LONDON – The coffee and bakery chain began trialling body-worn cameras in a select number of shops in London last month. A Pret spokesperson said this was done as a new safety measure. “These are only being worn by team leaders or managers, and are only turned on in specific circumstances,” the spokesperson said.

Signs have been put up in shops conducting the trial to let customers know. The cameras will not always be recording and will only be switched on in specific circumstances. This will be at the discretion of management in-store. Only Pret’s security team will have access to any footage captured, the chain confirmed. Pret a Manger is not the only chain to offer body-worn cameras to staff. Last year, Tesco began offering the cameras to members of staff after it said physical assaults had risen by a third in a year.

The Co-op has installed more than 200 secure till kiosks, locked cabinets for bottles of spirits and AI technology in its supermarkets to monitor self-checkouts after a 44% surge in retail crime last year to about 1,000 incidents a day. (The Guardian) …[+]

WASHINGTON DC – A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election. The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters across the three states, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.

The polls were conducted between 5 and 9 August, in the week Harris named Midwesterner Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high-school teacher, as her running mate on November’s Democratic ticket. It provides the clearest indication from crucial battleground states since Joe Biden pulled out of the race and endorsed Harris amid mounting concerns about the 81-year-old’s cognitive wellbeing and fitness to govern for a second term. The results come after months of polling that showed Biden either tied with or slightly behind Trump.

Harris is viewed as more intelligent, more honest and more temperamentally fit to run the country than Trump, according to the registered voters polled. The findings, published on Saturday by the New York Times, will boost the Democrats, as Harris and Walz continue crisscrossing the country on their first week on the campaign trail together, holding a slew of events in swing states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election.

On Saturday, the candidates held a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, a state the Biden-Harris ticket won by more than two points in 2020. While only a snapshot, Democrats will probably be heartened to see that 60% of the surveyed independent voters, who always play a major role in deciding the outcome of the race, said they are satisfied with the choice of presidential candidates, compared with 45% in May. (The Guardian) …[+]

DHAKA – The chief justice of Bangladesh’s top court has said he agreed “in principle” to resign after an ultimatum from protesters, days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to neighbouring India. Obaidul Hassan, who was appointed to helm the Supreme Court last year and is seen as a loyalist to Hasina, was told to step down on Saturday by protesters who gathered outside the court in the capital, Dhaka.

Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said students decided to take to the streets when they heard reports that Hassan was holding a meeting with justices of the Appellate Division. “They viewed this as a judicial coup in the making, so they quickly gathered at the Supreme Court and demanded that he immediately resign,” Chowdhury said.

A formal letter confirming Hassan’s decision to step down was expected after consultations with President Mohammed Shahabuddin. The students believe the Supreme Court to be highly politicized and want the other seven members to also resign, according to Chowdhury. Awami League party leader Hasina, 76, flew by helicopter to India on Monday. Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses including the extrajudicial killing of thousands of her political opponents.

Hassan oversaw a much-criticized war crimes tribunal that ordered the execution of Hasina’s opponents, and his brother was her longtime secretary. Cabinet ministers left blindsided by her sudden fall have gone to ground, while several top appointees have been forced out of office, including the national police chief and the central bank governor. On Friday, the bank’s governor, Abdur Rouf Talukder, resigned from the post, citing personal reasons. Protesters had stormed the central bank’s headquarters amid the political upheaval that led to the end of Hasina’s 15-year rule.

Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his pioneering work in microfinance credited with helping millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty, is leading a transitional government, another demand by the student leaders. (Aljazeera) …[+]

UGANDA – A landslide at a landfill in Uganda’s capital Kampala has killed eight people, the city’s authorities said on Saturday. The incident happened late Friday after heavy rainfall when sections of the landfill collapsed, covering some nearby houses, Ugandan media reported.

Kampala Capital City Authority said government and Red Cross personnel were searching the site and had rescued 14 people. “On a very sad note, eight people have so far been found dead, six adults and two children. The rescue operation is still ongoing …,” the authority said on its X account.

People look on as an excavator helps search for people trapped under debris after a landfill collapsed in Kampala on August 10, 2024. The landfill, known as Kiteezi, has served as Kampala’s sole garbage dump for decades and had turned into a big hill. Residents have long complained of hazardous waste from the site polluting the environment and posing a danger to people.

Footage from NTV Uganda television showed people walking on a section of the landfill that had crushed parts of a house, while pictures from UBC Uganda showed an excavator attempting to dig up garbage. Parts of Uganda have been experiencing heavy rains in recent weeks causing flooding and landslides, though no fatalities had previously been reported. (CNN) …[+]

KIEV – Vladimir Putin fixed the commander in chief of Russia’s military, General Valery Gerasimov, with a cold stare and a look of exasperation. The video, released Wednesday by the Kremlin, showed the Russian president was not happy with news from the southern region of Kursk. At that moment, hundreds of Ukrainian troops, backed by tanks and protected by air defenses, were advancing into the region. Russian soldiers were surrendering; hundreds of Russian civilians in and around the town of Sudzha were fleeing with anything they could grab.

In two-and-a-half years of warfare, it was an unprecedented Ukrainian incursion into Russia. Putin told the Kremlin meeting that it was “another major provocation” by Kyiv. The region’s acting governor declared a state of emergency, describing the situation as “very difficult.”

Above all, it was humiliating for a Russian state that prides itself on protecting the motherland. Video shows bodies on burnt-out Russian trucks in Kursk region as Ukrainian cross-border assaults rage. The Kursk attack was an audacious and counter-intuitive move from the Ukrainian military, what one analyst describes as “doing the least obvious thing.”

Despite steadily losing ground in eastern Donetsk, it chose to send elements of experienced brigades into Russian territory, with the apparent goals of embarrassing the Kremlin and forcing the Russian Defense Ministry to redeploy resources and providing the home front with a much-needed morale boost.

The Russian regiment tasked with defending this part of the border abandoned its positions. Several dozen soldiers were taken captive, leading President Volodymyr Zelensky to express Friday “special gratitude to our warriors and units who are replenishing the ‘exchange fund’ – by taking the occupiers as captives and thus helping to free our people from Russian captivity.” (CNN) …[+]