Belarus school year begins for over a million students

The academic year has begun in Belarus for more than a million schoolchildren. The first bell rang for 87,500 first-graders across over 2,500 schools and gymnasiums. Over 300 educational institutions will switch to a new digital system; eighth-graders will start studying artificial intelligence in computer science classes, and school cafeteria menus will be updated. Additionally, security personnel now have the right to conduct random bag checks of students and visitors. The Ministry of Internal Affairs explained that these measures are a response to alarming statistics from neighboring countries, where there has been an increase in incidents of students attacking each other with dangerous objects.