possession in Southeast Asia, and among the most per capita in Asia, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

One 18-year-old student told Reuters he initially thought there were firecrackers going off or someone banging an object.

“I didn’t think it was a gun at first,” he said. “There were many shots: bang, bang, bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again.”

SECOND SCHOOL SHOOTING

Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong told Reuters that both teachers and students were among the casualties. The motive for the shooting was being investigated, he told reporters.

It is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.

Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, described arriving as the shooting was ongoing and his team treated students with injuries in the back, chest and arms. They found a male teacher lying dead on an upper floor of the school, and in another room they found a female teacher with wounds in her chest and arm.

He said he was called to treat the teenage shooter after hearing a final shot.

“We rushed up and found that the perpetrator had shot himself in the right side of the head and collapsed. When we got up there, we checked his pulse, he still had one, so we started CPR.”

In the 2025 academic year, the school had an enrolment of around 3,100 students and 147 teachers, according to district authorities.

“This is terrible for something like this to happen,” Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters. “I’m sad for those who died and sad for something like this to happen in our country.”

HISTORY OF SHOOTINGS

Thailand’s worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in its recent history took place in 2022, when a sacked former policeman ran amok in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the northeast that killed 36 people including his wife, son and 22 children stabbed as they slept at a daycare centre.

In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima that included a shopping mall, while in July last year, a gunman killed five people at a Bangkok market, among them security guards and a vendor, before turning the gun on himself.

In 2023, a 14-year-old killed two people and wounded five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping centre, using a modified handgun that police said was likely purchased online.

After the 2023 shooting, Anutin, who was then serving as interior minister, ordered a raft of gun control measures, including a short-term ban on new licenses, import restrictions, and banning of people under 20 years from shooting ranges.

Longer-term measures also included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners as well as a specified validity period for some gun licenses.

Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms held by civilians, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents, the Small Arms Survey estimated.

Reporting by Chalinee Thirasupa, Panarat Thepgumpanat, Panu Wongcha-um, Chayut Setboonsarng and Devjyot Ghoshal; Writing by Josh Smith and Martin Petty; Editing by David Stanway and Saad Sayeed

The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in a basket of internationally traded food commodities, averaged 131.1 points in July, up from 130.3 in June and the highest reading since January 2023

International News via Reuters:

World food prices rose in July to their highest in more than three years as adverse weather and war escalation in the Gulf and Black Sea supported crop markets, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday.

• The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in a basket of internationally traded food commodities, averaged 131.1 points in July, up from 130.3 in June and the highest reading since January 2023.

• The FAO’s chief economist told Reuters this week that the world faces another bout of food inflation as wars in Iran and Ukraine along with El Nino create a perfect storm of higher costs and lower crop yields.

• A 3.4% month-on-month rise in the FAO’s cereal price index drove the July trend, fuelled in turn by a 5.8% jump in wheat prices, the agency said.

• Wheat markets were affected by concerns over Black Sea export disruptions and heat damage to crops in key producing regions, it said. [GRA/]

• The FAO’s vegetable oil index rose 2% to its highest level since June 2022.

• Higher crude oil prices amid escalation in the Iran war and strong demand for biodiesel supported palm and soy oil prices, though rapeseed and sunflower oil declined.

• Sugar prices rose 5.6% on weather concerns in Europe and Asia and expectations of stronger ethanol demand in Brazil.

• In contrast, meat prices fell 2.8% from a record high in June, FAO said.

• Poultry, pig and bovine meat prices declined, though sheep meat prices reached a record high amid tight export supplies in Oceania. Dairy prices fell 0.7%.

• The FAO’s overall food price index reading for July was slightly above a previous three-year high in April.

• The latest reading was nonetheless 18.2% below its March 2022 peak that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Reporting by Gus Trompiz;Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Emelia Sithole-Matarise

The company is offering notes in as many as 10 parts, a regulatory filing showed

International News via Reuters:

Alphabet is looking to raise between $20 billion and $25 billion from its latest U.S. bond offering, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, weeks after the tech giant’s 2026 capital spending outlook triggered a steep selloff.

The company is offering notes in as many as 10 parts, a regulatory filing showed. The maturities on the notes range from two to 40 years, the source said.

Alphabet did not comment on the size of the offering and maturities. Bloomberg News first reported the offering size.

The debt raise is the latest in a series of moves by tech giants looking to fund their costly AI spending, a shift in strategy for these companies that have typically relied on their large cash reserves to fund investments.

Hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle issued about $194 billion worth of bonds in 2026 through July 7, up 79% from roughly $108 billion in 2025, a Reuters analysis of LSEG data showed last month.

Big Tech is expected to spend more than $730 billion this year primarily on AI, and the massive outlay is already squeezing cash flows. Alphabet late in July posted its first ever negative free cash flow in its second-quarter report.

It also raised its annual capital expenditure forecast for the second time this year, fanning fears over the pace of returns on its AI investments, especially as concerns mount over delays to its flagship AI model.

Alphabet in June announced an $80 billion raise through equity offerings, including an investment from Berkshire Hathaway, and later increased the offering size to nearly $85 billion due to strong investor appetite.

The company has also sold bonds in Japanese yen, Swiss francs and British pounds – including a rare 100-year bond earlier this year.

Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru and Tatiana Bautzer in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur

About 72,000 migrants entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa last week, according to Spanish authorities, in one of the largest movements into EU territory in recent years

International News via Reuters:

The European Union should use all available leverage, including visa and trade policy, to secure cooperation from Morocco on migration, EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said on Thursday.

About 72,000 migrants entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa last week, according to Spanish authorities, in one of the largest movements into EU territory in recent years.

“One very important reminder from Ceuta is that to have control, we must cooperate with our neighbours,” Brunner told a European Parliament committee meeting. “But as long as control depends on the goodwill of one neighbouring state, we remain… vulnerable.”

Morocco’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EU has increasingly relied on agreements with North African countries to limit irregular migration, providing financial support and other incentives in exchange for stronger border controls and cooperation on returns.

Critics argue the approach leaves the bloc exposed to pressure from transit countries that can use migration flows to seek political or economic concessions.

Brunner said the EU must deepen cooperation with third countries on returns and readmission while using all available tools to ensure effective partnerships.

The comments came amid questions over whether Moroccan authorities turned a blind eye to the crossings.

Lahcen Haddad, co-president of the EU-Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee, defended Morocco’s record, telling Reuters that the country had prevented more than 227,000 attempted irregular crossings and dismantled over 1,050 smuggling networks between 2023 and 2025.

“Criticism is legitimate, but so is acknowledging the scale of Morocco’s contribution,” he said.

Ceuta mayor Juan Jesus Vivas told lawmakers on Thursday that around 100 people had died during the mass crossing and that between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remained in the enclave.

“I reiterate this today, having seen what I have seen: Morocco is not a reliable country,” he said, adding that responsibility for Europe’s only land border with Africa should rest with Europe rather than Morocco.

On Monday, Morocco rejected suggestions it was responsible for the surge, saying Spain should have anticipated the consequences of a court ruling that migrants arriving by swimming could not be immediately deported if no physical border barrier had been crossed.

ANTI-SMUGGLING DEBATE

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Spanish and Moroccan authorities have said migrant smuggling networks drove the crossings into Ceuta.

Brunner said the episode underscored the need for stronger action against smugglers and urged lawmakers to advance the EU’s anti-smuggling directive, proposed by the Commission nearly three years ago.

Humanitarian groups have criticised the proposal, saying it does not clearly exempt those providing migrants with food, shelter or other assistance from criminal sanctions.

“What happened in Ceuta should be a wake-up call to expand safe pathways to work and protection, not a pretext to simply push through new sanctions,” said Chiara Catelli, advocacy officer at PICUM, a rights organisation.

“Smuggling networks thrive where people have no safe or realistic way to seek protection or rebuild their lives in Europe.”

Reporting by Inti Landauro, Charlotte Van Campenhout in Amsterdam, Amina ISmail in Cairo, additiona reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi,writing by Amina Ismail, Editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Barbara Lewis and Ros Russell