Minister resigns over cut to international aid budget
International development minister Anneliese Dodds has quit her post over Sir Keir Starmer's decision to slash the overseas aid budget to pay for an increase in defence spending.
Ms Dodds posted on X: "It is with sadness that I have had to tender my resignation as Minister for International Development and for Women and Equalities. While I disagree with the ODA decision, I continue to support the government and its determination to deliver the change our country needs."
Around £6bn per year and transferred over to pay for defence.
That amounts to a reduction in aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Post
21 minutes ago
- New York Post
Anti-ICE protester roasted for homemade tactical suit, including leaf blower: ‘Bad cosplay of a minion'
An animated anti-ICE protester is being mocked online for wearing an eye-catching homemade tactical suit to Los Angeles riots — including a bicycle helmet, goggles and a leaf blower. The unidentified woman was impossible to miss as she was filmed yelling into a megaphone in a bright yellow helmet and clutching the large Ryobi leaf blower. 'This is our city and this was Mexico,' yelled the woman, who said she was 45 years old. 'You can't kick us out of the land that was ours,' she yelled. Asked why she was carrying a leaf blower, she said it was to protect herself from tear gas used by law enforcement — and 'to blow back at those motherf–kers.' The woman arrived at the protest in a helmet, goggles and chest protector. YouTube/Nick Shirley She also brought a leaf blower, which she was said was to blow away tear gas. YouTube/Nick Shirley The woman's makeshift protective fit quickly sparked ridicule online. 'Why is she doing a bad cosplay of a minion from Despicable Me?' a teacher, David Johnson, jabbed in an X post in response to the clip. 'Omg this has to be a satire,' another commented, while someone else asked: 'Is she ready to take on armed forces with a leaf blower?' Another X user joked that if she knows that California was briefly part of Mexico in the 19th century, 'she understands the concept of nations and borders then.' California and Los Angeles were part of Spain before Mexico gained its independence in 1821. Mexico was forced to surrender the land decades later after the US's victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848. Dozens of people in Los Angeles have been arrested since protests erupted on Friday in response to ICE raids. Mayor Karen Bass issued a curfew in the city's downtown area on Tuesday night in an attempt to curb the demonstrations, which have seen several cars — including police vehicles — torched by protesters.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
WhatsApp tells BBC it backs Apple in legal row with UK over user data
WhatsApp has told the BBC it is supporting Apple in its legal fight against the UK Home Office over user data privacy. The messaging app's boss, Will Cathcart, said the case "could set a dangerous precedent" by "emboldening other nations" to seek to break encryption, which is how tech firms keep their users' data private. Apple went to the courts after receiving a notice from the Home Office earlier this year demanding the right to access the data of its global customers if required in the interests of national security. It and other critics of the government's position say the request compromises the privacy of millions of users. The BBC has approached the Home Office for comment. It has previously declined to comment directly on the Apple case. But it has told the BBC the government's "first priority" is "to keep people safe" and the UK has a "longstanding position of protecting our citizens from the very worst crimes, such as child sex abuse and terrorism, at the same time as protecting people's privacy." WhatsApp has applied to submit evidence to the court which is hearing Apple's bid to have the Home Office request overturned. Mr Cathcart said: "WhatsApp would challenge any law or government request that seeks to weaken the encryption of our services and will continue to stand up for people's right to a private conversation online." This intervention from the Meta-owned platform represents a major escalation in what was an already extremely high-profile and awkward dispute between the UK and the US. Apple's row with the UK government erupted in February, when it emerged ministers were seeking the right to be able to access information secured by its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) system. The argument intensified in the weeks that followed, with Apple first pulling ADP in the UK, and then taking legal action against the Home Office. It also sparked outrage among US politicians, with some saying it was a "dangerous attack on US cybersecurity" and urging the US government to rethink its intelligence-sharing arrangements with the UK if the notice was not withdrawn. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US National Intelligence, described it as an "egregious violation" of US citizens' privacy. Civil liberties groups also attacked the UK government, saying what it was demanding had privacy and security implications for people around the world. Apple's ADP applies end-to-encryption (E2EE) to files such as photos and notes stored on the iCloud, meaning only the user has the "key" required to view them. The same technology protects a number of messaging services, including WhatsApp. That makes them very secure but poses a problem for law enforcement agencies. They can ask to see data with lower levels of protection - if they have a court warrant - but tech firms currently have no way to provide access to E2EE files, because no such mechanism currently exists. Tech companies have traditionally resisted creating such a mechanism not just because they say it would compromise users' privacy but because there would be no way of preventing it eventually being exploited by criminals. In 2023, WhatsApp said it would rather be blocked as a service than weaken E2EE. When Apple pulled ADP in the UK it said it did not want to create a "backdoor" that "bad actors" could take advantage of. Further complicating the argument around the Home Office's request is that it is made under the Investigatory Powers Act, the provisions of which are often secret. When the matter came to court, government lawyers argued that the case should not be made in public in any way for national security reasons. However, in April, a judge agreed with a number of news organisations, including the BBC, and said certain details should be made public. "It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place," his ruling stated. At the time, the government declined to comment on the proceedings but said: "The UK has robust safeguards and independent oversight to protect privacy and privacy is only impacted on an exceptional basis, in relation to the most serious crimes and only when it is necessary and proportionate to do so." What Apple pulling Advanced Data Protection means for you Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
We surveyed 1,500 Florida kids about cellphones and their mental health – what we learned suggests school phone bans may have important but limited effects
In Florida, a bill that bans cellphone use in elementary and middle schools, from bell to bell, recently sailed through the state Legislature. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law on May 30, 2025. The same bill calls for high schools in six Florida districts to adopt the ban during the upcoming school year and produce a report on its effectiveness by Dec. 1, 2026. Parents are divided on the issue. According to a report from Education Week, many parents want their kids to have phones for safety reasons – and don't support bans as a result. But in the debate over whether phones should be banned in K-12 schools – and if so, how – students themselves are rarely given a voice. We are experts in media use and public health who surveyed 1,510 kids ages 11 to 13 in Florida in November and December 2024 to learn how they're using digital media and the role tech plays in their lives at home and at school. Their responses were insightful – and occasionally surprising. Adults generally cite four reasons to ban phone use during school: to improve kids' mental health, to strengthen academic outcomes, to reduce cyberbullying and to help limit kids' overall screen time. But as our survey shows, it may be a bit much to expect a cellphone ban to accomplish all of that. Some of the questions in our survey shine light on kids' feelings toward banning cellphones – even though we didn't ask that question directly. We asked them if they feel relief when they're in a situation where they can't use their smartphone, and 31% said yes. Additionally, 34% of kids agreed with the statement that social media causes more harm than good. And kids were 1.5 to 2 times more likely to agree with those statements if they attended schools where phones are banned or confiscated for most of the school day, with use only permitted at certain times. That group covered 70% of the students we surveyed because many individual schools or school districts in Florida have already limited students' cellphone use. Some 'power users' of cellphone apps could likely use a break from them. Twenty percent of children we surveyed said push notifications on their phones — that is, notifications from apps that pop up on the phone's screen — are never turned off. These notifications are likely coming from the most popular apps kids reported using, like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. This 20% of children was roughly three times more likely to report experiencing anxiety than kids who rarely or never have their notifications on. They were also nearly five times more likely to report earning mostly D's and F's in school than kids whose notifications are always or sometimes off. Our survey results also suggest phone bans would likely have positive effects on grades and mental health among some of the heaviest screen users. For example, 22% of kids reported using their favorite app for six or more hours per day. These students were three times more likely to report earning mostly D's and F's in school than kids who spend an hour or less on their favorite app each day. They also were six times more likely than hour-or-less users to report severe depression symptoms. These insights remained even after ruling out numerous other possible explanations for the difference — like age, household income, gender, parent's education, race and ethnicity. Banning students' access to phones at school means these kids would not receive notifications for at least that seven-hour period and have fewer hours in the day to use apps. However, other data we collected suggests that bans aren't a universal benefit for all children. Seventeen percent of kids who attend schools that ban or confiscate phones report severe depression symptoms, compared with just 4% among kids who keep their phones with them during the school day. This finding held even after we ruled out other potential explanations for what we were seeing, such as the type of school students attend and other demographic factors. We are not suggesting that our survey shows phone bans cause mental health problems. It is possible, for instance, that the schools where kids already were struggling with their mental health simply happened to be the ones that have banned phones. Also, our survey didn't ask kids how long phones have been banned at their schools. If the bans just launched, there may be positive effects on mental health or grades yet to come. In order to get a better sense of the bans' effects on mental health, we would need to examine mental health indicators before and after phone bans. To get a long-term view on this question, we are planning to do a nationwide survey of digital media use and mental health, starting with 11- to 13-year-olds and tracking them into adulthood. Even with the limitations of our data from this survey, however, we can conclude that banning phones in schools is unlikely to be an immediate solution to mental health problems of kids ages 11-13. Students at schools where phones are barred or confiscated didn't report earning higher grades than children at schools where kids keep their phones. This finding held for students at both private and public schools, and even after ruling out other possible explanations like differences in gender and household income, since these factors are also known to affect grades. There are limits to our findings here: Grades are not a perfect measure of learning, and they're not standardized across schools. It's possible that kids at phone-free schools are in fact learning more than those at schools where kids carry their phones around during school hours – even if they earn the same grades. We asked kids how often in the past three months they'd experienced mistreatment online – like being called hurtful names or having lies or rumors spread about them. Kids at schools where phone use is limited during school hours actually reported enduring more cyberbullying than children at schools with less restrictive policies. This result persisted even after we considered smartphone ownership and numerous demographics as possible explanations. We are not necessarily saying that cellphone bans cause an increase in cyberbullying. What could be at play here is that at schools where cyberbullying has been particularly bad, phones have been banned or are confiscated, and online bullying still occurs. But based on our survey results, it does not appear that school phone bans prevent cyberbullying. Overall, our findings suggest that banning phones in schools may not be an easy fix for students' mental health problems, poor academic performance or cyberbullying. That said, kids might benefit from phone-free schools in ways that we have not explored, like increased attention spans or reduced eyestrain. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Justin D. Martin, University of South Florida and Chighaf Bakour, University of South Florida Read more: Do smartphones belong in classrooms? Four scholars weigh in How old should kids be to get phones? Kids with cellphones more likely to be bullies – or get bullied. Here are 6 tips for parents The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.