https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaG07sTJENxyeTTfph1G *INTERNATIONAL NEWS* *20 February 2025* *NEWS HEADLINES* *How do Britons feel Keir Starmer compares to previous prime ministers?* *_Holy surprise_* *One of Europe's most wanted cocaine traffickers photographed in church in Sierra Leone* *Earth's glaciers melt so rapidly they release 273 BILLION tonnes of ice into the ocean each year* *NEWS IN DETAIL* *How do Britons feel Keir Starmer compares to previous prime ministers?* Liz Truss is the only recent prime minister that Britons prefer Keir Starmer to While Britons currently still favour Keir Starmer for the top job over his fellow major party leaders, they are less positive when comparing him against many of his predecessors at Number 10, particularly previous Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Nearly half of Britons (45%) say that Blair was a better prime minister than Starmer has been, compared to just 10% who feel Starmer is the greater head of government. The public similarly favour Brown’s tenure in Downing Street over Starmer’s by a margin of 42% to 12%. Margaret Thatcher is the Conservative prime minister judged to have performed better than Keir Starmer by the largest margin, with 44% of Britons seeing her premiership as better than Starmer’s, compared to 25% who see things the other way. Britons also tend to see David Cameron and John Major as better prime ministers than Starmer, by margins of 41% to 24% and 39% to 16% respectively. The public are divided when comparing Starmer to some of the more recent Conservative prime ministers. For the 35% of Britons who see Boris Johnson as a better leader than Keir Starmer, there are 32% who side with Starmer’s premiership over Johnson’s. Similar small margins can be seen when comparing Rishi Sunak against Starmer (33% vs 30%) and Theresa May against Starmer (32% vs 28%). Liz Truss, however, is the exception, with 43% of Britons saying that Keir Starmer has been the better prime minister of the two, compared to just 13% who see Truss’s seven-week tenure as superior. Who thinks Keir Starmer has been a better prime minister than his predecessors? Unsurprisingly, Labour voters see Keir Starmer as having been a better prime minister than any recent Conservative holder of the office. Lib Dems also typically see Starmer as preferable to his Tory predecessors, although they are more divided when comparing him against David Cameron (36% vs 32%) and are evenly split between Starmer and John Major (28% vs 28%). Conservative voters side with all recent Conservative prime ministers over Starmer, except for Liz Truss, on whom they are divided 24% to 24%. In fact, it is only Reform UK voters who think that Truss (41%) was a better prime minister than Starmer (14%). Voters for all four largest parties believe that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were better prime ministers than Starmer has been, with Blair favoured over Starmer by 51-53% of Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem voters, and 46% of Reform UK voters. _YouGov_ *_Holy surprise_* *One of Europe's most wanted cocaine traffickers photographed in church in Sierra Leone* Johannes Leijdekkers, who has been on the run for at least two years, is wanted in the Netherlands for smuggling more than seven tonnes of cocaine A notorious drug lord who is wanted in the Netherlands for smuggling more than seven tonnes of cocaine has suddenly popped up in Sierra Leone. Dutch national Johannes Leijdekkers, who has been on the run for at least two years, was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison in June last year by a Rotterdam court. In September Dutch police said he remained missing and offered a €200,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest. Leijdekkers, who has been living it up at nightclubs and house parties, according to the Guardian, appeared at a New Year's Day church service with Sierra Leone's presidential family. In footage posted on Facebook by the country's first lady, a sombre-looking Leijdekkers can be seen in a white shirt at the service. Responding to the footage, Dutch prosecutors said they believed Leijdekkers had been living in Sierra Leone for at least six months. However, after Reuters verified the footage using facial recognition technology, his presence has now been dated back to at least December 2022. The Guardian states that “multiple sources” have claimed he was present at a New Year’s Eve party that year at the Mamba Point resort in the capital, Freetown. “The testimony corroborated footage that has been circulating in Sierra Leone of a man who resembles Leijdekkers involved in a fracas at a nightclub,” the Guardian reports. “Analysis of the footage showed it had been filmed at Mamba Point. At one point the words ‘Happy New Year 2023’ can be seen on a screen in the background. It has also been reported that Leijdekkers is in a relationship with a daughter of Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio. Leijdekkers and Agnes Bio, Sierra Leone’s consul to Morocco, were seen sitting next to each other in the church service footage from 1 January this year. Bio, who is the president’s daughter from a previous relationship with Zainab Kandeh, serves as an alternate representative of Sierra Leone on the UN Security Council. Dutch police have described Leijdekkers as "one of the key players in international cocaine trafficking". He is also listed as one of the most-wanted fugitives by Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency. Leijdekkers, who has operated under various assumed numerous aliases and nicknames, including Bolle Jos, was sentenced in absentia by a Rotterdam court last June to 24 years in prison. He is wanted for six drug transports totalling 7,000kg of cocaine, an armed robbery in Finland, and ordering the murder of an associate. He was also given a 10-year sentence in absentia by a court in Belgium in September over an attempt to smuggle drugs via the port of Antwerp in 2020. Dutch prosecutor Wim de Bruin said the fugitive's return to the Netherlands was of "the highest priority". "We are doing everything we can in that regard but we cannot comment any further because of the ongoing investigation," he told the BBC. A spokesperson for the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) said that until recently he was suspected to be living in Turkey. Sierra Leonean authorities have not commented on the claims. West Africa is a major transit point for the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America. Sierra Leone recalled its ambassador from neighbouring Guinea on January 17, after seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine were found in an embassy vehicle. Guinean authorities impounded a vehicle belonging to Sierra Leone's embassy and detained its occupants on suspicion of possessing "substances suspected to be cocaine", Sierra Leone's Foreign Minister Alhaji Musa Timothy Kabba said. _Sunday World_ *Earth's glaciers melt so rapidly they release 273 BILLION tonnes of ice into the ocean each year* Melting glaciers are driving sea levels to rise at ever faster rates, a major new study has warned. An international team of scientists says Earth's glaciers are vanishing so fast they now release 273 billion tonnes of ice into the ocean each year. While the world's glaciers have lost five per cent of their mass on average, glaciers in central Europe have already shrunk by almost 40 per cent. Since 2000, this has increased the global sea level by 0.7 inches (1.8cm) - making glaciers the second biggest contributor to the rising ocean. Likewise, these staggering losses have turned glaciers into the most rapidly vanishing reserves of ice anywhere on the planet. Over the last quarter of a decade, glaciers have lost 18 per cent more ice than the Greenland Ice Sheet and more than double the amount lost in Antarctica. And the researchers say that this process is only likely to get faster and more out of control as the climate continues to warm. Dr Samuel Nussbaumer, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich and project manager of the study, says: 'Our observations and recent modelling studies indicate that glacier mass loss will continue and possibly accelerate until the end of this century.' A new study warns that the world's glaciers are melting so quickly that they release 273 billion tonnes of ice into the oceans each year. A new study warns that the world's glaciers are melting so quickly that they release 273 billion tonnes of ice into the oceans each year. Pictured: Satellite images of the Scott (left), Sheridan (middle), and Childs (right) glaciers in Alaska Under the coordination of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGS), 35 teams of scientists from around the world combined 233 estimates of glacier mass changes. These estimates included satellite observations gathered by the European Space Agency and measurements taken by dedicated researchers on the ground. Together, they provide an extremely comprehensive view of how rapidly the world's glaciers have been melting. In 2010, glaciers covered an area of 272,287 square miles (705,221 kilometres squared) and contained 121,728 billion tonnes of ice. However, by 2023, glaciers had released a total of 6,542 tonnes of ice into the ocean. That equates to yearly losses of 237 billion tonnes of ice, which increases global sea levels by 0.03 inches (0.75mm) each year on average. This means that melting glaciers are a bigger contributor to sea level rises than the melting of the Greenland or Antarctic Ice sheets. The study found that only the warming of the ocean contributed more to rising sea levels between 2000 and 2023. Earth's glaciers have shrunk by five per cent on average but the losses have been close to 40 per cent in some regions such as central Europe and the Middle East Dr Inés Dussaillant, a glaciologist from the University of Zurich who was involved in the analysis, says: 'When it comes to sea-level rise, the Arctic and Antarctic regions with their much larger glacier areas are the key players. 'Almost one-quarter of the glacier contribution to sea-level rise originates from Alaska.' As this trend continues, it could flood low-lying coastal areas like Florida and increase the risk posed by storm surges. A recent study conducted by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, predicted that global sea levels could rise by a staggering 6.2ft (1.9 metres) by 2100 if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions continue to increase. If global sea levels were to rise by 6.2ft (1.9 metres), towns and cities around the world could be plunged underwater - including Hull, London, and Cardiff. However, the researchers note that increasing sea levels is not the only problem that glacial melting creates. Dr Dussaillant says: 'Glaciers are vital freshwater resources, especially for local communities in Central Asia and Central Andes, where glaciers dominate runoff during warm and dry seasons.' Yet the researchers found that glaciers in the Southern Andes have lost 12.8 per cent of their mass while those in 'high mountain Asia' have lost 8.8 per cent since 2000. Leader of the study Professor Michael Zemp, from the University of Zurich, says: 'To put this in perspective, the 273 billion tonnes of ice lost in one single year amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three litres per person and day.' For the communities that rely on glacial meltwater to live, rapidly melting glaciers threaten to cut off the supply of this vital resource in the future. The researchers say their findings should act as a new baseline to measure the progress of the world's climate targets and as a point of reference for future studies. Dr Stephen Plummer, a researcher from the European Space Agency, says: 'These findings are not only crucial for advancing our scientific understanding of global glacier changes, but also provide a valuable baseline to help regions address the challenges of managing scarce freshwater resources and contribute to developing effective mitigation strategies to combat rising sea level.' _Mail Online_