The result of Axel Rudakubana’s guilty plea on Monday, the first day of his Southport attacks trial, is leading the newspapers. The Sun reports that Rudakubana was able to purchase the knife used in the attack from online retailer Amazon, despite being only 17 at the time. The law prohibits the sale of knives to people under the age of 18.
The Daily Mirror quoted Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as describing it as “utterly outrageous” that Rudakubana was able to purchase weapons.
According to the Times, Rudakubana admitted to possessing the knife more than 10 times before purchasing the knife used in the Southport attack. The newspaper also reports that a Home Office review into how the government’s anti-extremism programme, Prevent, had failed to stop Rudakubana was found to be “prone to genocide and excessive violence”.
The Daily Express quoted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who made a statement on the matter on Tuesday, saying Britain needed to be protected from “lonely, inappropriate, (and) young people watching violent material online in their bedrooms”. Facing a new terrorist threat. Fundamental changes are needed to protect children.
Sir Keir is quoted by the Metro as saying that, in the past, “the major threat was highly organized political groups with clear political intentions, such as al-Qaeda” and, while that threat remains, there is a new threat posed by “desperate” people. The threat has arisen for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but focused on extreme violence that appears to be for its own sake”.
I say that the government has promised to enact strict laws to protect youth from violent content and to regulate the “nightmare of the online world”.
Sir Keir is quoted by the Guardian as saying: “You can’t tell me that the content this man saw before committing these murders should be available on mainstream social media platforms”. The newspaper says Sir Keir has also promised changes that would allow perpetrators of terrorist attacks to be charged under terrorism laws even if they lack a coherent ideology.
The Daily Mail says Chancellor Rachel Reeves has jetted off to the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos amid “the growing threat of economic despair”. The newspaper says Britain has recorded its biggest fall of people in work since November 2020, while Ray Dalio, founder of US investment giant Bridgewater Associates, told the Financial Times that the country was on the verge of entering a “debt death spiral”. There is a danger of. ,
Fraudsters would be banned from driving for two years as part of efforts to reduce the welfare bill under a proposed anti-fraud law, the Daily Telegraph reports. It says the new rules will apply to people who are owed more than £1,000 in wrongly claimed payments and ignore repeated requests to repay it, while other measures will help investigators Will allow people to withdraw money from their bank accounts.
The Financial Times reports that US President Donald Trump has threatened to double tax rates for foreign nationals and companies based in the US in retaliation for “discriminatory” taxes on US multinationals. The newspaper says Trump has imposed a digital services tax against Big Tech and a global tax accord agreed to by the OECD last year, adding that the move “threatens to trigger a global dispute over tax regimes “.
And the Daily Star says the UK could be hit by Storm Iovine with gusts of up to 90mph this weekend. It warns readers to “put off your cans, your garden gnomes and your ill-fitting hairpieces”.
