
U.K. government blasted as "racist" and "inhumane" for plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda
CBSN
London — Britain will send migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the Channel thousands of miles away to Rwanda under a controversial deal announced Thursday as the government tries to clamp down on record numbers of people making the perilous journey.
"From today... anyone entering the U.K. illegally as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1 may now be relocated to Rwanda," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a speech near Dover in southeastern England. "Rwanda will have the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead."
He called the East African nation with a sketchy human rights record "one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognized for its record of welcoming and integrating migrants."

Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil who made a record-breaking parachute jump from the stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding accident in Italy, a local mayor confirmed. Firefighters who responded to the scene said they found a paraglider that had crashed into the side of a swimming pool in the city of Porto Sant Elpidio, on central Italy's eastern coast.

Baghdad — A fire at a newly opened mall in eastern Iraq's Wasit province killed more than 60 people, including women and children, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The nation's Interior Ministry said in a statement that 61 people died, most of them from suffocation, in the blaze that broke out late Wednesday in the city of al-Kut.

Moscow — An American who spied on Ukrainian troops to help Moscow's military offensive in the country has been granted Russian citizenship, Moscow-installed authorities said Tuesday. Daniel Martindale spent two years in Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, transmitting coordinates of military facilities to Russia's secret services, according to reports in Russian state media.