Suella Braverman avoids press questions after travelling to Manston in military helicopter
Downing Street has defended Suella Braverman after she flew to an overcrowded migration centre in a £3,500-an-hour military helicopter.
The home secretary avoided questions from the press as she met the Dover coastguard and travelled to the Manston facility in a Chinook.
At one point in recent days, as many as 4,000 people were being detained at the site for weeks – even though it is only intended to hold 1,600 for no more than 24 hours.
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Braverman visits Manston
The government claims more than 1,000 migrants have been moved from Manston this week, meaning 2,700 people remain at the facility.
And Downing Street officials stressed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is receiving twice-daily updates on the situation.
A No 10 spokeswoman said the home secretary was getting an update on operations on the ground which “obviously involved operations in the Channel”, so she “travelled on a military aircraft to see the area of operations at sea”.
A Home Office spokesman reiterated the point, saying she travelled in the aircraft with Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, Dan O’Mahoney “to get a view of operations in the Channel first hand”.
Ms Braverman spent about two hours at Manston and left using a side gate – away from the journalists who were gathered at the main entrance.
While North Thanet’s MP Sir Roger Gale was also seen leaving the processing centre, Dover MP Natalie Elphicke said it was a “great pity” that the home secretary had not taken the opportunity to meet other Kent politicians.
“The small boats crisis is not just in the migrant processing facilities, it is on our Kent beaches, schools, services and housing,” she added.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt later said Ms Braverman was prepared to “face the music”, even though she avoided questions from the media throughout yesterday.
The Home Office has said steps are being taken “immediately” to improve conditions at Manston – enhancing medical facilities, supplying extra bedding as well as providing better catering.
Ms Braverman added: “This is a complex and difficult situation which we need to tackle on all fronts and look at innovative solutions.
“To break the business model of the people smugglers, we need to ensure that the illegal migration route across the Channel is ultimately rendered unviable.”
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Migrant from Manston left stranded
‘Disoriented, desperate and completely lost’
An asylum seeker who says he was among a group of migrants left stranded in central London on Tuesday night has said they were not told where they were going by officials.
The man – who gave his name as Hasibullah from Afghanistan – said he was among a group of 45 migrants who were removed from Manston and taken to Victoria coach station.
He told Sky News: “They tell us ‘you go by bus’. We know that we go to London but we don’t know where.
“When we reach London, the driver tell us ‘you go out’. Then, we don’t know where we go.”
Hasibullah said officials had not told them where their accommodation was. His group later received support from volunteers, and they were eventually taken to a hotel in Norwich.
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Migrants ‘threatening self-harm’
One of those volunteers, Danial Abass, told Sky News that he was on a routine walk to feed homeless people on Tuesday when he was approached by individuals who were “disoriented, desperate and completely lost” near Victoria coach station.
He said: “It was really a quite disturbing and distressing sight to see.”
Mr Abass added that many of the men were wearing flip-flops, grey tracksuits, identification tags around their hands and “big blue industrial bin bags with no jackets or socks”.
He took one of the men to Primark on Oxford Street and bought him jackets, shoes, clothes, hats and dinner from McDonald’s.
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A Home Office spokesperson said: “The welfare of those in our care is of the utmost importance and asylum seekers are only released from Manston when we have assurances that they have accommodation to go to.
“We worked at pace to find accommodation for the individuals as soon as we were notified, and they are now in accommodation and being supported.”
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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