UK-France migrant returns deal on verge of sign-off
Under the agreement, for each small boat migrant returned to France, an asylum seeker will be permitted to enter the UK legally from France.
The treaty allows for the immediate detention and return of small boat arrivals.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has described the deal as a 'breakthrough moment' to tackle people smugglers.
The government has also committed an additional £100 million to enhance enforcement against smuggling gangs and introduce new offences for advertising illegal crossings.
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BreakingNews.ie
5 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Rwanda agrees to take deportees from the US after migrant deal with UK collapsed
Rwanda on Tuesday became the third African nation to agree to accept deportees from the United States under the Trump administration's plans to send migrants to countries they have no ties with to get them off American soil. Rwandan government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo told The Associated Press in a statement that the East African country would accept up to 250 deportees from the US, with 'the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement' under the agreement. Advertisement Ms Makolo did not provide a timeline for any deportees to arrive in Rwanda or say if they would arrive at once or in several batches. She said details were still being worked out. The US sent 13 men it described as dangerous criminals who were in the US illegally to South Sudan and Eswatini in Africa last month and has said it is seeking more agreements with African nations. It said those deportees' home countries refused to take them back. The US has also deported hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama under President Donald Trump's plans to expel people who he says entered the US illegally and are 'the worst of the worst'. Rwanda attracted international attention and some outrage when it struck a deal in 2022 with the UK to accept migrants who had arrived in the UK to seek asylum. Advertisement Under that proposed deal, their claims would have been processed in Rwanda and, if successful, they would have stayed there. The contentious agreement was criticised by rights groups and others as being unethical and unworkable and was ultimately scrapped when Britain's new Labour government took over. Britain's Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the deal was unlawful because Rwanda was not a safe third country for migrants. The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for the African countries it has entered into secretive deals with to take deportees. It sent eight men from South Sudan, Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in early July after a US Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for their deportations. Advertisement They were held for weeks in a converted shipping container at an American military base in Djibouti as the legal battle over their deportations played out. South Sudan, which is tipping towards civil war, has declined to say where the men are being held or what their fate is. The US also deported five men who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini, where the government said they will be held in solitary confinement in prison for an undetermined period of time. A human rights lawyer in Eswatini said the men are being denied access to legal representation there and has taken authorities to court. Eswatini is Africa's last absolute monarchy. The king rules over government and political parties are effectively banned. Advertisement Both South Sudan and Eswatini have declined to give details of their agreements with the US. Rwanda, a country of some 15 million people, has long stood out on the continent for its recovery from a genocide that killed more than 800,000 people in 1994. It has promoted itself under long-time President Paul Kagame as an example of stability and development, but human rights groups allege there are also deadly crackdowns on any perceived dissent against Mr Kagame, who has been president for 25 years. Government spokesperson Ms Makolo said the agreement with the US was Rwanda doing its part to help with international migration issues because 'our societal values are founded on reintegration and rehabilitation'. 'Those approved (for resettlement in Rwanda) will be provided with workforce training, healthcare and accommodation support to jumpstart their lives in Rwanda, giving them the opportunity to contribute to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world over the last decade,' she said. Advertisement There were no details about whether Rwanda had received anything in return for taking the deportees. Gonzaga Muganwa, a Rwandan political analyst, said 'appeasing President Trump pays'. 'This agreement enhances Rwanda's strategic interest of having good relationships with the Trump administration,' he said.
The Guardian
7 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Lord Desai obituary
An economist with a strong grasp of politics, Meghnad Desai, who has died aged 85, put telling the truth ahead of the pursuit of personal ambition. His work as professor at the London School of Economics had the wide perspective that came from his Indian heritage, and his interest in Labour politics led to him becoming an active member of the House of Lords. The first of his books, Marxian Economic Theory, was published in 1973. I was one of his many students who benefited from the use of his book Applied Econometrics (1976). Testing Monetarism (1981) predicted the demise of the money-supply targeting that was then being pursued by Margaret Thatcher's government. Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (2002) contains perhaps his best-known contribution to the discipline. He asserted that Karl Marx had been misunderstood: he never said that capitalism was going to collapse anytime soon. On Meghnad's reading, Marx expected capitalism to continue until it had exhausted its productive potential, which given globalisation, could take a very long time. Appointed to the Lords by Neil Kinnock in 1991, he became a frontbench economics spokesman, but was sacked three years later by John Smith when a theoretical speculation of his ran counter to Labour's need for a presentable tax policy. Meghnad backed a proposal to widen the scope of the VAT net to include food and children's clothing. This view was subsequently supported in 2010 by Sir James Mirrlees' review for the Institute for Fiscal Studies as to how a more rational tax system could operate, but it was not a political headline that Labour was looking for in 1994. More presciently, he pointed out in early August 2022 that if Liz Truss were elected as Conservative leader and so the new prime minister, which she was a month later, then she would crash the pound. On the international stage, Meghnad championed a move away from a narrow focus on material progress in measuring development, and proposed instead a human development index. This found its way into the human development reports produced by the UN. With particular regard to India, Meghnad was an early proponent of, and an optimist about, the market-based reforms that were first introduced in 1991 and were to mark a turning point for Indian economic growth. In a tribute at the time of his deah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him a 'distinguished thinker and reformer'. His later writings included Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India (2004), on the film star who brought method acting to Indian cinema; Rethinking Islamism: The Ideology of the New Terror (2006), distinguishing between the religion and the militant mindset; and The Rediscovery of India (2011), covering the last 500 years of the region's history. He turned his hand to fiction too, with Dead on Time (2009), featuring a British prime minister, and an autobiography, Rebellious Lord (2020). He published more than 200 articles in academic journals and books, and was co-editor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics from 1984 to 1991. In British political life, he was chairman of the Islington South and Finsbury Labour party between 1986 and 1992; the constituency's MP was Chris Smith. When in 2020 Meghnad felt that the Labour party had not done enough to counter antisemitism, he became a non-affliated peer, and then, in 2023, a crossbencher. Born in what is now Varodara, in Gujarat state, Meghnad was the son of Mandakini and Jagdhishchandra Desai, a civil servant. He started secondary school at the age of seven and matriculated at 14. Then he was educated at the University of Bombay and subsequently won a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his PhD at the age of 23 under the supervision of the Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein. After a short spell at the University of California, Berkeley, he arrived as a lecturer at the LSE in 1965, becoming professor in 1983 and emeritus in 2003, and president of the Association of University Teachers in Economics (1987-90). At the LSE he was head of the Development Studies Institute (1990-95), and founded and headed the Centre for the Study of Global Governance (1992-2003). In 1970, he married Gail Wilson, a lecturer at the LSE. They had three children, Tanvi, Nuala and Sven. The editor of his book on Dilip Kumar was Kishwar Ahluwalia. After his first marriage ended in divorce, he married Kishwar in 2004, and his family then expanded to include her three children, Gaurav, Mallika and Priyanka. In 2008, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour awarded by India. Six years later, Meghnad founded the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, and as chair of the trustees, he raised money and worked with the UK government to help erect the statue in Parliament Square in 2015. He also supported Kishwar in her role as chair of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, the NGO responsible for creating and running the Partition Museum, which opened in Amritsar in 2017. Meghnad's kindness and generosity were evident when the economics internship I had been offered at a government department in 1979 fell victim to spending cuts by the incoming Thatcher government. He quickly found money to offer me a research assistant post, and encouraged many people early in their careers. His open-mindedness showed in his insistence, when I was an undergraduate, that I read widely, including John Rawls, the advocate of 'justice as fairness'. He is survived by Kishwar, his children and four grandchildren, Om, Ira, Chloe and Kiko. Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Lord Desai, economist, born 10 July 1940; died 29 July 2025
Daily Mail
7 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Teens who tortured kittens to 'reduce urge to hurt humans' are jailed
Two teenagers, who tortured and killed kittens in the woods because one wanted to 'reduce his urges to kill humans' have been locked up and banned from owning pets again. The boy, 17, and girl, 17, who cannot be named due to their age, both pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to an animal and possession of a bladed article in a public place. At a sentencing hearing at Highbury Magistrates Court in London in the UK, the male defendant was sentenced to 12-months in a secure youth center while the female defendant received a nine-month sentence. District judge Hina Rai told the 17-year-old boy that the killings were 'without a doubt the most awful offences against animals I have seen in this court'. Earlier this year, two eyewitnesses saw the couple holding hands as they approached a secluded part of a footpath in Ruislip, northwest London, carrying a black animal carrier with cats inside, the court heard. Armed with knives, a blowtorch, and scissors, the pair dismembered the kittens and then left their mutilated bodies behind. One kitten was recovered hanging from a tree by a rope. The kittens that the defendants killed were sourced through legitimate websites where owners sell pets. The pair falsely indicated they were legitimate buyers and paid for the animals in cash. During a police interview, the male defendant laughed when he was shown images of the weapons recovered at the scene. Meanwhile, the girl suggested she wanted to dissect the animals due to her interest in biology. A member of the public who discovered the mutilated kittens on May 3rd warned another passerby not to go down the footpath because 'there is something horrific down there'. In sentencing, the judge told the boy that his actions were 'extensively planned' and 'clearly premeditated'. Judge Hina Raijudge added: 'You said sorry in your (police) interview but reports also show that you struggle to show empathy and realise that the kittens would suffer. 'It seems you chose the kittens because they have emotion and you would have power over them.' Notes found on the boy's phone detailed his desire to murder people too. He had previously written: 'I really wanted to murder someone. 'Every day I was researching how to get away with murder. 'I have come close. I have killed cats to reduce my urges. 'I have skinned, strangled, and stabbed cats.' Prior to this offence, the boy - who has reportedly suffered with depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and self-harm - had no previous convictions. Earlier, prosecutor Valerie Benjamin told the court the boy's actions 'showed a degree of planning in terms of looking for animals and researching in terms of killing animals, and his desire to go on to killing humans, and how it would be to get away with murder and killing a homeless person'. The horrific scenes were not a 'spur of the moment' event but involved planning in 'finding the animals, taking them to a public place and killing them in such a sadistic manner'. Stephen Hancock of the Crown Prosecution Service added: 'This was an unimaginable act of cruelty on two defenceless animals which caused immense shock across our community. 'The manner in which these teenagers left the kittens was deeply disturbing and distressing. 'Instead of letting them hide behind their age, the CPS put forward the strongest possible charges to ensure they faced the full consequences of their actions. 'Whatever their motivation may have been, both defendants have now been disqualified from ever owning a pet and will have to live with a criminal record for the rest of their life.'
