Government

The US president has long been unhappy with inside information about his administration being leaked to the media.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that those who leak information to the news media should be shot as punishment.

Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, as he urged supporters to vote in the November 3 midterm elections.

“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told the crowd. “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.”

Trump made the statement in an apparent reference to Operation Midnight Hammer, which saw the US launch a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025 during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

In the aftermath of the attack, several media outlets published findings from a preliminary report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

That report – which had not yet been released to the public – indicated that Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium away from the sites the US had bombed.

It also suggested that the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more modest than what Trump had asserted.

Trump, however, appeared to signal that the timing of the US attacks was among the leaked information. He accused the news media of putting military members in danger, calling out The New York Times and CNN in particular.

“They leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” Trump said, claiming he had to reschedule the bombing campaign two days later as a result.

“Somebody leaked. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.”

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media, and he has previously called for harsh punishment against any official who passes on confidential information to news outlets.

After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report became public, he blamed lawmakers in the Democratic Party for its release.

“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “They should be prosecuted!”

Under Trump, the White House has taken aggressive action to track down the source of leaks.

Staff in his administration, as well as officers in the military, have also been asked to take polygraph tests.

Journalists at several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at determining the sources of internal information made public.

The newspapers had reported on stories such as a botched Navy SEALs raid in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings against launching the Iran war.

Last year, the Department of Defense demanded that journalists who wished to access the Pentagon sign an agreement not to publish unauthorised material.

Much of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree, and a federal court struck down many of the new demands made on journalists at the department.

Trump has long raged against leakers, going back to his first term as president from 2017 to 2021.

Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin told a podcast in 2024 that Trump had called for leakers to be executed, after media outlets reported that he had taken shelter in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020.

Trump appeared to reprise that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms.

“Leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly,” Trump said. “To me, they are the scum of the earth.”

Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary under United States President Donald Trump, has drawn increasing criticism over claims about her professional background.

On Wednesday, a public accountability nonprofit filed a complaint with the State Bar of California over Zacharia’s repeated claims that she was a lawyer.

If made falsely, such a claim is a crime in the state. According to Zacharia’s LinkedIn profile, she received a degree from the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in 2011, but critics have questioned whether she received a licence to practise law, as she has suggested.

“Ms. Zacharia has represented herself as a lawyer repeatedly to buttress her reputation and credibility as a television legal commentator and now as the White House spokesperson,” Michelle Kuppersmith, the head of the Washington, DC-based Campaign for Accountability, said in a statement. “Yet it seems it was all a lie.”

Her organisation filed the complaint with California’s bar office, a regulatory agency that oversees the licensing of lawyers.

“In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime,” Kuppersmith said.

“The State Bar should investigate whether Ms. Zacharia has misled the public about her credentials and hold her accountable if she has.”

Zacharia, a commentator who has appeared frequently on Fox News and Newsmax, began her term as White House press secretary on Tuesday.

In a news briefing that day, she seemed to falter and speak haltingly, sometimes having to repeat herself.

Her appearance was brief, lasting under 15 minutes. She spent much of her time at the podium thanking Trump for the opportunity and reading from a prepared statement.

“I have wanted to work for him for a very long time,” Zacharia said.

Later, she joined Trump outside the White House to speak further with reporters. When asked where she had passed the bar exam, Zacharia replied, “When I moved to China.”

The response was an apparent reference to a three-year stint in which she claims she worked at a law firm in Beijing.

A biography on the website for the pro-Trump women’s organisation Trumpettes USA Inc says she “served as outside counsel” for the World Bank and International Finance Corporation while in Beijing.

Her LinkedIn profile, meanwhile, indicates Zacharia served as an associate at the Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing from 2011 to 2013. More recently, from 2024 to 2025, it lists her as general counsel for Fix California, a voter rights group started by a Trump administration official.

On her Instagram profile, Zacharia describes herself as a “Wife, Mom, & Lawyer”.

But Zacharia’s assertion that she passed the bar in China has fuelled media scrutiny. China’s equivalent of the bar exam, the notoriously difficult National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination, can only be taken by Chinese citizens.

China has, on rare occasion, allowed foreigners to practise law in the country if they have several years of experience in their home countries first.

But that does not appear to be the case for Zacharia. According to media reports, Zacharia has not been found to be licensed as a lawyer in any state in the US.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Zacharia responded to the scrutiny by saying, “I practice international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials.”

Since Trump’s return to office for a second term, Zacharia has spent several months as a communications adviser at the Department of Homeland Security.

Since June, she has also worked as the senior communications adviser at the Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns the Truth Social platform.

President Laura Fernandez says mega-prison is part of ‘tough-on-crime model’ embraced by her government.

Costa Rica has announced the opening of a new mega-prison amid near-record homicide levels and growing organised crime, as countries across the region embrace police crackdowns that have proven popular but often weaken key civil liberties.

President Laura Fernandez opened the High-Containment Centre Against Organised Crime, or CACCO, on Wednesday. The prison will have capacity for 5,100 people, equivalent to about 20 percent of the country’s current prison population.

“The CACCO will force criminals to face a new model – a tough-on-crime model. Costa Rica will become a global benchmark for prison security,” Fernandez said during an inauguration ceremony.

Candidates across Latin America have embraced mega-prisons, seeking to replicate the policies of Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, who has won widespread popularity through a campaign of mass arrests and the suspension of basic rights in the name of combating crime.

Costa Rica, long spared from high levels of violent crime compared with its neighbours, saw a record-setting 905 homicides in 2023, followed by 876 in 2024 and 873 in 2025.

Analysts say that is partly due to increased fighting between criminal groups over lucrative drug routes.

The first transfers to Costa Rica’s new mega-prison will take place at the end of October, with Justice Minister Gabriel Aguilar saying the facility will help the government reassert control over the prison system and diminish infiltration by organised crime.

Right-wing leaders in other Latin American countries have also sought to replicate the mega-prison model.

Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, inaugurated in July, has announced plans to tour El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), in anticipation of creating a similar facility in her country. CECOT can hold about 40,000 people.

In Colombia, meanwhile, newly elected leader Abelardo de la Espriella campaigned for the presidency, in part, on a pledge to build 10 mega-prisons. He took office in August.

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, is currently in the midst of its own presidential election, and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has advanced to the final round of the vote. His platform also includes building five mega-prisons, citing the Salvadoran model.

El Salvador first imposed a “state of exception” under Bukele in 2022, expanding police and military powers.

That emergency declaration has been credited with a sharp drop in that country’s homicides, but rights groups say it has led to severe rights abuses and has been weaponised against critics of the government.

The “state of exception” has also resulted in mass arrests and mass trials, with rulings delivered against hundreds of defendants at a time. Some defendants have been detained without charge.

While the Bukele administration frequently touts its success in dismantling the gangs, the government has continuously extended the state of exception since it was first imposed.

Critics have warned that conditions inside mega-prisons are often poor, with imprisoned people facing overcrowding, due process violations and alleged torture in facilities like CECOT.

Victims’ groups, however, have denounced the ruling as ‘selective’ justice that exonerates a former government head.

A Mexican judge has closed the case against Francisco Garduno, former head of the country’s immigration agency, for crimes related to the 2023 fire at a Ciudad Juarez detention centre that killed 40 migrants and injured 30 others.

The incident was the deadliest event ever to occur at a Mexican immigration centre, and critics said it exposed the shortcomings and irregularities in the country’s detention system.

Garduno faced trial for the crimes of abuse of public office and dereliction of duty after footage from the fire showed guards had failed to respond to cries for help.

On Tuesday, Judge Victor Manlio Hernandez Calderon ruled that Garduno had fulfilled the court-mandated measures required to address the damage. But victims rejected that decision and announced they would appeal.

“Yesterday, corruption and the impunity of politicians protected by power won again,” the Foundation for Justice, one of the NGOs representing some of the victims, wrote on social media on Wednesday.

The victims have also compared the judge’s decision to close the criminal case to a de facto exoneration for Garduno.

In their view, the ruling “confirms that justice in Mexico is selective” and denies the victims “full reparations” and concrete guarantees that such an event will not be repeated.

Miguel Zenteno, one of the foundation’s lawyers, noted that the ruling is not yet final because it will be appealed and because another injunction is pending against the court-mandated reparations, which critics say failed to meet the standards for serious events.

On March 27, 2023, some 70 men were crammed into a locked dormitory with no ventilation and barely any water at the Ciudad Juarez immigration detention centre, on the border with El Paso, Texas.

As night fell, a small group set fire to some mattresses in protest, and within seconds, smoke engulfed the entire area.

Security cameras recorded the guards leaving the area despite cries for help. They made no attempt to open the gates of the dormitory. Only the women, held in another cell, were released. Most of the victims were Central Americans and Venezuelans.

Garduno, a former prison guard and current official at the Ministry of Education, led the National Migration Institute (INM) starting in 2019 and continued in the role until 2025 despite the fire.

The judge had previously ordered Garduno to compensate the families, provide them with free specialised medical care, issue a public apology, provide human rights training to migration personnel and guarantee that the events would not be repeated.

Zenteno acknowledged that the measures were implemented only partially because Garduno did not pay the damages as stipulated by the legal process.

Instead, Zenteno pointed out that the funds came from the INM, and the payments did not fully compensate the families. Furthermore, he added, the victims were not even informed how to access free medical services, and the apology “was a mere formality, not substantive”.

In addition to Garduno, prosecutors accused another former director of the institute of the same crimes.

Six immigration agents – including a military officer and a private security guard – and the two migrants accused of starting the fire are charged with homicide and assault. Most of the officials remain free pending trial.

The immigration agency has rejected a report from a government watchdog, making suggestions for improved body camera policy.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a United States agency that has taken a central role in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, has rejected a government report calling for its agents to wear body cameras that automatically activate.

On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that provides research to Congress, released a report recommending an update to ICE guidelines for camera usage.

It suggested that “automated camera activation” would be helpful in situations where “unexpected and unplanned incidents, unrelated to sensitive operations, result in use of force by or against personnel”.

“Given the important role of body-worn cameras in law enforcement activities, we maintain that additional controls are needed to help ensure that ICE personnel capture footage in accordance with policy,” the report said.

Automatic activation, it added, would address difficulties ICE agents face in manually turning on their cameras during enforcement operations.

But ICE has rejected the recommendation for automatic activation, which could be triggered by an agent pulling a gun or turning on a car siren. The agency cited privacy concerns.

But the Trump administration faces public pressure to improve transparency during its immigration raids.

Agents from ICE and other agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have faced accusations of excessive force and civil liberties violations.

In January, two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – were shot to death in separate shootings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during immigration operations.

The New York Times estimated in July that immigration agents had opened fire on at least 25 people since the start of Trump’s second term. A CBS News review updated this week counts at least 30 shootings, with nine people killed and 13 others wounded.

ICE has often blamed such incidents on aggression against its agents, and it has argued that its officers have opened fire to defend themselves from danger.

But in several cases, that rationale has come under scrutiny.

Critics argued that video footage in Good’s fatal shooting disproved government statements alleging that she had weaponised her vehicle against agents. Her car, according to observers, appeared to be turning away from agents, not towards them.

In another case, ICE agent Christian Castro was accused of making false statements about a shooting that resulted in injury to Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man living in Minneapolis.

Castro faces federal charges for allegedly lying about being attacked with a snow shovel and broom before the shooting, after video footage contradicted his account. Castro pleaded not guilty last month.

More recently, on October 8, immigration agents shot a man named Oscar Belgal in New York City while his five-year-old son was in the backseat of his car. ICE stated that Belgal appeared to be “going towards officers” in his car when they opened fire.

On Tuesday, a judge rejected the government’s effort to have Belgal deported.

Activists say better recording procedures for body camera footage could help clarify what happened in such incidents.

But the Trump administration has largely refused to implement reforms to ICE protocol.

Earlier this year, Democrats in Congress delayed funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, on the basis that significant changes needed to be made to reduce incidents of excessive force.

The department said on Wednesday that automatically recording cameras could result in “the unauthorised recording of sensitive interactions with informants or victims”.

The agency added that all ICE offices had received body cameras as of August 5, but that training in their use was still ongoing and would be finished “soon”.

Mexico will require the digital platforms to protect minors from violent and sexual content.

Mexican ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠President Claudia ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sheinbaum signed a presidential decree requiring digital platforms, including TikTok, Meta and X, to protect children from violent, sexual and other harmful content online.

The decree establishes that digital platforms must, by design, restrict exposure to content involving violence, harassment or sexual abuse, as well as immediately remove any risky material from the profiles of minors.

Sheinbaum said on Wednesday that the government would back legislation to penalise companies that fail to implement the decree.

“If no progress is made, it would become a law,” she told a news conference on Tuesday.

“The goal is for digital platforms to take on some of the responsibility and refrain from disseminating, promoting, or spreading content related to this type of information — including criminal acts or violent behaviour,” Sheinbaum had said earlier when she indicated she would introduce the decree.

The decree comes after an attack by two 18-year-olds on their former high school in the northern ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌state of Coahuila in early October that killed one and wounded three others.

Digital platforms will have one month to comply with the decree, government adviser Luisa Maria Alcalde said.

Officials said they had already discussed the matter with representatives of social media outlets and streaming platforms such as Meta, Microsoft, Apple, TikTok, Google, X and Huawei.

Last August, Meta, for example, agreed to pay an $18bn settlement in a major US federal case accusing it of endangering children, and was forced to introduce new safety features to platforms including Instagram and Facebook. The lawsuit alleged Meta had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠retaining, and using personal data from children under 13 without proper parental consent.

Mexico’s move follows a broader global push to protect minors online, with governments in Europe and Australia tightening oversight of digital platforms and US states pursuing a range of child-safety measures.

Brazil has also moved to strengthen protections for children online. Such measures have raised questions over how to protect minors while safeguarding privacy and freedom of expression.

Tehran municipality has launched a series of welfare initiatives to help residents cope with soaring living costs, but the measures have raised questions about their financing and effectiveness, as well as whether the local authority is taking on responsibilities better handled by Iran’s national government.

The local authority has launched four projects it says are aimed at protecting citizens, including a housing project, freezes on the prices of 12 basic goods, and a maternity package.

Questions have been raised about how they will be funded and whether the municipality is overstepping its traditional functions.

In Iran, municipalities are responsible for local services and urban management, while the national government oversees broader economic policy, including efforts to control inflation.

Iranian law does give municipalities some responsibilites beyond conventional urban services, but Article 55 of Iran’s Municipal Law does call for municipalities to provide for public food markets, make certain essential goods more affordable, and provide social welfare facilities and low-cost housing.

The dispute is therefore less about whether Tehran municipality can provide the services, and more about their scale and financing.

The municipality’s price-freezing initiative, dubbed the “Zero Inflation” project, has been the most controversial. It comes as year-on-year inflation reached nearly 90 percent last month, while annual food inflation hit 108.8 percent.

Doubts have been raised about how the project will be funded and its effectiveness. Others believe that the measures could fuel inequality between the capital and other cities.

They are viewed as steps to address the huge economic challenges faced by Tehran residents, worsened since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28.

Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani said the municipality had recently guaranteed prices ranging between 5 percent and 50 percent below market rates for the next six months.

Yousef Akandeh, a political activist, told Al Jazeera that freezing the prices of some goods or providing free services will not reduce inflation to zero alone.

“Even if we assume that the Tehran municipality succeeded in stabilising the prices of 12 basic goods, what about the rise in rents, medicines, transportation prices, and the rest of living expenses,” Akandeh asked.

Real steps to tackle inflation, Akandeh said, would have to begin with controlling liquidity growth and monetary discipline, which he said are nearly impossible amid the ongoing war.

The municipality has also introduced a maternity support programme offering mothers of children born this year monthly credits worth up to 40 million rials ($15) for two years for each newborn.

Akandeh raised the issue of institutional overlap, noting that a similar national scheme already exists.

“The government implements a similar package and provides monthly financial amounts for all newborns across the country and not just in Tehran, and if the municipality’s package is independent of it, the Tehrani family may benefit from the national and municipal programme simultaneously,” Akandeh said.

Receiving support from both programmes would not, in itself, indicate wrongdoing. But critics are instead raising the question of whether it is an appropriate use of Tehran’s municipal resources, particularly when the city faces competing spending demands.

Amir Dabiri Mehr, a former adviser in the Tehran municipality, told Al Jazeera that although supporting the homeless falls under the municipality’s social responsibilities, the problem lies in a lack of transparency. The municipality is funded by taxes and building density licences.

“The people have the right to know what the municipality spends within the framework of its original tasks, and in tasks it has chosen for itself, and where it gets its resources from?” Dabiri Mehr said.

The municipality-affiliated Hamshahri newspaper said that the “Zero Inflation” project is not funded by municipal budget subsidies, but through direct purchases from producers and reducing commercial profit margins in council-run stores.

The biggest crisis facing Tehran’s residents is housing, which is the national government’s responsibility, Mehr said. Food and living expenses are the national government’s responsibility.

“If the goal is to solve the people’s problems, it seems that the biggest problem facing the residents of Tehran today is the housing crisis, and this dilemma cannot be solved by building an apartment building consisting of a few residential units,” he said.

Al Jazeera attempted to contact the Tehran municipality for comment but received no response.

Tehran Mayor Zakani has, however, defended the financing arrangements, telling a local newspaper, Hamshahri, that the Zero Inflation initiative would not rely on direct subsidies from the municipal budget, but instead on purchasing goods directly from producers and reducing commercial profit margins in city-run stores.

Zakani also said that the programme would draw on municipal resources, bank financing, and partnerships.

The Caribbean country of Jamaica has received its first third-country deportations from the United States, as part of an expanding set of international agreements under President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, 22 deportees from the US arrived at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica.

Media reports indicate they were subsequently boarded onto a bus and taken to an undisclosed location.

Such deportations – which often involve non-citizens who have no ties to their destinations – have faced widespread condemnation from human rights groups and advocates who have questioned their legality.

But Jamaica is among a growing number of countries to accept third-country deportations, as part of Trump’s effort to implement the largest mass deportation campaign in US history.

At least 35 countries have entered into third-country deportation agreements with the US, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, an advocacy project affiliated with the groups Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The Washington Post reported last month that the Trump administration has earmarked roughly $410m to support such efforts.

Jamaica signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding in June to receive third-country deportations. Under the plan, Jamaica will transfer any deportees to their home countries or other destinations after their arrival.

The country’s government has also pledged not to accept any deportees with criminal records.

“The government reiterates that this is a transit arrangement intended to facilitate the return of Third Country Nationals to their country of origin or other receiving countries,” Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security and Peace and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade said in a joint statement.

It added that care for the deportees will be supported by the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations organisation.

“The arrangement will not be funded by the Government of Jamaica,” the joint statement added.

Opposition leaders in Jamaica, however, spoke out against the deportation, framing the deal as a threat to the island’s security. They also questioned why the agreement had not been debated publicly.

“Jamaicans are being asked to trust a secret document that touches their security, their communities and their public services,” said Fitz Jackson, the opposition spokesperson on national security.

In response to Jackson’s statement, Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith argued that any questions about the deportation deal “have all been answered”. She also indicated that the US has not agreed to make the deal public.

“As I explained before, some countries have agreed to receive criminals, we have not,” she wrote on social media.

“Some countries have had their agreements made public, but our partner has not agreed for this one to be.”

Legal challenges against the third-country deportations are ongoing in the US, where advocates have argued that deportees are being removed from the country without due process of law, the constitutional right to a fair hearing.

Critics have also argued that third-country deportations sometimes send immigrants to countries where they may face danger.

Some of the recipient countries, such as South Sudan, are in the midst of ongoing conflict or have faced accusations of serious human rights abuses.

Opponents have even said the third-country deportations are being used as a backdoor method for circumventing court protection orders.

Such orders may prohibit the US government from returning certain immigrants to their home countries, for fear of violence and persecution.

But by sending immigrants to third countries, critics say the Trump administration avoids violating such protection orders – though in some cases, the third country has then returned the deportee to the country identified in the US protection order.

In a February report by Democrats on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one official said anonymously that the purpose of such far-flung deportations was to instil fear.

“The point is that the administration can threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere,” the official said. “The point is to scare people.”

The amount of time children in England spend on screens at school could be harming their “physical and developmental health”, a group of more than 150 clinicians has warned.

GPs, paediatricians and other specialists said in an open letter to Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Health Secretary Yvette Cooper that tablets and laptops are being used without a full understanding of their long-term health impacts, including on eye health.

The clinicians said they are prescribing glasses, hearing aids and speech therapy to children “for a problem that is unintentionally being made worse in our schools”.

The government said it was consulting on screen time guidance for children aged five to 18 but that technology could be a powerful learning tool if used properly.

The group of clinicians said nearly one million children are using screens in most lessons, despite studies suggesting a rise in short-sightedness.

They pointed to an analysis of 276 studies covering 5.4 million participants around the world.

That analysis, they claimed, found a rise in short-sightedness among children and adolescents from around 24% in 1990 to almost 36% by 2023, warning the condition is associated with an increased risk of a range of eye health problems.

Many children now spend longer on screens in the classroom than is recommended in a 24-hour period, the letter said, adding: “As a country, we need to wake up to this now, and start rolling back screen use in schools before the damage compounds further.”

One of its signatories was, Dr Becky Foljambe NHS GP and founder of Health Professionals for Safer Screens. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme parents had not been given the chance to “opt out” of the “excessive” use of screens in schools, which risks children “just not thriving” in education.

She said an “explosion” in short-sightedness “cannot be put down to genetics alone”.

Foljambe said it was a “lazy argument” to advocate for screen use to prepare children for a digital work, adding: “They also need their sleep, their eyesight, they need rest, they need ability to critically think and appraise.”

“We are conscious that some of this evidence is still surfacing but the direction of travel is consistent across multiple, independent, and in some cases very large, bodies of research,” the letter continued.

It also warned that children with special educational needs are “disproportionately” directed to screen-based learning.

A Department for Education spokesperson said the government was developing new screen-time guidance for children aged five to 18, and will consult on the safety of artificial intelligence and educational technology in schools.

They said: “Used well, technology can be a powerful tool to support learners who need it and free up teachers to deliver the excellent education every child deserves.”

It comes after a ban on smartphones in schools in England came into force in June, making individual schools and trusts legally responsible for being phone-free throughout the day.

Simon caps a Pacific season of record-breaking intensity, as deadly storms wreak havoc from Hawaii to Mexico.

At least two people have died in Mexico after Hurricane Simon and former tropical storm Rachel brought torrential rain and catastrophic flooding to Pacific coast communities.

At a Monday news briefing, Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado confirmed that a 71-year-old man had died during Hurricane Simon after a retaining wall collapsed under the weight of intense precipitation.

According to the Guerrero-based news agency IRZA, the man, identified by his family as Albino Moreno Jimenez, had been feeding his animals on the western outskirts of Chilpancingo when a wall came crashing down on him.

A second death was announced later in the day in the state of Baja California along Mexico’s western coast. There, Governor Marina del Pilar said that a young girl had died from the effects of what was once Hurricane Rachel, which peaked in early October as a Category 3 storm.

At least 10 more people remain missing in Baja California, according to the governor. Eight were reported missing in the city of Ensenada, on the Pacific coast, and two in the fishing town of San Felipe on the Gulf of California.

The figures remain preliminary, with local newspaper La Jornada reporting a higher death toll of two in Baja California and 11 missing.

Death toll expected to rise

Rachel made landfall in the Mexican state as a post-tropical cyclone, and its remnants have travelled north through southern California in the southwestern United States.

Hurricane Simon, meanwhile, has churned off the coast of Mexico since the weekend. By late Monday morning, it had weakened from a powerful Category 4 storm to a Category 2.

Its maximum sustained winds had slowed slightly to around 155km/h (100mph), according to the US National Hurricane Center. Its centre was about 115km west-southwest of Cabo Corrientes, a cape in the state of Jalisco, drifting west at 3km/h.

Forecasters predict Simon could make landfall on Thursday or Friday. Hurricane warnings remain in effect for western Mexico, which is vulnerable to landslides and deadly surf conditions as a result of the storm.

Experts warn the death toll from both storms could rise, and officials have called on residents to exercise caution amid the devastation wrought by downed trees, high winds and floodwaters.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported the death of a cliff diver, Juan Patines, who was killed in Mazatlan, the northwestern state of Sinaloa, after jumping into the sea on Saturday night.

According to Mexican media, the heavy surf hampered his efforts to return to shore amid dangerous coastal conditions associated with Hurricane Simon. Local authorities later halted cliff-diving at the site due to hazardous sea conditions.

Officials have yet to confirm whether his death was directly linked to Hurricane Simon.

A record Pacific storm season

Rachel and Simon have battered Mexico’s western coast as part of an extraordinary stretch of hurricane activity across the Pacific.

The northeastern and central Pacific Ocean has experienced a record storm season this year, fuelled in part by the El Nino weather phenomenon, which results in warming waters in parts of the region. Twenty-one named storms have been recorded in the Pacific so far.

On Sunday, Simon tipped the region to a historic high for accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), a metric of the combined strength and longevity of tropical storms. This year has already surpassed the previous high set in 2018.

The US island chain of Hawaii has been among the hardest-hit places. In August, Hurricane Lala unleashed ruinous flooding on Hawaii’s Big Island as a Category 1 storm, killing a 93-year-old woman and destroying some 100 homes, according to state officials.

A few weeks later, Hurricane Lowell, a Category 4 hurricane at its peak, struck the Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Niihau, where powerful winds, storm surge and flooding overwhelmed towns and roads.

Roughly 90 percent of Kauai’s power customers were plunged into darkness as a result of electricity outages. At least two deaths were linked to Lowell.

In late September, Hurricane Nolo brought another round of flooding and landslides to the Hawaiian islands, though it did not make landfall.