The heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year was a prime example of these shifts, Europol said, as the thieves threatened guards and visitors, and stole €88 million worth of jewels such as Empress Eugenie’s tiara

International News via Reuters:

Art thieves in Europe are committing more violent robberies focusing on gold and jewels, and specialist gangs have been replaced by ad-hoc opportunists recruited through social media, Europol said on Monday.

The heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris in October last year was a prime example of these shifts, Europol said, as the thieves threatened guards and visitors, and stole €88 million worth of jewels such as Empress Eugenie’s tiara.

Over the last two years, art thieves have shifted their attention to precious metals, jewels and cultural artefacts that offer greater profits, the EU’s law enforcement agency said in a report. 

The price of gold has surged 85% over the past two years, as investors and central banks turn to the metal as a safe haven. The London Bullion Market Association, which oversees London’s over-the-counter gold trading hub, has warned that “as gold prices rise to historic levels, illicit flows and market distortions are also increasing.”

Europol said: “offenders are breaching premises and display cases using tools such as sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and, in some instances, explosives.”

Where traditional gangs used “deception and stealth”, had a central leader and niche expertise, recent thefts were carried out by a decentralised ad-hoc group of profit-seeking opportunists, recruited through social media on a “crime-as-a-service” basis, it said. 

Europol added thieves were increasingly targeting gold items from nuggets and coins to jewels.

“Precious metals can be easily melted down, leaving no trace for law enforcement, and facilitating illicit sales during the fencing process. Precious stones in jewellery, on the other hand, can be easily removed and sold further,” the report said.

In January last year, thieves used explosives to steal a 2,500-year-old Dacian golden helmet and three ancient gold bracelets from a museum in the Netherlands. The artefacts were later recovered and returned to Romania, although one bracelet is still missing.

Europol also noted an increase in thefts of ancient Chinese porcelain artefacts such as Ming Dynasty vases due to high demand.  

Reporting by Julia Payne, additional reporting by Polina Devitt in LondonEditing by Alexandra Hudson

The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by utilising existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents

International News via Reuters:

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party will introduce a bill in Parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10% of a platform’s global revenue for non-compliance.

The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by utilising existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents.

“We simply cannot accept the harm being done to a generation of New Zealand children,” Luxon said in a statement.

“Social media is exposing them to harmful content, addictive technology and pressures they are not equipped to deal with and it’s affecting their family life, mental health, sleep and education.”

It was not immediately clear if the bill would garner sufficient support to pass through Parliament, with one of Luxon’s coalition partners, the New Zealand First party, saying it would not support it.

“We have been concerned with the proposed legislation and the direction and slippery slope that legislation like this will inevitably take our country,” New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who is also the country’s foreign minister, said in a post on X.

In December, Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.

That legislation had been a “colossal failure,” Peters said, adding that keeping children off social media should be the responsibility of parents.

“I won’t pretend that it will be simple or that it will be perfect,” Luxon said at an event.

“We won’t get every single child off social media. Some will always find ways around it, but frankly, it’s just way too important not to at least try.”

Reporting by Renju Jose and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Thomas Derpinghaus

The 7.7-magnitude quake shook the province of East Nusa Tenggara on August 15, followed by thousands of aftershocks, damaging more than 73,000 homes and forcing the evacuation of about 180,000 people

International News via Reuters:

The death toll from an earthquake that hit eastern Indonesia reached 100 on Monday, the disaster agency chief said, as relief operations continued for a 10th day. 

The 7.7-magnitude quake shook the province of East Nusa Tenggara on August 15, followed by thousands of aftershocks, damaging more than 73,000 homes and forcing the evacuation of about 180,000 people.

• The death toll reached 100 as more people undergoing treatment succumbed to their injuries, disaster agency chief Suharyanto said in a press conference, adding more than 1,600 people were injured.

• Authorities were distributing aid using helicopters, trucks, and motorcycles, Suharyanto said.

• The earthquake was Indonesia’s deadliest since 2022, when a shallow 5.6-magnitude quake killed hundreds in West Java.

• Indonesia, an archipelago of 290 million people, straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a seismically active zone where tectonic plates meet and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are frequent.

Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Martin Petty

The sinking of the migrant boat, which carried seven members of the same family, sparked a wave of grief and anger triggering violent protests in the city on Sunday night

International News via Reuters:

A hospital in the southern Tunisian city of Ben Guerdane has received at least 19 bodies of migrants recovered from the sea over the past two days, the head of a migrant rights group said on Monday, following the sinking of a boat at the weekend.

The sinking of the migrant boat, which carried seven members of the same family, sparked a wave of grief and anger triggering violent protests in the city on Sunday night. 

Protesters burned tyres and blocked roads, while police responded by firing tear gas to disperse the crowds.

Protesters are demanding better living conditions and economic development, saying a lack of opportunities and years of marginalisation are pushing young people to undertake dangerous sea crossings to Europe in search of a better life.

It was not clear if all the bodies were from the boat that sank.

Mostafa Abdelkebir, the head of the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters that genetic testing was being carried out to identify the bodies and determine how many of them had been aboard the boat, while searches continued for other people who may still be missing.

Tunisia was once a major departure point for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, but departures have fallen sharply over the past two years amid a crackdown and tighter maritime controls, backed by European funding and modern border-monitoring equipment, particularly from Italy.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and dozens of other human rights and humanitarian groups said in a statement last month that the EU-Tunisia migration deal had fuelled and normalised serious abuses against migrants and asylum seekers in Tunisia.

Reporting By Tarek Amara; Editing by Sharon Singleton