BRUSSELS (Anadolu) – One in five people in the EU is at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the bloc’s statistical office reported on Friday. “In 2020, there were 75.3 million people at risk of poverty in the EU,” Eurostat said in a press release, adding that “27.6 million were severely materially and socially deprived, and 27.1 million lived in a household with low work intensity”, Anadolu news agency reported. In total, 96.5 million people representing 21.9% of the EU population fell into at least one of the three above-mentioned categories of poverty and exclusion risks. About 5.9 million people simultaneously experienced risk of poverty, social and material deprivation and lived in a household with low work. Among the 27 EU member states, Romania has the highest share of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion with 35.8% of its citizens experiencing at least one of these difficulties. The southeastern European country is followed by Bulgaria, Greece, and Spain, with 33.6%, 27.5%, and 27% of its people at the risk, respectively. Meanwhile, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia had the lowest share of their population at risk of poverty or social exclusion with 11.5%, 13.8%, and 14.3%, respectively.

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BEIJING (AFP) – Three Chinese taikonauts successfully docked with China’s new space station, state media said, on what is set to be Beijing’s longest crewed mission to date and the latest landmark in its drive to become a major space power. The three blasted off shortly after midnight on Saturday (16:00 GMT Friday) from the Jiuquan launch centre in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, Xinhua said, with the team expected to spend six months at the Tiangong space station. After the launch, the China Manned Space Agency declared it a success and said the crew members “were in good shape”, according to Xinhua. The Shenzhou-13 vessel carrying the three then docked hours later with the radial port of the space station, Xinhua said in a brief dispatch on Saturday morning. The mission – twice as long as its 90-day predecessor – will set up equipment and test technology for future construction on the Tiangong station. Mission commander Zhai Zhigang, 55, a former fighter pilot who performed the country’s first spacewalk in 2008, said the team would undertake “more complex” spacewalks than during previous missions. A previous record-breaking space crew – making the first mission to Tiangong – returned to Earth in September after three months on the space station.

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LONDON (The Independent) – Austerity measures introduced by David Cameron’s coalition government after 2010 can be linked to tens of thousands of additional deaths, according to a damning new study. A paper published by researchers at the University of York concluded that reductions in funding to health can be linked to an extra 57,550 fatalities. Researchers looked at the healthcare spending of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat government after 2010. The researchers said the results of their paper confirmed what had been reported in previous studies. But the conclusions of causal impact of social care, public health and healthcare expenditure on mortality in England, published in the BMJ Open journal, make “a major contribution by additionally estimating the effect of social care expenditure”, its authors stated. After forming a coalition with then Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, David Cameron’s government embarked on a series of public spending cuts which broadly became known as austerity. Cameron and the Conservative Party announced the cuts were necessary to get the public finances back in order following the 2008 financial crash.

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ROME (Al Jazeera) – A ship’s captain who handed 101 migrants over to the Libyan coastguard after rescuing them in the Mediterranean Sea has been given a one-year jail term, in the first such case heard by Italy’s courts. Giuseppe Sotgiu was found guilty of violating international laws that forbid the forced return of people to countries where they are at risk. He was piloting the Asso 28, an Italian-flagged offshore ship supplying oil platforms off Libya, at the time of the rescue on July 30, 2018. The migrants – including five pregnant women and five minors – were picked up from an unseaworthy dinghy in international waters and handed over to the Libyan coastguard at the port of Tripoli. International organizations operating rescue operations told Al Jazeera that, albeit it being a “step in the right direction”, the judgement punishes one individual while it neglects to address the responsibility of Libya and European Union states. “If you condemn a person for handing migrants to [the Libyan coastguard], you are putting into question the legitimacy of that authority,” Giorgia Linardi, the spokeswoman in Italy for the German non-governmental organization Sea Watch, told Al Jazeera.

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WEST JAVA (Al Jazeera) – Eleven students drowned and 10 others were rescued during a school outing for a river clean-up in Indonesia’s West Java province. Local officials said on Saturday that 150 students, aged 13 to 15, were participating in the clean-up along the banks of the Cileueur river when 21 of them slipped into the water. “The weather was good and there was no flash flood,” said Deden Ridwansyah, chief of the Bandung Search and Rescue Office. “Those children who drowned were holding each others’ hands. One of them slipped and the others followed.” Residents and a rescue team managed to save 10 of the students, who were sent to a nearby hospital. All victims were found and the search ended on Friday night. The students apparently were not wearing flotation devices. Some reports said they were trying to cross the river, which is popular for rafting and inner tubing, when they fell in.