New Zealand prime minister Luxon has said his party will introduce a bill in parliament that ⁠seeks to ban children ⁠under ​16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10% of a platform’s global revenue for non-compliance.

The bill would ⁠require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by utilising existing account information, facial technology and ⁠digital identity documents. Luxon explained that this decision is to protect children from harm that may be caused by harmful content, addictive technology and pressures they are not ‌equipped to deal with.

In December, Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram ⁠and Facebook.

That legislation had been a “colossal failure”, New Zealand’s foreign minister Peters said, adding that ​keeping children off ​social media should be the responsibility ​of parents.

Australian officials say they are dismayed by the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite federal government ministers remaining silent on the move.

The government has also been quietly maintaining contact with Australians working at the ICC who might be targeted by future US sanctions, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to ramp up his campaign to “dismantle” the court.

The Trump administration has already sanctioned several ICC lawyers, and last week Rubio announced fresh sanctions on ICC president Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is Senegalese. Rubio’s reason is they have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.

The United States has never joined the ICC, and the Trump administration has long been openly hostile to the court, calling it an “unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy” that undermines US sovereignty. Last year Trump also announced sanctions on several ICC officials after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told the ABC that Australia “does not support sanctioning the ICC or its officials”, although it did not mention the United States or the Trump administration. Many US allies have also given a muted response to the sanctions, although the European Union said last week it “deeply regrets” the decision, and expressed “unwavering support” for the ICC.

The Spanish government has U-turned and said it will allow 500 migrant children in Ceuta to relocate to the mainland.

The majority of the estimated 70,000 people who crossed into Ceuta – a Spanish territory on the coast of north Africa – on 30 July have returned to Morocco. However, under Spanish law, the state has a duty of care to young, unaccompanied migrants until they reach the age of 18.

The transfer of the children to the Spanish mainland is a sensitive political topic as several regions governed jointly by the conservative People’s party and the far-right Vox are reluctant or opposed to receiving their quota. To minimise conflict, the youth ministry, in coordination with the Ceuta government, is devising an urgent plan under which NGOs and child protection agencies take charge of the most vulnerable children, girls in particular, without transferring their guardianship to Spain’s regional governments.

News of the government’s plan came only hours after the European Commission said that under EU law all of the migrants should be returned to Morocco. Asked to clarify, the commission’s spokesperson on internal affairs, Markus Lammert, said that by law all irregular migrants remaining in Ceuta should be sent back, “including unaccompanied minors”. But The People’s party has rejected the government plan, saying the best place for the children is with their families.

The mixed messages partly derive from the fact the latest European pact on immigration has not yet been incorporated into Spanish law and therefore Spain’s own legislation on the treatment of unaccompanied minors remains in force.