������Ƶ

LONDON: Labour scored a surprise win in a Scottish Parliament by-election on Friday, giving UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government a rare moment of celebration.
Labour won with 8,559 votes, overturning the comfortable majority of 4,582 earned by the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2021.
The SNP were favorites going into the election, but saw their vote collapse by almost 17 percent, netting them 7,957 votes and delivering a heavy blow to the party that runs Scotland.
“People in Scotland have once again voted for change,” Starmer wrote on X.
“Next year there is a chance to turbo charge delivery by putting Labour in power on both sides of the border,” he added.
Starmer and his government have seen their popularity plunge since coming to power last July.
Labour secured 31.6 percent of the vote, slightly down on the 2021 election.
But they capitalized on a fractured opposition, with the anti-immigration Reform UK party making inroads into Scottish politics for the first time with 26.1 percent of the vote.
The Conservative party continued its dismal recent electoral record, gaining just six percent of the vote.
The ballot was held following the death of SNP lawmaker and government minister Christina McKelvie in March.

Myanmar’s military has arrested a six-year-old child as part of a group it labelled “terrorists” for the daytime killing of a retired military officer and diplomat last month, a junta-run newspaper reported on Friday.
Cho Htun Aung, 68, a retired brigadier general who also served as an ambassador, was shot dead in Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon on May 22, in one of the highest profile assassinations in a country in the throes of a widening civil war.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup, overthrowing an elected government led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and triggering widespread protests.
The junta’s violent crackdown on dissent sparked an unprecedented nationwide uprising. A collection of established ethnic armies and new armed groups have wrested away swathes of territory from the well-armed military, and guerrilla-style fighting has erupted even in urban areas like Yangon.
“A total of 16 offenders — 13 males and three females — were arrested,” the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
In an accompanying graphic, the newspaper carried the image of the six-year-old child, identified as the daughter of the alleged assassin.
Her face was blurred in an online version of the newspaper seen by Reuters, but visible in other social media posts made by junta authorities.
A junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Golden Valley Warriors, an anti-junta insurgent group, said they killed the retired general because of his continued support for military operations, including attacks on civilians, according to a May 22 statement.
The junta claims the group is backed by the National Unity Government — a shadow government comprising of remnants of Suu Kyu’s ousted administration that is battling the military — and paid an assassin some 200,000 Myanmar Kyat ($95.52) for a killing, the state newspaper reported.
NUG spokesperson Nay Phone Latt denied the shadow government had made any such payments. “It is not true that we are paying people to kill other people,” he told Reuters. Since the coup, Myanmar’s junta has arrested over 29,000 people, including more than 6,000 women and 600 children, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an activist group.
Fatalities among civilians and pro-democracy activists verified by AAPP during this period amount to more than 6,700, including 1,646 women and 825 children.