This Palestinian man, who wants to remain anonymous, left Gaza through ‘Al Majd Europe’, a controversial group using unofficial, Israeli-coordinated channels that required registration, screening, and payments to unknown individuals. He told Al Jazeera that passengers did not know their destination, which ended up being Johannesburg, South Africa
The United Kingdom has announced a drastic reduction in the protections for asylum seekers and refugees under a new plan aimed at slashing irregular immigration and countering the far right.
The measures, modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system, were announced late on Saturday as Prime Minister Keir Starmer comes under pressure from surging popularity for the anti-immigrant Reform UK party.
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“I’ll end UK’s golden ticket for asylum seekers,” Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood declared in a statement, with the Home Office, as her ministry is known, calling the new proposals the “largest overhaul of asylum policy in modern times”.
Mahmood is due to lay out the policy in parliament on Monday.
Meanwhile, the head of the UK’s Refugee Council warned the government that the measures would not deter people from trying to reach the country and urged a rethink.
“They should ensure that refugees who work hard and contribute to Britain can build secure, settled lives and give back to their communities,” Enver Solomon said.
Currently, people get refugee status for five years, after which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain and eventually, citizenship.
Mahmood’s ministry says it would cut the length of refugee status to 30 months. That protection will be “regularly reviewed”, and refugees will be forced to return to their home countries once they are deemed safe, it added.
The ministry also said it intended to make those refugees who were granted asylum wait 20 years before applying to be allowed to live in the UK long-term.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high. Polls suggest immigration has overtaken the economy as voters’ top concern.
Some 109,343 people claimed asylum in the UK in the year ending March 2025, a 17 percent rise on the previous year and 6 percent above the 2002 peak of 103,081.
The Home Office said the reforms would make it less attractive for irregular migrants and refugees to come to the UK and make it easier to remove those already in the country.
A statutory legal duty to provide support to asylum seekers, introduced in a 2005 law, would also be revoked, the ministry said. That means housing and weekly financial allowances would no longer be guaranteed for asylum seekers.
It would be “discretionary”, meaning the government could deny assistance to any asylum seeker who could work or support themselves, or those who committed crimes.
Starmer, elected last year, is under pressure to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats from France, something that also troubled his Conservative predecessors.
More than 39,000 people, many fleeing conflict, have arrived this year following such dangerous journeys – more than for the whole of 2024 but lower than the record set in 2022.
The crossings are helping raise the popularity of Reform, led by firebrand Nigel Farage, which has led Labour by double-digit margins in opinion polls for most of this year.
Women in Fiji are often employed in the informal economy, which means low and inconsistent pay, with underemployment for them running as high as 74 percent, according to The Asia Foundation. So the women being trained by Ravea are eager to learn a more lucrative trade.
Gathered in Vatulele’s bright, turquoise-coloured community hall, Ravea is teaching women how to haul in the lines, clean the oysters, and make predator nets from heavy-duty plastic to protect the oysters from triggerfish and pufferfish. She offers quarterly training sessions, welcoming both women and men to learn the oyster meat trade.
Around 25 women in the village have received training in oyster farming this year. On this day in mid-July, half a dozen women aged 24 to 59 and dressed in florals and polka dots are crouched over rolls of predator nets.
Unaisi Seruwaia, 49, is one of the trainees. She previously served as secretary of Vatulele Yaubula, the village’s community oyster collective, so she understands the industry’s potential.
“It’s not easy to live in a [Fijian] village — it’s difficult to make money,” she says, noting that the average income in her village is just 150 to 200 Fijian dollars ($66-88) a week.
“We sell vegetables, like dalo [taro] and yaqona [kava], or we look for income from fishing,” she says, adding that some women also dry coconut meat, weave baskets or take jobs in shops.
As the weather becomes more unpredictable, a climate-resistant source of income is more important than ever, says Seruwaia.
Warnings about extreme weather events are raising fears that fishing stocks will decline further. In March 2025, for example, a climate study predicted that tropical cyclones and extreme floods would increase in severity in Fiji, posing even more risks to coastal and marine livelihoods.
The country has only just recovered from 2016’s Cyclone Winston. The 26-day storm was the strongest on record in the Southern Hemisphere, costing an estimated 1.99 billion Fijian dollars ($875m) in damage. The cyclone affected more than half of Fiji’s population, killing 44 people and causing widespread damage and destruction to villages and farmland, particularly on the north coast of the main island, but also on the smaller islands.
“Cyclone Winston caused extensive damage to coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds — critical habitats that sustain subsistence and small-scale commercial fisheries,” says Rosi Batibasaga, a WCS fisheries officer.
Coastal villages such as Vatulele were hit hard, she said: “They faced reduced fish availability, destroyed boats and fishing gear, and sharp declines in household income and food security.”
Vatulele resident Vive Digiata, 59, put it simply: “Before [the cyclone], life was easier,” she said. “Fish are becoming smaller, and people are switching to canned fish to supplement their food.”
Tens of thousands of people are gathering in the Philippines’ capital, Manila, demanding accountability over a corruption scandal linked to flood-control projects and top government officials, including allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The three-day rally, which begins on Sunday, is the latest display of outrage over the discovery that thousands of flood defence projects across the typhoon-prone country were made from substandard materials or simply did not exist.
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Police estimated that 27,000 members of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, or Church of Christ, gathered in Manila’s Rizal Park before noon, many wearing white and carrying anticorruption placards, for the afternoon demonstration.
Brother Edwin Zabala, spokesman for the church, said the three-day rally is aimed at expressing “our sentiment and lend the voice of the Iglesia ni Cristo to the calls of many of our countrymen condemning the enormous evil involving many government officials”.
Other groups were scheduled to hold a separate anticorruption protest later on Sunday at the People Power Monument in suburban Quezon city.
The country’s military reaffirmed support for the government before the planned demonstrations in Manila, where the Philippine National Police say they will deploy 15,000 police as security.
The protests follow allegations that numerous well-connected figures, including Marcos’s cousin and former House of Representatives Speaker Martin Romualdez, pocketed large sums for anti-flooding projects that were low in quality or never completed at all.
Public outrage has flared again after recent storms hammered large swaths of the country earlier this month and left at least 259 people dead, and Marcos has promised that those implicated in the scandal would be in jail before the Christmas holiday.
The Department of Finance has estimated that the country lost up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2bn) to corruption in flood-control projects between 2023 and 2025, some of them referred to as “ghost infrastructure projects”.
A fact-finding commission has filed criminal complaints for corruption against 37 people, including senators, members of Congress, and wealthy businesspeople. Criminal complaints have also been filed against 86 construction company executives and nine government officials for allegedly evading nearly 9 billion pesos ($153m) in taxes.
Among those accused are lawmakers opposed to and allied with Marcos. In addition to Romualdez, these include Senate President Chiz Escudero, as well as Senator Bong Go, a key ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
All three have denied wrongdoing.
Marcos has said his cousin will not face criminal charges “as yet” due to a lack of evidence, but added that “no one is exempt” from the investigation.
“We don’t file cases for optics,” he said. “We file cases to put people in jail.”
Duterte, a harsh Marcos critic, was detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands in March for alleged crimes against humanity over his brutal anti-drug crackdowns.
His daughter, the current vice president, said Marcos should also be held accountable and jailed for approving the 2025 national budget, which appropriated billions for flood control projects.
There have been isolated calls, including by some pro-Duterte supporters, for the military to withdraw support from Marcos, but Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, General Romeo Brawner Jr, has repeatedly rejected those calls.
“With full conviction, I assure the public that the armed forces will not engage in any action that violates the Constitution. Not today, not tomorrow and certainly not under my watch,” Brawner said.
The military “remains steadfast in preserving peace, supporting lawful civic expression and protecting the stability and democratic institutions of the republic”, he added.
Islam Makhachev out-classed Jack Della Maddalena in a five-round beat-down to claim a unanimous decision victory and win the UFC welterweight championship at Madison Square Garden, with Valentina Shevchenko retaining her flyweight title in the co-main event.
Makhachev made light of stepping up a weight class after relinquishing the lightweight crown to chase a new challenge, utterly dominating his Australian opponent for 25 minutes with his smothering grappling to claim his 16th UFC victory in a row on Saturday night.
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The 34-year-old softened up his 29-year-old adversary with calf kicks before launching a relentless wrestling attack and Della Maddalena had no answer, getting stuck on the mat dealing with submission threats under tremendous pressure for long periods.
“This is my plan. It’s not a secret, all my opponents know this, and nobody can stop it,” Makhachev said before calling for his first title defence to be at the proposed event on the White House lawn in 2026.
All three judges scored the contest 50-45 as Makhachev became the 11th fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two different weight classes.
Della Maddalena – who ended an 18-fight career win streak, that featured 14 finishes – walked out of the cage without conducting the traditional post-fight interview and lost his first title defence since he beat Belal Muhammad via unanimous decision in May to wrest away the welterweight championship.
In the co-headliner, Zhang Weili’s dream of joining the elite group of double-champions came up short as the wily Shevchenko out-pointed her in another dominant performance to retain the flyweight crown.
Shevchenko (26-4-1) won her 11th overall title fight once she swept the scorecards 50-45 against Zhang.
Shevchenko displayed her full array of skills, sniping at her Chinese opponent and hurting her with punishing kicks to the body, and taking her to the mat and controlling her whenever she felt in danger.
The fighter from Krygyzstan became the first female UFC fighter to record 60 career takedowns – and the fight indeed ended with Zhang on her back.
“I was preparing for this fight as the hardest challenge in my life,” Shevchenko said in the cage after her customary victory dance.
“This is what I call the art of martial arts. When they are here in front of me, they cannot do anything.”
The show went on without an appearance from President Donald Trump, a close friend of UFC CEO Dana White, who normally has a cage side seat for the tri-state area’s biggest events.
UFC fans at the Garden, though, did get a big fight well ahead of the main event when a massive brawl broke out near one of the tunnels used for fight entrances and spilled through the stands and near press row.
The stir – which involved MMA fighter Dillon Danis – had the crowd howling and caused a short delay to the start of the pay-per-view card as police and security tried to bust up the melee.
Fists continued to fly at a furious pace once UFC 322 truly got under way.