About 40 migrants were rescued in the waters between southern England and northern France on Christmas Day, amid a spike in attempts by migrants to cross the English Channel to British shores on small boats, British and French authorities said.
The French regional maritime authority said in a statement that a small rubber boat with a failed engine was spotted on Tuesday off the coast of Calais.
A police helicopter monitoring the area directed a tugboat to the stranded migrants, the prefecture said.
Photo: AP / Marine Nationale
Eight migrants, including two children, were found aboard the boat and handed over to British authorities, it said, without providing the passengers’ nationalities.
Calais, a port city on one end of a Channel tunnel that connects France and England by train, has long been a magnet for migrants fleeing conflict or poverty in Africa and the Middle East.
French officials two years ago closed a makeshift camp that swelled to a population of 10,000 at one point as people waited to try to hop trucks taking ferries or trains to England.
The channel has seen a spike in migrants attempting the trip from France to England in dinghies or other small boats.
The British Home Office said that border agents responded to five separate boating incidents in English waters starting early on Christmas Day involving about 40 passengers, who said they were from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
The office told Britain’s Press Association that all received medical evaluations and were sent on for immigration interviews.
Social welfare agencies would assume care of the two children among the passengers, the news agency reported.
The office put the number of England-bound migrants the French tugboat took on at nine, not eight.
The French maritime authority said that the initial sighting of the boat estimated nine were aboard, but the tugboat crew that reached them found only eight.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS