Today is ‘key’ in search for British teenager Jay Slater missing in Tenerife, local reporter says
Today is a “key day” in the search for a British teenager who has been missing in Tenerife since Monday morning, with search and rescue teams hoping “to have good news”, a journalist on the island has said.
Jay Slater, from Lancashire, who was holidaying with friends, was last seen on a night out in Tenerife on Sunday evening, having been to the NRG music festival.
Tenerife-based reporter Clio O’Flynn said Thursday “is a key day, the day they [the rescuers] want to have good news and say they’ve found Jay”.
The search resumed on Thursday. Pic: Bomberos Voluntarios de Santiago del Teide
Jay Slater and his mother, Debbie Duncan. Pic: Lucy Law
“If he’s taken shelter, the hope is he’s waiting for help to come along,” the journalist told Sky News.
His mother, Debbie Duncan, who flew to the island and has joined mountain rescuers and the local civil guard in the search for the 19-year-old, has called his disappearance “an absolute living nightmare”.
She told ITV News: “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. I just want my baby back.”
Mr Slater’s friend, Lucy Law, told Wednesday’s UK Tonight programme on Sky News she spoke to him at around 8.15am local time on Monday.
Mr Slater, an apprentice bricklayer, is “not a stupid boy”, she said, but had told her his mobile phone battery was down to 1%.
Ms O’Flynn said: “The problem will be ‘does he have a phone signal? Will people be able to locate him? Can he hear their cries?'”
Authorities, she said, are “very, very keen to find this young man, for his sake and the sake of the island”.
Pic: Bomberos Voluntarios de Santiago del Teide
The search had been “very intense”, she added, with teams using all the resources at their disposal, including “mountain specialists, search dogs, drones and helicopters” and are “taking suggestions from his family, so it’s very coordinated”.
The area where he is believed to have gone missing is a “dry, arid, part of the island”, and, given its volcanic origins, has “ravines and gullies”, Ms O’Flynn said, warning there are “no lakes, rivers or streams, so it would be quite hard for him to access fresh water”.
However, she said the island, the largest and most populous of the Canary Islands, is “not experiencing the sort of heatwaves seen recently in Greece and Cyprus”.
Temperatures have been around 26C (79F), she said, but warned that “if you’re lost, 25C is very hot”.
Ms Law said Mr Slater, from Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn, told her he had got lost and needed water and had “cut his leg on a cactus”.
When she told him to return to where he had walked from, he said he did not know where that was, she said.
He was without food and water, she added, and had been in a T-shirt and shorts. “It’s very warm in the day and very cold at night”.
Pic: Bomberos Voluntarios de Santiago del Teide
Earlier, she told the Manchester Evening News someone Mr Slater had met on his night out had driven him back to their apartment in a hire car without him realising how far away it was.
“He’s ended up out in the middle of nowhere. Jay was obviously thinking he would be able to get home from there,” she told the newspaper.
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During the short phone call, he told her he had missed a bus trying to get back to his holiday accommodation so was attempting to walk instead – a journey that would take 11 hours.
Jay Slater. Pic: Lucy Law
His phone then cut out, with his last live location showing as the Rural de Teno park – a mountainous area popular with hikers.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has been reported missing in Spain and are in contact with the local authorities.”
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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UK aims to build relationship with Syria
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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