International
Army put on standby as UK Police hand in weapon
The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence is offering soldiers to support armed police in London after dozens of police officers stood down from firearms duties, BBC reports.
More than 100 officers have turned in permits allowing them to carry weapons, a source told the BBC, in support of a fellow officer who has been charged with murder over the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Chris Kaba.
The officer, named only as NX121, who appeared in court last week, has been charged over the death of Chris Kaba in September 2022.
Kaba died hours after he was struck by a single gunshot fired into the vehicle he was driving in the Streatham area of South London.
It later emerged that the Audi Mr Kaba was driving, which did not belong to him, had been linked by police to a gun incident the day before.
His death prompted a number of protests and renewed allegations of racism within the force.
The Ministry of Defence said it received a request, known as Military Aid to the Civil Authorities, from the Home Office to “provide routine counter-terrorism contingency support to the Metropolitan Police, should it be needed”.
A MACA is offered to the police or the NHS in emergency situations. The military helped medical staff in the Covid pandemic and covered for striking border staff and paramedics last year.
The Met said it was a “contingency option” that would only be used “in specific circumstances and where an appropriate policing response was not available”.
Military staff would not be used “in a routine policing capacity”, it added.
On Saturday, the Met said its own officers still make up the vast majority of armed police in the capital but they were being supported by a limited number of firearms officers from neighbouring forces.
Announcing the review, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the public “depend on our brave firearms officers to protect us”.
“In the interest of public safety they have to make split-second decisions under extraordinary pressures.”
She said that officers have her “full backing”.
“I will do everything in my power to support them,” she added.
In his letter to the home secretary, the Met Police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, said that a system where officers are investigated for “safely pursuing suspects” should not have been allowed to develop.
Sir Mark said he would “make no comment” on any ongoing legal matters, but “the issues raised in this letter go back further”.
He said firearms officers are concerned that they will face years of legal proceedings, “even if they stick to the tactics and training they have been given”.
“Officers need sufficient legal protection to enable them to do their job and keep the public safe, and the confidence that it will be applied consistently and without fear or favour,” he wrote.
But in instances where officers act improperly, Sir Mark said the system “needs to move swiftly” rather than “tying itself in knots pursuing good officers through multiple legal processes”.
Canada has invited 1,000 candidates through its Express Entry system to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class.
The invitation round was conducted on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, according to the latest ministerial instructions published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
The department said candidates required a minimum Comprehensive Ranking System score of 523 to receive an invitation.
“Number of invitations issued: 1,000,” the notice stated.
It added that candidates ranked among the first 1,000 eligible foreign nationals in the group were eligible to receive invitations.
The round was conducted at 10:13:44 UTC on August 18, with a tie-breaking rule of August 17, 2026, at 22:09:00 UTC.
The tie-breaking rule means that “If more than one candidate has the lowest score, the cut-off is based on the date and time they submitted their Express Entry profiles.”
The invitations were issued under the Canadian Experience Class, one of the classes managed through Canada’s Express Entry system.
The ministerial instructions, signed by Canada’s Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Lena Metlege Diab, in Ottawa on August 18, stated that invitations could be issued between August 18 and August 19, 2026.
“Invitations may be issued to eligible foreign nationals who rank among the first 1,000 eligible foreign nationals in the group ranking,” the instructions stated.
Express Entry is Canada’s primary online system for managing permanent residence applications from skilled workers.
It covers three federal economic immigration programs: the Canadian Experience Class, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, and the Federal Skilled Trades Program.
Candidates create profiles that are ranked using the Comprehensive Ranking System, which awards points for factors including age, education, language ability, work experience, and other human capital attributes.
The highest-ranked candidates are invited to apply in periodic rounds.
The Canadian Experience Class is designed for skilled workers who already have Canadian work experience and wish to become permanent residents. Eligibility generally requires at least one year (1,560 hours) of skilled work experience in Canada within the past three years in occupations under National Occupational Classification TEER categories 0, 1, 2, or 3, along with minimum language proficiency (Canadian Language Benchmark 7 for TEER 0 or 1 jobs, and CLB 5 for TEER 2 or 3).
There is no education requirement and no need to show settlement funds.
Applicants must plan to live outside Quebec.
The August 18 draw followed a pattern of frequent CEC-focused rounds in 2026. A previous Canadian Experience Class draw on August 5 issued 3,000 invitations with a lower CRS cut-off of 516.
The latest round’s reduced volume and higher cut-off of 523 mark one of the more selective CEC invitations so far this year.
As of mid-August 2026, IRCC had already issued well over 113,000 invitations through Express Entry, with a substantial share going to Canadian Experience Class candidates.
Thousands of people turned back from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and returned to Morocco’s Fnideq began boarding buses home on Friday, with the operation continuing on Saturday, according to AFP journalists at the scene.
A Moroccan source close to the operation told AFP on condition of anonymity that the people sent back by Spain are to be transported home directly by bus or via the railway station in Tangier, 70 kilometres (45 miles) away.
According to the source, the Fnideq border crossing is now “completely secure”, as are the hills overlooking it, from which hundreds of people, mostly young men, had thrown stones at security forces on Friday.
The Spanish government announced on Friday evening that at least 48,000 of the 60,000 people who entered Ceuta in recent days had returned to Morocco.
Late Friday, AFP journalists saw around twenty 54-person-capacity buses depart, for a total of about a thousand people.
Fnideq is a small town of just 70,000 inhabitants, roughly equivalent to the population of the enclave of Ceuta, one of Spain’s two North African enclaves.
The buses were headed for Tangier, Tetouan, or the economic capital Casablanca, all equipped with rail facilities to redirect people who had come from as far away as Marrakech, more than 500 kilometres to the south.
“I heard that buses had arrived to take us back home. Honestly, I just want to see my children again. I regret having come all the way here,” said Rachid Aouchari, 32, from Ksar el Kebir, 170 kilometres from Fnideq, who was turned back from Ceuta during the night from Thursday to Friday.
Until midday Friday, clashes had pitted the security forces against migrants seeking to cross into Spain, either by swimming or on foot along a narrow wall leading to the Ceuta crossing point.
Police responded with water cannons and tear gas against hundreds of young men, arresting dozens of them, according to an AFP journalist.
AFP
A fighter jet crashed and erupted into flames at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California on Friday, sending smoke billowing into the sky that could be seen from miles away.
The single-seat F-35B Lightning II aircraft from Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, went down short of the runway just before 10 a.m. PT.
“The pilot ejected (and) was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition for evaluation and treatment of non-life-threatening injuries,” according to a statement from the wing.
Airport fire crews sprayed the wreckage with firefighting foam and worked to extinguish a grass fire surrounding the crash site.
“F-35 short final crash,” the Miramar air traffic control tower told firefighters in audio recorded by LiveATC.net. “It appeared that the parachute did deploy … and a pilot ejected.”
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. Military plane crashes are typically investigated by the military as opposed to civilian crashes which are investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Billed as “the most advanced jet fighter in the world” by its manufacturer, the F-35B is a stealth aircraft that can land like a conventional plane, or vertically, similar to a helicopter. The more than 50-foot-long jet is operated by the US Marines, the United Kingdom and the Italian Air Force. The planes cost about $102 million each, according to the manufacturer.
About 15,000 service members from all branches of the military are based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, located in San Diego. (CNN)
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