70 m. ago Home Office tells foreign students they will be removed if they overstay visas

About 130,000 to be contacted for first time in response to ‘alarming’ spike in numbers claiming asylum Tens of thousands of foreign students are to be contacted directly by the government and warned that they will be removed from the UK if they overstay their visas.The Home Office has launched the new campaign in response to what it has called an “alarming” spike in the number of international students arriving legally on student visas then claiming asylum when they expire. Continue reading...

Society

20 h. ago 850,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since Assad's fall, UN says

An official with the U.N. reguee agency UNHCR says that since the fall of Bashar Assad’s government in December, some 850,000 Syrian refugees have returned home from neighboring countries

Events

21 h. ago Russia suspected of jamming GPS on plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen

Aircraft with European Commission president onboard reportedly forced to circle Bulgarian airport for an hourEurope live – latest updatesRussia is believed to have jammed the satellite signal of a plane carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, over Bulgaria, reportedly forcing it to circle an airport for an hour.Von der Leyen was travelling to Plovdiv on Sunday when her charter plane lost electronic navigation aids, delaying its arrival in the central Bulgarian city. Continue reading...

Politics

44 h. ago Educating Yorkshire headteacher addresses 'big change' as series returns after more than a decade

Hit Channel 4 show Educating Yorkshire is back with a second series, over a decade after the first series aired

Culture

54 h. ago ‘I was never worried’: 10 years on since Syrian siblings’ 2,700

Ten years after Angela Merkel declared ‘We can do this’ at the height of the 2015 migration into Europe, Syrian refugee Somar Kreker looks back at his 44-day odysseyThe trip would be tough, Somar Kreker knew, but he was not overly fearful. It was the summer of 2015, and in a small flat in Amman, Jordan, this young Syrian’s only thought was how to turn a long and arduous journey into something more bearable. The engineering student had fled Syria three and a half years earlier after refusing to enlist in the brutal regime’s army. He was now ready to begin a new chapter of his life, starting with a new task: to reunite with his younger sisters, still trapped in Damascus, and lead them to Germany, where their brother was living.“I was never worried or stressed about the trip,” says Somar, just 27 years old at the time. “I never had any thought about danger or failure. My only thoughts were how I could make the trip a happy adventure for me and my sisters. Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago A decade after throwing open its borders to millions of migrants, Germany is now proof Farage's deportation flights pledge can work, writes SUE REID

SUE REID: Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced this week that the German welfare state is no longer sustainable for either its own people or the millions of Merkel newcomers. The welcome is over.

Economics

6 d. ago Farage attacked for ‘ugly’ rhetoric of plan for mass deportation of asylum seekers

Reform UK leader says he will rip up UK’s human rights commitments and pay despotic regimes to take people backNigel Farage has been accused of “ugly” and “destructive” rhetoric after announcing plans to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, and pledging to pay despotic regimes such as the Taliban to take them back.Unveiling Reform UK’s “Operation Restoring Justice” at a combative press conference in Oxford, Farage said he would rip up the UK’s postwar human rights commitments, contained in a range of international conventions, to deport “absolutely anyone” – including women and children – arriving by small boat. Continue reading...

Events

7 d. ago Syrian refugee who sexually assaulted teenager before claiming being jailed for it would breach his human rights is locked up

Hassan Abou Hayleh, 40, attacked a 19-year-old girl after finding her sitting alone on a kerb in Weymouth, Dorset, as she waited for her father to give her a lift home.

Events

7 d. ago ‘People sleeping while walking’: inside Manston asylum centre in Kent

Six staff members speak of new arrivals’ exhaustion and ill-health and colleagues’ indifference to their plightWhen asylum seekers first arrive at Manston, a former military base outside Ramsgate in Kent, they are ushered from one enormous, grubby marquee to the next for a series of interviews and checks.As many as 1,000 people a day are processed at the site after crossing the Channel in small boats, and interviews continue through the night. Upon arrival in the UK, exhausted and disorientated, their phones and other belongings are taken from them and placed in distinctive blue plastic bags. Continue reading...

Events

8 d. ago Lefties like Shelton and Draper could flip the script at this year’s US Open

Rafael Nadal aside, there has been a paucity of male southpaw champions in recent decades. But that could change at Flushing Meadows this yearDuring the peak years of the Big Three, from 2008-2020, the only relevant issue to be discussed when discussing a grand slam draw was which of the trio was scheduled to meet before the final. And what this ultimately meant was that semi-finals often turned out be better than the finals (see: the 2010 and 2011 US Open semi-finals between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, or the 2013 and 2021 French Open semis between Rafael Nadal and Djokovic).Tennis hadn’t had that kind of impenetrable triangle of stars since the Jimmy Connors-Björn Borg-John McEnroe troika’s very brief hold on the sport in the late 1970s and very early 1980s. What makes that long-ago epoch stand out even further is the preponderance of left-handed players. Consider – from 1974 through 1984, a southpaw triumphed in every one of those 11 years at the US Open; Connors in 1974, 1...

Events

1 week ago SUE REID: Ten years ago, Angela Merkel opened Germany's borders to Syrian refugees. It was a trigger for mass arrivals across the Continent and a decade that changed Europe for ever

Ten years ago Germans were putting balloons on lamp posts to greet a multitude of foreigners. The popular tabloid, Bild, screamed the headline 'Refugees Welcome'.

Events

1 week ago German cities report 'easing' of migrant crisis as asylum claims are cut by half amid crackdown by new chancellor Friedrich Merz

It comes after the newly elected chancellor scrapped Angela Merkel 's open border policy by issuing orders to turn undocumented migrants away from the nation.

Events

1 week ago Strictly Come Dancing final date revealed with major change 'for first time in a decade'

The Strictly Come Dancing 2025 launch show is just weeks away but the final episode of the BBC One competition won't air until "very close to Christmas"

Politics

2 w. ago I know the unsettling truth about the rise in people being diagnosed with ADHD. I have spent decades treating patients... this is what's changed

Since I started practising more than two decades ago, the number of people being diagnosed with ADHD in the UK has soared.

Science

2 w. ago Cruel rosacea robbed Janet of her looks. Antibiotics and creams failed her

For decades, Janet Atkins would start each day inspecting her face in the mirror in the hope that the flushing and spots spread across her cheeks had improved overnight.

Events

2 w. ago Schoolgirl, 15, left at bus stop by boyfriend and is never seen alive again

Karen Stitt was raped and stabbed 59 times, but her killer slipped away unnoticed for decades until in 2019, the police received a tip-off that changed everything

Politics

2 w. ago I was an RAF sergeant living the dream but I lost everything

Kevin Jones had a lot going for him as a young man but his life changed forever when a letter was sent into his barracks. Decades on he admits he never truly recovered from it.

Politics

2 w. ago Soccer Saturday's iconic stars and where they are now after axe fell on beloved line

Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday has been a huge hit with football fans for decades, but the programme has undergone a number of changes in recent seasons with varying degrees of success

Politics

2 w. ago Bayreuth's 2025 production of Wagner's 'Meistersinger' features a Technicolor look — and a twist

In Wagner's home theater in Bayreuth, Germany, a twist has been added to the classic opera “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.”

Politics

2 w. ago Remember when having women in power was supposed to change everything? | Gaby Hinsliff

The careers of Sturgeon, Merkel and Ardern show how foolish it is to idealise leaders just for being womenNicola Sturgeon was always afraid of failure. But it was a very particular kind of failure she feared; one that follows a very particular kind of success. Living up to the fact of being Scotland’s first female first minister became, she writes in her new memoir, “almost an obsession”, which is arguably unhealthy but not unreasonable. To be the first woman (or indeed the first minority) in any field is to be uncomfortably aware of being on probation: the test case that sceptics will use to decide whether women in general can really hack it, but also the yardstick by which other women will judge whether representation actually makes a difference.You daren’t betray anything that looks like a sign of weakness, yet at the same time you’re endlessly under pressure to spill your guts on all the intimate stuff – miscarriage and menopause in Sturgeon’s case, pregnancy in high office for ...

Politics