13/02/2026

FRIDAY | FEB 13, 2026

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UK nursery worker faces jail for child sex abuse

Govt sued over public health funding cuts WASHINGTON: Four Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the Trump administration from terminating US$600 million (RM2.3 billion) in public health funding. In a complaint filed in Federal Court in Chicago, the states of California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota said they are being unlawfully subjected to “devastating funding cuts to basic public health infrastructure based on political animus and disagreements about unrelated topics, such as federal immigration enforcement”. A US Health and Human Services Department spokesperson said on Monday the grants are being terminated because they do not reflect the agency’s priorities. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. The grant funding, administered through the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is used to monitor health threats, respond to disease outbreaks and plan for emergencies. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly attempted to withhold funding from Democratic-led states, although the cuts have been blocked by lower court judges. A judge last month temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing access by five Democratic-led states to more than US$10 billion of federal funds for childcare and family assistance based on what the administration said were concerns about fraud. The New York Post reported last week that Trump’s budget office had instructed the Transportation Department and the CDC to claw back more than US$1.5 billion from a group of Democratic-led states. “Trump is resorting to a familiar playbook. He is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda. Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again,” said California Attorney-General Rob Bonta. – Reuters Brazil orders X to block sexualised deepfakes on Grok BRASILIA: Brazil on Wednesday told Elon Musk’s social network X to stop its chatbot from creating sexually explicit images, the latest country to pressure the billionaire to fix the AI tool. Indonesia became the first country to block Grok entirely last month while Britain and France said they would maintain pressure after the chatbot cranked out a flood of lewd photos of women and children. X must “immediately implement appropriate measures to prevent the production, using Grok, of sexualised or eroticised content of children and adolescents, as well as adults who have not given their consent”, said Brazil’s chief prosecutor, the National Data Protection Agency and the National Consumer Rights Bureau. They gave the platform five days to comply with the order or risk legal action and fines. X said it had deleted thousands of posts and suspended hundreds of accounts after Brazil issued a warning last month, but checks found that Grok users were still able to generate sexualised deepfakes, Brazilian authorities said. They slammed X for “not being transparent in its response”. X announced measures on Jan 15 to prevent Grok from undressing images of real people in countries where such action is deemed illegal. It was not clear where these measures are in effect. Pressure has been building on xAI to rein in Grok after its “Spicy Mode” feature allowed users to create sexualised deepfakes of women and children using simple text prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes”. According to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, Grok generated an estimated three million sexualised images of women and children in a matter of days. – AFP

LONDON: A United Kingdom (UK) nursery worker was set to be sentenced yesterday for years of child sexual abuse, as the government considers making CCTVs mandatory in nurseries after a string of similar cases. Vincent Chan, 45, is facing years in prison after he admitted to 56 counts of abuse, including molesting four girls aged three and four at a north London nursery, between 2022 and 2024. The sentence was due to be handed down in the Wood Green Crown Court in the British capital. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday said the government was consulting on whether to make CCTVs mandatory in nurseries, with multiple cases of abuse in UK child care centres coming to light in recent years. o Suspect admits to molesting four girls, filming acts and downloading indecent images Wednesday identified the 18-year-old who carried out a mass shooting in a remote mining town, as authorities investigate the suspect’s mental health and previous interactions with police and healthcare providers. Police commander Dwayne McDonald said authorities do not know the motive in Tuesday’s mass shooting, a rare occurrence in Canada, which has strict gun laws. The shooter, who took her own life, was known to have mental health issues. McDonald identified the shooter, who killed her mother and stepbrother before shooting dead another six at a school, as Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman who dropped out of the targeted high school four years ago. The shooter was known to police and “we have begun the process of reaching out to” the public healthcare system to “understand what interactions may have taken place,” said British Columbia Premier David Eby outside the Tumbler Ridge town hall on Wednesday evening. Authorities have said the shooter had previously held a firearms licence that had lapsed and weapons had previously been confiscated from her residence but subsequently returned. “I have a lot of questions. I know the people of Tumbler Ridge have a lot of questions,” said Eby, adding that officials want to do “all we can” to “prevent tragedies like this from happening again”. Nearly everyone has a connection to one of the victims in the small town in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where hundreds gathered for a candlelight vigil. The initial toll was reported at nine before being revised down to eight, but “there is a young girl who is fighting for her life”, said Eby. Officers who entered the town’s high school found six dead: a 39-year-old woman teacher, three 12-year-old girls and two boys, aged 13 and 12. Twelve-year-old Maya Gebala was clinging to life on Wednesday night after being shot in the head and neck, said her aunt Krystal Hunt.

In a statement after Chan pleaded guilty in January, the families of the victims from the now-closed Bright Horizons nursery in north London said they were “sickened”. “These further crimes raise deeply troubling questions about how safeguarding systems could have failed so badly that someone who was a prolific and persistent offender was able to secure employment as a nursery worker and offend without intervention for a number of years,” the families said. According to law firm Leigh Day, which is representing them, 50 families concerned about safeguarding failures at Bright Horizons have joined legal action against the nursery provider, which they accuse of “brushing concerns aside”. The sentencing comes days after another nursery worker Nathan Bennett was found guilty of multiple sexual offences against five boys aged two and three, including rape and sexual assault, by a court in Bristol, southwest England. He was caught after the nursery manager saw Bennett on CCTV images slipping his hands into a child’s trousers. She reported him and he was arrested, and the nursery closed down. – AFP

“They are harrowing cases for everyone in this country. The safety of children is, of course, paramount and we are acting to keep them safe,” Starmer told Parliament. Chan, who worked at the London nursery for seven years until he was suspended in 2024, filmed himself carrying out the abuse against the four girls during nap time at the day care. He also admitted to downloading thousands of indecent images of children. Before that, Chan worked in a school in north London from 2007 to 2017, during which he was guilty of filming up young girls’ skirts in a classroom and also filming solo sexual acts at the location. He also admitted to taking indecent pictures of children in 2024 and 2025, when he was no longer with the nursery or school. “Chan is a dangerous and predatory individual, and the scale of his abhorrent offending is shocking,” said London Met police officer Lewis Basford, who is leading the investigation. “Chan’s history demonstrates to us that he has sought out positions of trust involving contact with young girls, which allowed him to commit his crimes unchecked for so long.” Chan admitted to sexual offences dating back to 2011.

Canada probes past of mass shooter TUMBLER RIDGE: Canadian police on

Mourners attending a vigil in Tumbler Ridge on Wednesday, the day after the mass shooting. – REUTERSPIC

The child “tried to lock the door of the library from the shooter to save the other kids“ before being wounded, she said. Police responded “within two minutes of the call”, said Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree. The shooter, armed with a long-barrelled gun and a pistol, was found dead from “a self-inflicted gunshot wound” after the massacre, said McDonald, who is also British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police deputy commissioner. Flags will be lowered nationwide to half-staff for seven days following the tragedy, among the deadliest shootings in Canada’s history. “These children and their teachers bore witness to unheard of cruelty. I want

everyone to know this: our entire country stands with you, on behalf of all Canadians,”said Prime Minister Mark Carney in an address to Parliament. He described Tumbler Ridge as a tough, blue-collar place of “miners, teachers, construction workers” who represent “the very best of Canada: resilient, compassionate and strong”. School shootings remain rare in Canada compared with the neighbouring United States. The tragedy ranks among the country’s deadliest, following the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting that claimed 22 lives and led to a ban on many assault weapons. Area schools will remain closed for the rest of the week. – AFP