Britain to make parental leave more flexible
LONDON • British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said working grandparents will be given the right to take time off to help care for their grandchildren as part of a move to make parental leave more flexible.
Parents will have the option to share part of their leave entitlement with grandparents, the governing Conservative Party said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
Parents will be able to share as much as 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of parental-leave pay, currently £139.58 (S$303) a week, or 90 per cent of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, with a nominated working grandparent.
BLOOMBERG
17 hurt when Porsche crashes into Malta crowd
VALLETA (Malta) • At least 17 people were injured after a white Porsche 918 Spyder sped off the track and ran into the crowd yesterday.
According to Malta Today, the driver was critically injured, while a six-year-old boy and his mother suffered serious injury.
The accident occurred yesterday afternoon at the Malta International Airport, where Malta's biggest annual motoring event Paqpaqli Ghall-Istrina was being held.
An eyewitness told the Times of Malta that the "car was speeding down the taxiway when the back left wheel went on the grass. The car then spun out of control".
XINHUA
10 held for recruiting fighters for ISIS
MADRID • Police have arrested 10 people in Spain and Morocco for recruiting and indoctrinating fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Spanish interior ministry announced yesterday.
The suspects were part of a "network of recruitment, indoctrination and sending foreign fighters to fight for Daesh (another name for ISIS) in the regions of Syria and Iraq under its control," the ministry said in a statement.
The statement said arrests "in the last few hours" were part of a joint operation between the two countries in the Spanish cities of Toledo, Badalona, Xeraco, and in Casablanca, Morocco.
More than 100 people from Spain are suspected of having joined militant fighters in Iraq and Syria and the authorities fear they may return to launch attacks at home.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
