International
UK bars Nigerian students, others from bringing family by January
The United Kingdom has put in place a law that will see Nigerian students, and others studying in the UK from bringing family as dependents except under specific circumstances.
This is as the UK government aims to bring immigration into the country which stands at about 1 million down.
Under the new rule, the UK will remove the permission for international students to switch out of the student route and into work routes before their studies have been completed to prevent misuse of the visa system.
Sky News also added that “there will also be a review of the maintenance requirement for students and dependents and a crackdown on “unscrupulous” education agents “who make use of inappropriate applications to sell immigration, not education”.
This change takes effect January 2024 to allow students starting courses in the UK time to plan to adapt to the new rules.
This new law comes after indications had emerged that the UK plans to put stricter laws in place to bring down the climbing number of immigrants into the country via studies.
In a written ministerial statement on Tuesday, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said recent immigration figures had shown an “unexpected rise” in the number of dependants coming to the UK alongside international students.
According to Braverman, the increase was made after the government made its commitment to lower net migration, the UK media house reported.
Braverman said while the government’s strategy around international education “plays an important part in supporting the economy”, it should “not be at the expense of our commitment to the public to lower overall migration”.
According to Sky News, Braverman said the package strikes the right balance between acting decisively on tackling net migration and protecting the economic benefits that students can bring to the UK.
A statement on the UK’s Home Office official site adds that the “New government restrictions to student visa routes will substantially cut net migration by restricting the ability for international students to bring family members on all but post-graduate research routes and banning people from using a student visa as a backdoor route to work in the UK.
“The ONS estimated that net migration was over 500,000 from June 2021 to June 2022. Although partly attributed to the rise in temporary factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, last year almost half a million student visas were issued while the number of dependants of overseas students has increased by 750% since 2019, to 136,000 people.”
The Home Office also noted that this new rule is not at the expense of the government’s commitment to the public to lower overall migration and ensure that migration to the UK is highly skilled and provides the most benefit.
According to them, the proposal is aimed at allowing “the government to continue to meet its International Education Strategy commitments while making a tangible contribution to reducing net migration to sustainable levels. The government has also made clear that the terms of the graduate route remain unchanged.”
The Home Office also made it clear that “the proposals announced today do not detract from the success of the government’s International Education Strategy, including meeting the target to host 600,000 international higher education students studying in the UK each year by 2030, for two years running.”
Official statistics, which are due to be published this week, are expected to show that net migration has increased from 504,000 in the 12 months to June 2022 to more than 700,000 in the year to December, Sky News said.
According to data, foreign students brought 135,788 family members to Britain last year – nine times more than in 2019 while in 2022, 59,053 Nigerian students brought over 60,923 relatives.
There are grave fears for the passengers of a private plane that suddenly vanished mid-flight, sparking a major search off the coast of the US.
US authorities say the Gulfstream G100 lost contact with air traffic control about 2am local time on Saturday (4pm Saturday AET) while flying from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda to Boston Logan International Airport.
The US Coast Guard said the Federal Aviation Administration alerted it after contact was lost with the aircraft – which plummeted from 23,500 feet to 11,000 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.
“We are praying for a safe outcome,” a spokesperson for Latitude Air Ambulance, which operates the missing plane, told City News.
A search is now under way off Nantucket in the air and on water as crews work to locate the missing jet, the Coast Guard said. Data from FlightRadar24 showed a number of aircraft searching south of the island.
Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US.
The plane was en route from Bermuda to Boston when it vanished.
“Air & surface crews have launched in search of the aircraft. Updates will be provided here as info becomes available,” the Coast Guard Northeast District said on X.
The plane was carrying out a medical evacuation in Bermuda – a British overseas territory in the north Atlantic Ocean, according to Clarence Togeretz, Director of Flight Operations at Latitude Air Ambulance.
“We always get rather concerned when our crew doesn’t report to us in a timely manner,” he told NBC News.
“But I will say that again, optimistically and positively, that doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.”
Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.
In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.
In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.
Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.
Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.
Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.
In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.
No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.
The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.
Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.
But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.
Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.
On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)
The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.
The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.
At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.
The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.
The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.
An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.
Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.
Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.
A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.
The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.
The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.
The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”
The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.
– Payments –
Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.
Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.
However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.
In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.
Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.
The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.
An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”
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