LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer ‘s office on Friday condemned comments by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the death of a university student who was handcuffed as he lay dying from a stab wound.

Henry Nowak, 18, died after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa in the English city of Southampton in December. Digwa, who is Sikh, falsely claimed to police he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak, who was white. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded man as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.

Digwa, 23, was convicted of murder for stabbing Nowak with an 8-inch (21 centimeter) Sikh dagger and sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term.

The case has been seized on by anti-immigration activists and politicians, despite the fact that both Nowak and his killer were British. On Tuesday, police in Southampton were pelted with chairs, cans, rocks and flares after a demonstration over Nowak’s death attended by far-right figures and others.

Vance said in a post on social platform X on Friday that there should be “righteous anger” in response to the murder, which he blamed in part on “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

In a statement issued in response to Vance’s comments, Starmer’s office criticized people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”

“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes,” Downing Street said in a statement. “Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”

Ed Davey, leader of the centrist opposition Liberal Democrats, said “we all need to resist attempts like this to politicize Henry Nowak’s death and divide our country — whether they come from MAGA politicians like Vance or their cronies here in the U.K..”

Politicians including Nigel Farage, leader of the hard-right party Reform UK, have claimed that the police response is evidence of “two-tier” policing, with a bias against white people in the British justice system.

The U.S. State Department echoed the “two-tier” policing claim in a post on X Thursday, expressing condolences to Nowak’s family and saying that “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline.”

The British government rejected the “two-tier” allegation, which is not backed by statistical evidence.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which investigates allegations of police wrongdoing, is probing the actions of police officers responding to Nowak’s stabbing.

The victim’s father, Mark Nowak, has said the case was not about racism or religion, and that he wanted his son’s death to lead to safer streets and not to be used to create “further division, hatred or tension.”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Teachers, families of Mexico’s 130,000 missing people, animal rights groups and a range of other social movements in Mexico are capitalizing on impending FIFA World Cup celebrations next week to put pressure on authorities and make demands.

Protesters from the country’s teachers’ union, CNTE, blocked main throughways in Mexico City, bringing central parts of the city to a standstill this week to demand better working conditions. Demonstrators knocked down figures of World Cup soccer players, broke into a government building and on Friday played a soccer match on a blockaded street. At the same time visitors from across the world began flooding in to the Mexican capital ahead of the competition that starts June 11.

“The proximity of the World Cup places a lot more pressure on the government,” said Abel Escalante, a 52-year-old special education psychologist who traveled from the southern state of Chiapas to protest, who was blocking the street around the city’s iconic Angel de la Independencia monument on Friday.

The protests come just days before Mexico City hosts the tournament’s opening ceremony, co-hosted by Mexico, the United States and Canada. In addition to kicking off the competition, the Mexican capital, Guadalajara and Monterrey will also host a number of matches.

They are joined by a range of other social movements that have jumped on the World Cup to increasingly place pressure on the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at a time when authorities seek to present a friendly face to the world.

“This isn’t an event for the Mexican people. Tons of people are going to come, but they’re going to be people with all this disposable income. It’s for the elites. The few average people who do go will have to scrape together all the money they have to live off of,” Escalante added.

Sheinbaum responded to mounting protests on Friday morning, saying that “the door is open” for teachers to negotiate with the government over their demands for better retirement packages.

But she added groups of protesters, who broke in to a government building the day before, were trying to provoke a violent reaction from authorities, which she said was not going to happen. She promised that Mexico’s main square known as the Zocalo, which the teachers tried to take over at the end of May to stage a sit-in, would remain open for World Cup events.

Sheinbaum’s government has come under criticism by activist groups for prioritizing World Cup celebrations over pressing social needs, like addressing the soaring cost-of-living fueled in part by foreign tourism or the country’s forced disappearance crisis.

More groups planned protests in the coming weeks as celebrations were slated to kick off. Building on top of all that is a robust protest culture in the Mexican capital, with unions and activist groups that regularly take over public spaces in demonstrations.

Protests of families searching for their disappeared and rural teachers pushing for better working conditions have mounted as the local government has made a push to beautify the city.

Local workers have painted bridges bright purple, planted orange Mexican marigolds across the city and plastered streets with cartoon axolotls, an endangered species that has become the sort of mascot of Mexico City.

Last weekend, families searching for their loved ones plastered the faces of the disappeared people across the city and sprayed graffiti next to one of those bright purple bridges now lining the city’s streets.

“Mexico, champion of disappearance,” it read.

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Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY, June 6 (Reuters) – Pope Leo leaves on Saturday for a week-long visit to Spain, his first to an EU country outside Italy, where he will inaugurate a new tower in Barcelona’s famed Sagrada Familia basilica and meet migrants who braved dangerous Atlantic waters to reach Europe.

The first American head of the Catholic Church is expected to draw large crowds on the June 6-12 trip, which also includes stops in Madrid, Montserrat Monastery and the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the west coast of Africa.

Leo, who angered U.S. President Donald Trump by criticising his anti-immigration policies, will meet on the last stop with migrants and organisations ​dedicated to helping them.

The situation faced by migrants is profoundly close to the pope’s heart, said Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican’s press office. “These are people, and their stories must touch us.”

POPE LEO EXPECTED TO DECRY WARS AND POLARIZATION

Leo, who has adopted a more forceful tone against the direction of global leadership in recent months, is scheduled to give more than 20 speeches, becoming the first pope to address the Spanish parliament.

He is likely to decry the wars raging around the world and urge dialogue to overcome growing political and social polarisation while in Spain, Bruni said.

Leo spent decades as a missionary and bishop in Peru before becoming pope last May, and will speak Spanish throughout most of the trip.

But when he meets migrants on the island of Tenerife, he expects to speak French as many have come from Francophone Africa.

In sharp contrast to many leading Western powers, not least Trump’s United States, Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s government has opened a mass amnesty programme, allowing an estimated 500,000 immigrants to apply for legal status.

More than 3,000 people died in 2025 trying to reach the Canary Islands, often in makeshift dinghies, according to the NGO ​Caminando Fronteras.

Sanchez has been lauded abroad by some for criticising Trump, but at home is under heavy pressure from a string of corruption allegations against his party.

After landing in Madrid on Saturday morning, Leo will meet King Felipe and Queen Letizia at the Royal Palace, and address diplomats and civil leaders.

The same day, he will meet young people in the square outside the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, home to the Real Madrid soccer club, and visit a Catholic charity for homeless people.

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

June 5 (Reuters) – A seven-month-old Palestinian baby was killed and his parents were wounded by Israeli gunfire in the Tel Rumeida area south of the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday evening, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The ministry identified the infant as Sam Fahd Abu Haikal and said he was killed at the scene, while his parents were wounded in the shooting and were in moderate condition.

The baby’s grandmother said the family was driving near Checkpoint 17 when they saw Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in the distance and stopped the car. She said shots were then fired toward them, which they initially believed were warning shots.

“One bullet struck my grandson, traversed his face and crossed his head, striking his mother’s cheek where it lodged,” she said, adding that the bullet had also grazed the father’s finger, and that the mother was in hospital.

The Israeli military said that during operational activity in the Hebron area on Friday, soldiers perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them and one soldier fired single shots at the vehicle. It said three Palestinians were wounded and evacuated for medical treatment.

An initial military inquiry found that those injured were “uninvolved civilians”, the military said, adding that the incident was under review and that the findings would be submitted to the relevant authorities.

Tel Rumeida, an area of Hebron where Israeli settlers live under heavy military protection among Palestinian residents, has long been a flashpoint for violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Over 700,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank among more than 3 million Palestinians, according to a European Union report ​in 2024.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta; Additional reporting by Enas Alashray; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Carlos Alberto Solari, the Argentine singer-songwriter known as “the Indio” who led Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota, one of the country’s most popular and influential rock groups, died Friday. He was 77.

Solari, who had struggled with Parkinson’s disease for at least a decade, was found dead near an indoor pool at his house in the provincial town of Ituzaingó, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, authorities said, without identifying a cause of death.

His family confirmed his death on social media, saying they would hold a public funeral to allow people to bid farewell to the rock legend. As news of his death broke, fans began gathering at his home, with some bearing flowers and wearing T-shirts printed with his nickname.

“We will mourn as is fitting, listen to his songs and, above all, take care of one another, as he taught us to do,” the family’s statement said.

As the lead singer of Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota — known more simply as “Los Redondos” — Solari became a countercultural icon for disaffected Argentines coming of age as their country transitioned from a bloody military dictatorship to a democracy characterized by newfound freedoms but also instability and hyperinflation in the 1980s.

During the consumerist frenzy that gripped Argentina the 1990s, under the free-market policies of then-President Carlos Saul Menem, Solari’s classic rock anthems, punchy dance tunes and cryptic lyrics gave voice to a spirit of rebellion against the excesses of capitalism and influences of foreign powers. Los Redondos released 10 studio albums, eschewing major record labels to maintain artistic independence.

The band broke up in 2001, but Solari found continued success as a solo artist, releasing five more albums under his own name that mixed mainstream rock and electronic influences and drawing hundreds of thousands of fans to parks and stadiums across Argentina.

At a massive concert in 2016, he announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “Mr. Parkinson is nipping at my heels. But here I am,” he said. The crowd went wild. He later retired from touring, speaking candidly in interviews about the debilitating effects of the disease.

Tributes poured in from politicians, artists and soccer stars across the country.

The Argentine Soccer Association said Solari’s voice “became a popular rallying cry” and “echoed in the stands” of the soccer-crazed country.

The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, a prominent activist group which sought to find relatives who had been killed or “disappeared” by the 1976-83 dictatorship, said the singer “inspired society as a whole to doubt, to question and to think critically.”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s former president who is serving a corruption sentence under house arrest, posted one of his famous lyrics on social media, popularized as a call to live courageously: “Just living costs you your life.”

Solari is survived by his wife, Virginia Mones Ruiz, and 25-year-old son Bruno.

CONAKRY, June 5 (Reuters) – Political parties backing Guinea’s coup-leader-turned-President Mamady Doumbouya have won a majority in the bauxite-rich West African country’s legislative elections, the electoral authority said on Friday, tightening his grip on power. 

The final distribution of Guinea’s 147 legislative seats was still being determined, but the pro-Doumbouya Generation for Modernity and Development (GMD) coalition was strongly outperforming rivals, according to provisional data. GMD and its allies had won at least 100 seats, the results showed. 

The outcome is set to further consolidate the position of Doumbouya, a former special forces commander who seized power in 2021 and won a seven-year term as president in December in a result contested by his ​opponents.

Nationwide voter turnout was 52.87% for the legislative contests and 58.51% for communal elections, a vote for local government bodies, which were held simultaneously on Sunday. 

Aminata Toure, the country’s top election official, said on Thursday that political parties had eight days to challenge individual results and that the relevant judicial bodies would adjudicate any disputes.

Final results will be announced after those disputes are resolved.

No major opposition parties were allowed to participate in Sunday’s vote. The parties of former President Alpha Conde and opposition leaders Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Toure have been dissolved. 

Diallo, who is in exile, in March called for “direct resistance” to Doumbouya after the government consolidated its position by dissolving those parties and 37 others.

A government decree at the time said the parties had failed to meet legal obligations such as filing financial statements.

(Reporting by Guinea newsroom; Writing by Amindeh Blaise Atabong; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Sanjeev Miglani)

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) – U.S. President ‌Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law ​Jared Kushner traveled to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee on Thursday to consult with experts that could play a role in nuclear negotiations with Iran, a source familiar with the trip said on Friday.

The source, confirming an Axios report, did not provide additional details.

President Donald Trump is adamant that any deal to end the war with Iran include a provision that Tehran will not develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran is believed to possess about 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that was at sites bombed by U.S. planes a year ago. Tehran has been adamant that it must maintain the ability to enrich uranium and denies developing a weapon.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Christian Martinez; Editing by Ryan Patrick Jones and Cynthia Osterman)

DAKAR, June 5 (Reuters) – Advocacy groups representing deportees sent by the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea filed a complaint on Friday with the main human rights body of the African Union, an attempt to drum up opposition on the continent to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The complaint was submitted to the Gambia-based African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of 14 people from African countries who were deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea starting in November of last year.

All of the so-called third-country deportees had obtained legal protection in the U.S. against their repatriation. President Donald Trump’s government has embraced third-country deportations to African countries as part of what critics say is an attempt to circumvent those protections.

Washington has defended the deportations as lawful and says they are part of a strategy “to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”

SIX DEPORTEES ALREADY SENT HOME

Six of those represented in the complaint filed on Friday have been forcibly repatriated from Equatorial Guinea within the last week despite expressing fear of persecution or torture, according to the human rights groups representing them.

Three were then sent back to Equatorial Guinea after their home countries refused to accept them, while lawyers have lost contact with the other three, the groups said in a statement.

The other eight deportees are still detained in Equatorial Guinea.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is mandated to promote human rights among member states through “urgent appeals” and “friendly settlement of disputes”, according to its website.

The complaint asks that the commission suspend further repatriations and guarantee the deportees have access to lawyers, among other provisional measures. It could decide to hear the case itself or refer it to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, based in Tanzania.

The government of Equatorial Guinea did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the complaint filed on Friday.

In a report published in February, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the total cost of third-country removals was unknown, but that more than $32 million had been sent directly to five countries, including $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea.

(Reporting by Robbie Corey-Boulet; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

June 5 (Reuters) – Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom said on Friday that a Ukrainian drone had deliberately struck engineers demining an area around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, injuring at least three people.

Rosatom said the incident occurred at the start of a ceasefire around the plant, brokered by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to restore the main external power line to the plant.

“The strike was clearly calculated,” Rosatom head Alexei Likachev said in comments posted on social media. “Three of our engineers were injured. Two are in serious condition.”

“The international community must know of the continuing attempts to inflict maximum damage on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, on the personnel responsible for ensuring its safety…despite the agreements that have been reached.”

In a separate statement, Rosatom said five people were hurt. 

The IAEA said it had been informed of the incident by the plant’s Russia-installed management, and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, writing on X, called for maximum military restraint and full adherence to the ceasefire.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors, was seized by Russian troops in the early weeks of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Each side has since accused the other of undertaking military actions to compromise nuclear safety.

The plant’s Russian-installed management accused Ukraine on Thursday of deploying more than 20 drones to attack a nearby thermal plant vital to supplying the facility with external power.

The plant generates no electricity, but needs external power to ensure that nuclear fuel at the site does not overheat.

The latest ceasefire was the sixth negotiated since late last year to carry out repairs to the power lines.

In its statement, the IAEA said the plant’s second external power line was also down following attacks on two electrical substations located on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from the nuclear plant.

The facility was relying on diesel generators as it did for a month last year in similar circumstances.

(Reporting by Linda Pasquini, editing by Himani Sarkar, Thomas Seythal, Ron Popesk and Sanjeev Miglani)

VATICAN CITY, June 5 (Reuters) – Pope Leo will meet with survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy during his week-long visit to Spain, the Vatican said on Friday.

Further information will only be provided after the meeting, a statement said, so as to protect the survivors’ privacy.

Leo, the first U.S. pope, is leaving on Saturday to visit Spain and the Canary Islands from June 6 to 12.

The possibility of the pope meeting abuse survivors had been the subject of media reporting in recent days.

A 2023 report by Spain’s human rights ombudsman estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of ​clergy abuse there over decades, echoing similar scandals that have shaken the Church in places across the globe.

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Editing by Angelo Amante)