EINDHOVEN – A nine-year-old Belgian boy who was due to graduate in electrical engineering has dropped out of his Dutch university due to a dispute over the end date of his degree, his father said on Tuesday.
Young prodigy Laurent Simons hit the headlines worldwide when it emerged he was on course to receive his degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology in December, and become one of the world’s youngest graduates. But his father Alexander told AFP he had now quit because the university wanted to delay his degree until next year, while insisting his son now had new plans. “Today, he already got two offers from foreign universities,” Alexander Simons said. “We have good times ahead of us.” The university said in a statement that it had suggested a timetable that would have allowed him to finish in mid-2020, which would have been “in any case a very fast timetable.”
HELSINKI – Finland’s Sanna Marin (34) was officially appointed as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday, becoming the world’s youngest sitting head of government. The former transport minister takes the helm of a coalition of five parties that will all be led by women, once the prime minister takes over as head of her Social Democratic party next year. All but one of the female coalition leaders are aged under 35. Marin became Finland’s third female prime minister after her nomination was passed in parliament by 99 votes to 70 on Tuesday, and president Sauli Niinisto officially appointed the new centre-left Cabinet. She succeeds Antti Rinne, who resigned last week after losing the trust of one of his coalition parties over his handling of a postal strike.
LONDON – Britain’s election race has tightened markedly over the past two weeks, and prime minister Boris Johnson is now likely to win only a modest majority in today’s vote, according to a closely watched forecast released on Tuesday. The 28-seat Conservative margin of victory predicted by pollsters YouGov, down from 68 two weeks ago, is narrow enough that the firm said Johnson could fail to win an outright majority, given the uncertainties inherent to forecasting – an outcome that would prolong Brexit uncertainty. “Based on the model, we cannot rule out a hung parliament,” Anthony Wells, YouGov’s director of political research, told The Times newspaper, which published the results. Johnson called the election to break what he viewed as a deadlock in parliament, where his minority administration had been unable to pass legislation.
– Nampa-AFP-Reuters
