LONDON (AP) — The former Prince Andrew made money by subletting three cottages on the estate where he lived rent-free for two decades, according to a report on the royal family’s properties released Friday by the U.K. public spending watchdog.

It also disclosed that his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, live in rent-controlled palace properties paid for by their uncle, King Charles III.

The National Audit Office report said Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received income from renting out the cottages on the Royal Lodge estate, his home near Windsor Castle for more than 20 years. A lease for Royal Lodge signed in 2003 shows he paid only a nominal fee known as a “peppercorn rent” for the property, which included a 30-room mansion and eight cottages, three of which he was allowed to sublet.

The amount of income was not included in the report, an omission that Margaret Hodge, a Labour member of the House of Lords and former head of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, said was concerning.

“It’s shocking that the National Audit Office was not able to establish how much money Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor secured from the properties he let,” she said.

The audit office review was carried out at the request of lawmakers after Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles and evicted from Royal Lodge by his brother, the king, following revelations about his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor moved earlier this year to the king’s Sandringham Estate in eastern England.

In February, the former prince, 66, was arrested and questioned by police about allegations of misconduct in public office. Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and has not been charged.

The audit office report shows that 11 working royals receive free housing within palaces in return for their official duties. They include the king and Queen Camilla, Prince William and his wife Catherine, and the king’s youngest brother, Prince Edward, and his wife Sophie.

William and Kate also have a family home near Windsor, for which they pay rent of 307,200 pounds (about $413,000) a year.

The rents on Eugenie’s cottage in Kensington Palace and Beatrice’s apartment in St. James’s Palace are set at a portion of open-market value that has ranged in recent years between 50% and 68%. Both rents are paid out of the Privy Purse, the monarch’s private funds.

The pair are not considered “working” royals who carry out public duties, and both have outside jobs.

Buckingham Palace said the audit office report “is in line with the royal household’s commitment to transparency. We hope that the findings will help correct, clarify or contextualize a number of points regarding royal properties.”

Critics of the monarchy cited the findings as evidence the royal family does not pay its way.

“It shows an absolute total contempt for the taxpayer, not only that Andrew was able to have a peppercorn rent for a gigantic property, but then to make potentially millions on the side from subletting properties,” said former Liberal Democrat lawmaker Norman Baker, a longtime critic of royal finances.

Mountbatten-Windsor has featured in millions of pages of documents about Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January, showing how the wealthy financier used an international web of rich, powerful friends to gain influence and sexually exploit young women and girls.

British police are looking into claims that Mountbatten-Windsor sent confidential trade information to the disgraced financier when he served as U.K. trade envoy from 2001 to 2011. Detectives say they may broaden their investigation to include allegations of sexual misconduct and have appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Mountbatten-Windsor has rarely been seen in public since he moved to the Sandringham Estate, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of London. He was photographed Thursday in a car with a large bruise on his face.

The Times of London said, without citing sources, that the bruise was the result of a “nonserious medical condition.”

By Sarah Young

LONDON, June 5 (Reuters) – Britain is running out of time to boost its defences in response to the threat posed by recent Russian actions, the country’s military chief said on Friday, after months of delays to the country’s Defence Investment Plan.

“Russia is definitely raising the stakes and risks crossing a line,” Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton told BBC Radio. “We need to spend more on defence and do it faster.”

The Defence Investment Plan will lay out the funding for military equipment and services to ensure the armed forces move to a state of “warfighting readiness”, but reports say it has been held up since last year by budget rows within government.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed on a visit to a drone factory on Friday that the plan would be published before a July 7 NATO summit, following a period of close work between government and military leaders.

“It is no exaggeration to say that we’re living in more dangerous and volatile times than at any time in my life,” Starmer said.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called on Starmer and other European leaders to spend more on defence and become less reliant on Washington for the continent’s security, is due to attend the summit.

THREATS GREATEST SINCE COLD WAR

Knighton said the risks and threats to Britain were greater than at any time since the Cold War, and the government needed to spend on defence accordingly.

“The challenge for ministers is to make those difficult trade-off decisions,” he said.

Media reports say military chiefs have warned Starmer that there is a £28 billion shortfall in funding over the next four years, and say that is behind the delay to the investment plan.

Starmer has pledged the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, aiming to lift it to 3% of national output in the next parliament, but he has been criticised for not following through on his promises.

George Robertson, who served in the 1990s as Britain’s defence secretary and then as chief of NATO, said in April that there was a gap between Starmer’s rhetoric and action and he was “not willing to make the necessary investment” in defence.

Knighton said Russia was stepping up its threat, with more incursions into British airspace and through regular “probing, challenging, testing” of defences, as well as being behind cyberattacks, sabotage and attempts to steal technology.

“We do need to step up and enhance our capability as the threats from potential adversaries grow,” he said.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)

By Gergely Szakacs

BUDAPEST, June 5 (Reuters) – Hungary’s government will submit to parliament next week anti-corruption legislation needed to release billions of euros worth of suspended European Union funding, Transport and Investment Minister David Vitezy said on Friday.

Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who ousted veteran nationalist leader Viktor Orban in an April election, secured the release of 16.4 billion euros ($19.1 billion) last month on promises to scrap Orban reforms deemed by the EU to have harmed democracy.

Hungary’s forint currency and bond markets have rallied strongly on Magyar’s pro-EU pivot and his pledge to prepare the country for adoption of the euro by the end of this decade.

“This will be a comprehensive anti-corruption bill that also improves the transparency of Hungarian public life,” Vitezy told reporters. “This represents the rule-of-law criteria that will allow us to bring the EU funds home.”

He said the legislation would enable Hungary to tap up to 10 billion euros from the EU’s pandemic recovery fund to finance transport and renewable energy projects, as well as funds to support small businesses and rental housing construction.

TRANSPARENCY

The reforms will boost the powers of Hungary’s Integrity Authority, an anti-graft watchdog, and create more transparency in the asset declarations of public officials, with any omissions punishable by up to two years in jail, Vitezy said.

He said the government would inject some 3.5 billion euros of EU recovery funds into the state development bank MFB to help finance some of these projects and avoid any loss of funding ahead of an end-August cut-off date.

Hungary will also be able to offset 2.6 billion euros worth of investments previously drawn from its own resources with EU funding, Vitezy said, boosting the government’s room for manoeuvre with the budget following a surge in the deficit driven by heavy pre-election spending under Orban.

Vitezy said some 4.2 billion euros of EU cohesion money would be used to finance investments in railways and transport infrastructure, while another 2.2 billion suspended over an erosion of academic freedoms would be spent on higher education.

($1 = 0.8593 euros)

(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs and Paweł FlorkiewiczEditing by Gareth Jones)

MOSCOW, June 5 (Reuters) – Five Azerbaijani citizens were killed and three others injured in attacks on two cargo vessels in the Sea of Azov, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Responding to a question about the vessels hit in Taganrog Bay, the ministry said the crews included 25 Azerbaijani citizens in total, but that the ships do not belong to Azerbaijan.

Earlier on Friday, Ukraine said that its drones had struck five ships in the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk, as well as in the coastal waters of Russian-controlled territories.

Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukrainian drone forces, said in a statement that his drones had hit dry cargo ships and a tanker that were involved in “stealing” Ukrainian grain and transferring military cargo and fuel, with the names of the vessels painted over and their radars turned off.

(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Maxim RodionovEditing by Andrew Osborn)

BERLIN, June 5 (Reuters) – The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) has begun an investigation into the Boeing 787 jetliner whose nose gear collapsed on Thursday at a gate at Frankfurt airport, according to a BFU spokesperson.

• An interim report is expected in about eight weeks, and the final report in about a year, said the spokesperson

• Lufthansa, which operated the aircraft, said several crew members and ground staff were lightly injured and hospitalised; two Lufthansa employees who were briefly hospitalised on Thursday were able to leave the same day

• The affected Boeing 787-9 will be repaired after the investigation, said Lufthansa

• Passengers had not yet boarded the aircraft

• The incident occurred at 12:45 p.m. (1045 GMT) on Thursday, and the jet was scheduled to depart for Los Angeles as flight LH450

• The Boeing 787-9 is a relatively new addition for the Lufthansa Group, which is planning to gradually phase out less efficient jets and simplify its fleet

(Reporting by Klaus Lauer, Writing by Lena Rueckerl, Editing by Miranda Murray)

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS, June 5 (Reuters) – World food prices slipped in May from a revised April level, with vegetable oil prices falling for the first time this year while cereals and sugar jumped, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday.

The FAO Food Price Index, which measures changes in a basket of globally traded food commodities, averaged 130.8 points in May, 0.2% down from its revised April level of 131.0, but up 2.9% from a year earlier.

Despite the small downward correction for the April data, the index remained near its highest level since January 2023 and 18.4% below its March 2022 peak.

Cereal prices rose more than 2.6% on the month, with wheat up for a fourth straight month on smaller export harvest prospects, including in the United States, and higher fuel and fertiliser costs linked to the Iran conflict.

Maize prices were also supported by stronger import demand and tighter supplies in Brazil and the U.S., the agency said.

By contrast, vegetable oil prices fell 4.6% from last month, their first monthly decline this year, as lower palm and soy oil prices outweighed gains in rapeseed and sunflower oil.  After rising for five consecutive months, international palm oil prices declined, reflecting expectations of weaker global import demand and uncertainty in crude oil markets.

Vegetable oil prices on average were still more than 20% above last year, as elevated energy costs following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz raised demand for biofuels made using organic materials, such as oil-rich plants.

Sugar prices jumped 7.5% from last month to 95.1 points, but remained 13.1% below their level a year ago. The increase was mainly driven by concerns over an anticipated tightening of global sugar supplies in the coming months.

In a separate cereal supply report, the FAO said it expected world cereal production – including rice in milled equivalent – to shrink 2% in 2026/27 to 2.98 billion tons. 

Production of all major cereals is anticipated to decline, albeit for many from record levels reached in 2025, with the largest year-on-year decrease in percentage terms forecast for wheat and the smallest for maize and barley.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU, June 5 (Reuters) – The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is worried about its declining population and has announced cash incentives to families to produce more children.

Nestled between China and India in the eastern Himalayas, Bhutan, a country of fewer than 800,000 people, is offering families monthly incentives of 10,000 ngultrums (about $105) for every third and subsequent children born on or after June 4, 2026 until the child reaches three, the government said in a statement on Thursday. 

It will also cover eligible third and more children who were born before but have not yet attained three years of age as of the above date. 

Cabinet Secretary Kesang Deki said the incentive would be given to families for any number of children after the second child. “They can have three, four, five, six or seven children,” she told Reuters on Friday.

Bhutan’s total annual births have fallen from 11,001 in 2015 to 8,153 in 2024, a decline about 26%, and the total fertility rate – children per woman – has declined to almost the replacement level of 2.1 in the period, official data show.

A declining and ageing population, together with outward migration, has long-term implications for Bhutan’s workforce, communities, and socio-economic development, the statement said.

Young Bhutanese people are increasingly seeking opportunities abroad mainly in Australia amid growing economic unhappiness in the landlocked Buddhist kingdom.

The new policy reflects the government’s “commitment to the welfare of mothers, children, and families, and to the long-term sustainability of Bhutan’s population”, it added.

The neighbouring Indian state of Sikkim also announced in 2023 incentives such as year-long maternity leave for women, month-long paternity leave for men, and financial support for those seeking pregnancy through in-vitro fertilisation.

Bhutan is known for its pioneering Gross National Happiness index, an alternative economic gauge that takes into account factors normally ignored by gross domestic product measures, such as recreation and emotional well-being.

($1 = 95.99 ngultrums)

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

By Alvise Armellini

ROME, June 5 (Reuters) – Sex education in Italian schools will require parental consent under a reform promoted by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government, which also excludes it from nurseries and primary schools.

The bill, sponsored by Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara, won final approval in the Senate on Thursday, drawing criticism from opposition parties that it could restrict teenagers’ access to important information. 

“Subordinating sex education to parental consent is like asking families’ permission to teach Italian (literature) or history: an institutional absurdity that betrays the educational mandate of public schools,” said Angelo Bonelli, co-leader of the Greens and Left Alliance party.

Valditara said after the vote that the reform would protect minors “from the confusion of gender propaganda” and re-establish the constitutional principle that parents are responsible for their children’s education.     

The terms “gender theory” or “gender propaganda” are often used by conservative politicians to discredit academic studies or policies that challenge traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, or state that gender identities are not fixed.

Under the new law, schools must inform families at least seven days in advance of any sex education initiatives, including details on outside experts or organisations involved.

Pro Vita & Famiglia, a Catholic group advocating traditional family values, welcomed the measure, saying it would allow parents to reject initiatives they deemed inappropriate.

“Parents will be able to learn about, identify and reject in advance inappropriate projects that promote gender fluidity, abortion, surrogate motherhood and an ideological vision of sexuality among minors,” a spokesperson said.

Sex education in schools is not compulsory in Italy, unlike in most European countries. A 2025 Save the Children survey found only 47% of Italian teenagers had received it.    

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — The rare Bundibugyo type of Ebola that Congo is battling took locals by surprise after weeks of spreading unnoticed. Hundreds of cases were suspected when the outbreak was declared in May, but many dismissed the news as a “Western conspiracy.”

Congolese authorities announced the new Ebola outbreak on May 15. At least 63 people have died from 381 confirmed cases, Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said late Thursday. Yet the outbreak has been challenged by skepticism, attacks on health workers and misinformation.

Vérité Johnson, a journalist and editorial secretary at the Radio Télévision Mont Bleu station in Bunia, the eastern Ituri province capital where the outbreak is concentrated, decided to produce a new program to combat rumors.

The radio show has emerged as a vital tool to win over some residents who have been unaware or skeptical about the facts of Bundibugyo.

The 45-minute program runs daily at 10 a.m., reminding people of the dangers and regularly featuring health specialists providing updates and answering questions. The show’s jingles about the virus also play intermittently throughout the day and residents are able to call in with questions.

“So far, there’s still a layer of resistance within the population, and that’s where the media plays an important role,” Johnson said.

Resistance to protocols during public health emergencies is common in Congo, which is battling its 17th Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified there in 1976. There currently is no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo type of Ebola, which has added another layer of fear.

Widespread rumors, often arising from fear and misinformation, discourage residents from adhering to health warnings or seeking medical help during an outbreak, health officials say. People often hear about a disease through the media as authorities and international partners scramble to contain the outbreak.

Some residents allege illnesses like Ebola are elevated by opportunists trying to profit.

“They don’t separate people who have Ebola from those who have the flu at the hospital. Given the manner in which people are treated, we deduce it is about money,” said Samson Gerson, 52-year-old Bunia resident and father of seven children. “I can never take the vaccine, I prefer to die because if the vaccine arrives, it can scare us even more.”

Analysts say some people in Congo have been receptive to disinformation due to mistrust of the healthcare system and because some local officials have not become actively involved in containing the disease.

“What is key is to involve the local actors at all levels. If we try to impose what we think is right to the community, we are running towards failure,” said Basile Rambaud, emergency programs director for Mercy Corps in Congo. “If people do not trust the response, they end up delaying to seek care, rejecting protective measures, or avoiding working with health teams, giving the virus more time to spread.”

Ituri province residents have launched at least three attacks against health centers, demanding the bodies of deceased patients. Some people who are believed to have Ebola left the centers during the attacks and health workers could not account for their whereabouts.

“We don’t even know what the body of a person who died of Ebola looks like, but we just see images and montages on our phone,” said Bunia resident Chantal Francine, who expressed doubts over the reported deaths.

The virus has rapidly spread from an initial three health zones to 24, according to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said Wednesday that the virus “had a big start.”

Experts and WHO officials have warned the numbers might not reflect the true scale of the epidemic as weeks of testing for the wrong type caused a delay in containing the virus.

The outbreak has been worsened by an ongoing armed conflict between Congo’s government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, as well as attacks by the Islamic State-affiliated group the Allied Democratic Force, which killed 16 people in Beni territory in North Kivu on Tuesday.

The attacks by both groups have caused massive displacement of people living in the conflict areas, officials said.

Despite the growing Bundibugyo outbreak and the conditions that are enabling the disease to spread, Johnson said Radio Télévision Mont Bleu continues providing residents with vital facts.

“Everyone is free to think what they want, but the information remains the same. The epidemic is here,” Johnson said.

___

Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

___

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A woman accused of enslaving a Yazidi teenager in Syria would agree to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and undergo religious counseling if she were freed on bail, her lawyer told a court Friday.

Zeinab Ahmad, 31, continued an application for bail in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on two slavery charges. Her application was heard on Thursday and Friday. It will continue on June 15 when her lawyer Grace Morgan has called a police witness to testify.

The mother of three would live with her daughter in the Melbourne home of her uncle Abraham Abbas. The mechanic told the court he hated the Islamic State group.

“They’re evil and they don’t represent anything to do with Islam at all,” Abbas said.

Ahmad and her mother Kawsar Ahmad, 53, also known as Kawsar Abbas, have been in custody on slavery charges since they returned to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp last month with a group of Australian women and children linked to IS.

A Yazidi woman has alleged she was enslaved in the Ahmad family home in 2017 and 2018 in the then-IS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria. She also alleged she was raped and beaten by the defendants’ husband and father Mohammed Ahmad, who in currently held in an Iraqi prison.

Morgan told the court her client was willing to undergo religious counseling if released through a program run by police and a board of imams that counters violent extremism.

Ahmad would also agree to be subjected to a so-called control order with conditions including wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet and surveillance of her phone.

Such orders are usually imposed by courts on convicted terrorists who are reaching the end of prison terms and continue to pose an unacceptable threat to the public. The orders restrict a person’s conduct, movements and communications for a set period.

Two police officers testified Friday that such orders could not legally be used instead of or in conjunction with bail conditions.

Detective Senior Constable Marc Clendenning, who heads the investigation, told the court that electronic monitoring of Ahmad’s movements and phone would not make the risk she posed acceptable.

“There’s a lot of unknown information about the accused’s ideology,” Clendenning said.

“The fact of being under Islamic State for over a decade, no conditions of that nature would ameliorate the risk,” he added.

Three generations of the Ahmad family moved from Melbourne to Syria via Turkey in 2013 and 2014.

Morgan argued that because such slavery charges had never before been tried in Victoria state, the hearing would take longer than other criminal trials.

Detective Sgt. Matt Archer, a Joint Counter Terrorism Team supervisor, did not agree it would necessarily take longer that other prosecutions but agreed that an offense being tried for the first time brought some legal complexities.

Australian officials found the woman who alleged she was enslaved in the Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq in 2019. The officials couldn’t electronically record an interview with her about her allegations against the Ahmad family, but she provided a typed statement, according to prosecution evidence.

Morgan questioned how defense lawyers could get all relevant evidence and documents through the Kurdistan Regional Government, which runs the semi-autonomous region of Iraq.

Ahmad is charged with two crimes against humanity: enslavement and use of a slave. Each carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.