Child migrants were rescued from a boat in the English Channel, which was drifting without power.
They were among a group of about 30 people stuck on the broken dinghy in the Channel, trying to reach the English coast.
The rescue on Monday came as record numbers have reached England this year, and the UK looks to implement its plan of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The children were returned to France, carried ashore by crew members of the Abeille Languedoc rescue vessel.
They had left France from somewhere along the Boulogne-sur-Mer coast in northern France, but the dinghy’s generator broke down while still in French waters.
The Abeille Languedoc is an ocean-going tug specialising in the rescue of ships in distress, and has been moored in Cherbourg for 26 years monitoring the Channel between the Cotentin Peninsula and the Pas-de-Calais.
Crew members gave children toys and blankets after the rescue, as they were returned to France.
The Channel run is a popular but dangerous route across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes for migrants fleeing some of the world’s trouble spots.
There have been increasing numbers of people crossing in the last three years with 2021 setting a record high and 2022 seeing year-on-year highs.
At least 7,7,39 migrants have arrived in the UK via the Channel so far this year, many of them in unseaworthy boats. That is more than triple the tally for this time last year.
The humanitarian problem has inspired the UK government’s controversial Rwanda policy and its promise to deport people who make the Channel crossing.
The Home Office has said deportations could start as early as this week.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said legal challenges have delayed implementation of the policy she described as a “world-first” agreement.
Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, one of the organisations vowing legal action against the plan, said: “There's nothing 'world-first' about this agreement — it's a neocolonial embarrassment that seeks to trade black and brown refugees for money with a country whose human rights record is abysmal.
“Terrible harm is already being done — people are terrified of receiving these letters, including asylum-seeking children who have arrived in the UK on their own. We'll see the government in court.”
Guidance published by the Home Office states Rwanda is “a safe country to relocate people to”, although an assessment carried out before the UK-Rwanda agreement found “some concerns with its human rights record around political opposition to the current regime, dissent and free speech”.
Profile
Name: Carzaty
Founders: Marwan Chaar and Hassan Jaffar
Launched: 2017
Employees: 22
Based: Dubai and Muscat
Sector: Automobile retail
Funding to date: $5.5 million
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
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Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
Four motivational quotes from Alicia's Dubai talk
“The only thing we need is to know that we have faith. Faith and hope in our own dreams. The belief that, when we keep going we’re going to find our way. That’s all we got.”
“Sometimes we try so hard to keep things inside. We try so hard to pretend it’s not really bothering us. In some ways, that hurts us more. You don’t realise how dishonest you are with yourself sometimes, but I realised that if I spoke it, I could let it go.”
“One good thing is to know you’re not the only one going through it. You’re not the only one trying to find your way, trying to find yourself, trying to find amazing energy, trying to find a light. Show all of yourself. Show every nuance. All of your magic. All of your colours. Be true to that. You can be unafraid.”
“It’s time to stop holding back. It’s time to do it on your terms. It’s time to shine in the most unbelievable way. It’s time to let go of negativity and find your tribe, find those people that lift you up, because everybody else is just in your way.”
