Nearly 450, 000 Afghans have returned from Iran since early June, according to the United Nations refugee agency, after Tehran imposed a July 6 deadline for undocumented migrants and refugees to leave the country.
The surge compounds Afghanistan’s existing challenges as the impoverished nation struggles to integrate waves of returnees from Pakistan and Iran since 2023, amid one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.
The UNHCR reports that more than 1.4 million people have “returned or been forced to return to Afghanistan” this year alone. Iran’s late May directive potentially affects four million undocumented Afghans among the approximately six million Afghan residents claimed by Tehran.
Border crossings increased dramatically from mid-June, with some days seeing approximately 40, 000 people entering Afghanistan. Between June 1 and July 5, 449, 218 Afghans returned from Iran, bringing the 2024 total to 906, 326, according to an International Organization for Migration spokesman.
Many returnees report experiencing pressure from authorities, arrests, deportations, and financial losses due to hasty departures. The crisis response has been hampered by significant cuts in foreign aid, prompting calls for increased funding from the UN, international NGOs, and Taliban officials.
The UN has cautioned that this mass return could further destabilise Afghanistan, which already faces entrenched poverty, unemployment, and climate change effects. “Forcing or pressuring Afghans to return risks further instability in the region, and onward movement towards Europe”, the UNHCR said on Friday.
While Taliban officials advocate for a “dignified” return process, Iranian media frequently reports mass arrests of “illegal” Afghans. Iran’s deputy interior minister, Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian, acknowledged that while undocumented Afghans in the country were “respected neighbours and brothers in faith”, Iran’s “capacities also have limits”. He indicated the return process “will be implemented gradually”.
EXCLUSIVE: Liam Gallagher could be preparing to take a huge risk as Oasis prepares for their first hometown show at Manchester’s Heaton Park this weekend
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Liam faces a huge risk ahead of the Heaton Park gigs this weekend(Image: Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Liam Gallagher faces a major risk ahead of the first Oasis gig at Heaton Park, Manchester this weekend. Liam, 52, faces getting a rocky reception at the Oasis homecoming Manchester gigs – if he continues asking the crowd to “do the Poznan”.
The frontman urged all fans at both Cardiff gigs to turn around and bounce up and down during the anthem Cigarettes & Alcohol. He said on Saturday: “I don’t ask you to do the Mexican wave or sh*t like that, but I want you to do the poznan so everyone turn around and put your hands on each other. It’s 2025, don’t be shy. When the tunes start, you jump up and down, it’s very easy, you don’t need GCSEs.”
And he also posted a clip of the Poznan on his official social media with his comments from Friday night where he similarly said: “I want you to do the Poznan, so turn around and put your hands on each other.” This gives the impression it could become a tour staple move for fans to jump around during that song.
Oasis will headline Heaton Park this weekend(Image: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
But the Poznan is a celebration used by Manchester City and at Heaton Park he would be asking a crowd to do it which will contain many thousands of Manchester United football fans.
One music source told the Mirror: “Liam loves seeing the crowd do it, but it will be a higher risk strategy at Heaton Park. It will be no surprise if he does do it or gives City a shout-out on stage because he and Noel are such big fans. Bonehead is the only red(United fan) in the lineup.”
The two brothers haven’t performed in Manchester since the Bank of Burnage gigs in June 2009(Image: Big Brother Recordings / PR Handout)
On social media, Manchester United fans are already debating the prospect of the Poznan this weekend. One suggested her could never watch Oasis live because they are City fans. But on X, formerly known as Twitter, one said: “I’ll be there at Heaton Park and won’t be doing the Poznan but doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the music?”
Another user called Fenton said: “Oasis surely won’t ask the crowd to do the Poznan at Heaton Park will they? Will end in disaster.” One fan called Sam said: “You can quite easily support Utd and love Aasis. Just won’t catch me doing the Poznan.”
The gig will be the first since Noel finally revealed why he and his younger brother decided to end their feud, which started when Noel quit the band in 2009. Before performing at the Rock en Seine festival, he dramatically walked out and said he couldn’t work with his brother anymore.
It’s the concert nobody ever expected to happen – but it is(Image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Speaking last weekend, he said that Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs was the mastermind behind the reunion. Noel introduced the band, whilst also joking about the high turnover of drummers Oasis had in the past. He said: “On drums, our 13th official drummer, Joey Waronker.
“On guitar, if it wasn’t for him none of this would have f**king happened in the first place, Mr Bonehead.” Meanwhile, Liam apologised to fans for the 16-year wait following their last concert. he said: “Hello people, it’s been too long.” As they broke into fan-favourite Champagne Supernova, their final song of the evening, the lead singer said: “Right you beautiful people, this is it. Nice one for putting up with us over the years, we know we’ve been difficult. Champagne Supernova, nice one.”
The band are supported by 90s group Cast, and former frontman of The Verve, Richard Ashcroft.
Ahead of the publication of their new book, Fiona Phillips and her dedicated husband, Martin Frizell, have spoken candidly about the realities of life with Alzheimer’s Disease, including the former presenter’s heartbreaking plea
In a candid admission, Fiona Phillips’ devoted husband, Martin Frizell, has opened up about the desperate plea she’s made as the couple deals with the everyday realities of living with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Fiona and Martin first locked eyes on the set of GMTV, back when he was chief correspondent. Although independent-minded Fiona had never intended to marry, they fell in love quickly and tied the knot in a 1997 Las Vegas wedding.
In the years since, Fiona and Martin, who share sons Nathaniel and Mackenzie, have stuck by each other through thick and thin. When Fiona, 64, was given a shock Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2022, after months of suffering from brain fog and anxiety, Martin made sure to be there for her every step of the way.
Now Martin has offered a devastating insight into how their lives have changed, with his “glamorous, glittering star” of a wife now vulnerable and in need of constant reassurance.
READ MORE: Fiona Phillips’ husband reveals her heartbreaking daily routine after Alzheimer’s diagnosis
Fiona Phillips and Martin Frizell have spoken out about the realities of life with Alzheimer’s Disease(Image: Getty Images Europe)
In a joint piece penned for the Mail Online, producer and editor Martin shed light on the “isolating” nature of Fiona’s illness, admitting, “the dinner-party invitations have dried up”.
Martin wrote: “It’s not that Fiona would even want to go out for dinner, but sometimes it would be nice to be asked. I don’t think people are deliberately trying to exclude us; they’re just not sure what to say, and so they say nothing at all.
“And it does feel lonely. It feels selfish to say that because this is not about me – it’s about Fiona and she’s the one who is really suffering in all this. She’s the one who feels lonely and scared and is often in pain.”
Martin has revealed that ‘vulnerable’ Fiona now struggles to be left alone
Sadly, when Martin does try to head out alone, Fiona finds it difficult to be left, sometimes even begging him to stay. He continued: “Sometimes when I’m going out, she will say, ‘Please don’t leave me,’ because she wants me to be close by. And it breaks my heart that my strong, independent wife has become so vulnerable.”
In the same piece, Canterbury-born Fiona spoke of the challenges she faces as her “memory skips away”, with even her most precious memories now difficult to grasp – a feeling that she’s likened to “trying to chase a £5 note that’s fallen out of your purse on a gusty day”.
Fiona has enjoyed a glittering career as a presenter and journalist(Image: Daily Mirror)
Paying tribute to her supportive husband, Martin, the mum of two shared: “I couldn’t be writing this at all without my husband Martin, and my closest friends, who are helping me articulate more clearly the thoughts I once had that are now harder for me to reach.
“I used to be able to talk to anyone about anything (a skill inherited from my mum), and then I made a career out of chatting to people on television. Nowadays, I can find talking about my life agonisingly difficult. Sometimes I get halfway through a sentence and I can’t remember where I was heading with it or the word I was looking for. It feels awful.”
Fiona was only in her early 60s when she learned she had Alzheimer’s – an illness she had assumed she wouldn’t have to think about for another 20 years. She had initially attributed her symptoms to going through menopause, but further tests revealed the devastating diagnosis.
Speaking previously with the Mirror, former breakfast TV host Fiona divulged: “It’s something I might have thought I’d get at 80. But I was still only 61 years old. “I felt more angry than anything else because this disease has already impacted my life in so many ways; my poor mum was crippled with it, then my dad, my grandparents, my uncle. It just keeps coming back for us.”
With Martin’s assistance, Fiona has penned a book called Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s, which is set to be published later this month.
Remember When: My Life With Alzheimer’s by Fiona Phillips (Macmillan, £22), is to be published July 17.
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Bridgerton actor Corey Mylchreest, who played King George / Farmer George in the spin-off show is set to star in a steamy Netflix drama set in Oxford University alongside Sofia Carson
My Oxford Year’s trailer is officially out and we cannot wait for its launch(Image: Netflix)
Netflix heard our demands for a return of Bridgerton’s King George and, this summer, they’ve promised to deliver. Known for his dreamy role as King George in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, Corey Mylchreest is set to return to our screens in a new Netflix romcom set in Oxford. Corey will act as the charming love interest of our academic dreams.
My Oxford Year will star the talented Sofia Carson as the American lead Anna. Following Anna to Oxford for her British dream of studying at Oxford University, viewers can fall as deeply in love with the witty Jamie – and yes, he is still just as handsome as he was a Farmer George.
READ MORE: Five romantasy book series’ to get your heart racing if you loved A Court of Thorns and Roses
Bridgerton: Queen Charlotte’s actor Corey Mylchreest is set to return as Netflix’s newest love interest(Image: Netflix)
Coming out August 1, the film guarantees us the summer romance we’ve been craving. The show was directed by BAFTA nominee Iain Morris, famed writer of British cult classic, The Inbetweeners. Sofia, who’s also acting as an executive producer for the new Netflix offering, praised Iain, telling Netflix Tudum: “Comedy is his language, so his vision of this film beautifully created a timeless, heart-breaking, sweeping romance, grounded in laughter”.
And whilst an intense love story from within the walls of Oxford’s halls might not be the fun-filled fling Netflix viewers prefer, Sofia insists that whilst “you may fall madly in love, you may cry” in one scene, Iain “will always make sure the joy of laughter is present”.
Only the second of Sofia’s productions, after 2022’s hit Purple Hearts, this bookish romance “steeped in literature and poetry” is a perfect match for #Booktok lovers.
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Calling her role an honour to “walk the halls of Oxford,” Sofia quoted poet Alfred Tennyson. “It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all” – two hundred years after Tennyson so beautifully uttered those words, they ring truer than ever — in the halls of Oxford, and within the heart of our film” she shared, affirming the foundation of the project was “the belief that life is too short to not live it in love, in joy”.
Also a fan of the Bridgerton spin-off, the actress claimed she knew Corey would be her Jamie from the beginning. Opening up about the instant sparks during their chemistry read, she recalled: “I watched Queen Charlotte in awe of Corey. He’s an extraordinary force of an actor. I always knew it would be Corey. As soon as he walked into the room for our chemistry read in London, Anna and Jamie came to life. Instantly”.
Corey’s close connection to the film comes from his personal ‘Oxford year’. A born-and-bred Londoner, Mylchreest told Tudum: “I have a friend that studied for uni[versity] in Oxford, and so there was a period of my life where I was going up and getting the train to Oxford quite frequently”.
My Oxford Year will be released on August 1, 2025(Image: Netflix)
Enjoying what the prestigious world of Oxford had to offer, Corey’s familiarity with the location was the polar opposite of his co-star, who opted to save her fresh eyes for filming. Carson admitted that she purposefully abstained from exploring the historic landmarks as she “wanted to save [her] honest reaction to witnessing the magic of Oxford for the first time, for once the cameras were rolling”.
With the release of Jurassic Park, starring Jonathan Bailey – forever our Anthony – and the filming of Bridgerton’s Season Four concluding in April, predicted to launch between later this year and 2026, it is clear to see that Netflix’s viewers cannot get enough of the Bridgerton cast.
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In the minutes before the Lions ran out to play the Queensland Reds in Brisbane, Maro Itoje gathered his players together in the dressing room and appealed to their inner grunt.
The captain made a point about wanting to play hard and direct rugby. “Get us through the front door,” he demanded of his team. “Forwards – set the tone with our physicality.”
And that’s the ongoing confusion with these Lions. They have all the artillery they need to blast through the guts of any team in Australia, but they just haven’t done it nearly often enough.
Head coach Andy Farrell has said regularly that the Lions are absolutely at their best when driving at the heart of the opposition and then, when they have them beaten up, playing from there. It’s like that old line about the first step to making chicken soup – catch a chicken.
And yet against the Waratahs they were still shovelling the ball out the backline without doing the hard yards up front. They should be better than this. They are better than this.
Last month, Itoje addressed some of the side-to-side stuff the Lions delivered in the defeat by Argentina and called it “tippy-tappy”. And it’s still a bit tippy-tappy.
Now that the Test series is looming on the horizon, maybe they’re about to unload. Maybe now is the time the hounds of hell are unleashed and the gameplan shifts to a more balanced and more belligerent version of what we’ve seen so far.
Before the Brumbies game, Itoje was asked if more direct rugby was in the offing. “That’s definitely the ambition,” he replied.
“Rugby doesn’t change too much, whether it’s under-14s rugby or the Lions. You have to go forward. You have to earn the right – the famous saying – to go wide. And that is definitely the case for us. We need to punch holes, get forward, then space opens up, wherever that may be.”
Does he feel they’ve been too lateral in their attack on this tour?
“At times, perhaps. At times we’ve been very good in playing direct and playing through teams. But at times we probably look to go wide before we earn the right.”
Now it’s the Brumbies’ turn to have a crack at them. Given rugby league’s State of Origin decider is on at the same time, the match will exist in a parallel Australian universe. Not that the Brumbies will see it like that.
They’ve been reared on stories of how their predecessors – Tevita Kuridrani and chums – beat the Lions in 2013 and how the 2001 Brumbies – Justin Harrison and all that – came so agonisingly close to beating them. They’ll know that legendary status awaits them if they can pull this off.
The problem is the brutal realities of modern-day rugby are getting in their way. The Brumbies are a good side, the best in Australia. But this is not the best of the Brumbies the Lions will be playing.
They have 10 players with Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies and only two have been released. Meanwhile, the Lions are going full metal jacket with what looks like the Test team, or very close to it.
It might not have the heft of the brilliant 2017 Lions in New Zealand, but there’s a sense that if this team can put it all together then we’re going to see something memorable.
At the heart of this, of course, is Finn Russell – championed on Tuesday in Canberra by Johnny Sexton who, you suspect, is now allowing himself to see a whole lot more in Russell as his coach than he ever did as his rival. That’s been a nice sideshow.
“He’s been very good, hasn’t he?” said Sexton. “He’s controlled things really well. He’s been composed, place-kicked very well, defended remarkably well. He’s been probably our best defender in the backline and that’s great to see.
The Wallabies are in poor shape, but the Lions can’t distract themselves with the modest nature of what they will probably be facing in the series. They need to start getting it right. So, no sloppy beginnings, no tippy-tappy, no mountain of handling errors because they’re forcing things. We need to see a cohesive unit coming through the fog now, a team with an identity and a ruthlessness.
“We want to be as dominant as we possibly can,” said Itoje. “We want to build and build and build. We want to get better and better. We want to start big and we want to maintain that throughout the whole game.
“That’s always the ambition. We want our big ball carriers to get over the gain-line, to aggressively attack holes. When you do that, opportunities tend to open up thereafter.
“People like Bundee (Aki), Ellis (Genge), Jack (Conan), big Joe McCarthy etc. We want these guys to be punching at the line.”
There are several stages to Lions tours – the initial selection, all happy clappy; the jolly japery about stealing the Lion from its young protector (Henry Pollock, this time); the thrill of the early games and new combinations; the honour of the debutants wearing the jersey; the speculation about who’s making the Test team.
We’re through all of that now. This week in Australia has felt like the turning of a page. “From now on, the kid gloves are off – it’s bare-knuckle stuff.” Jim Telfer’s words from the epic 1997 tour in South Africa.
A three-day warning strike is being held by Ondo State’s government medical staff starting on July 14, 2025, under the direction of the National Association of Government General and Dental Practitioners (NAGGMDP).
The Ondo State Government is acting in response to what the doctors described as gross disregard for the health industry and the welfare of medical professionals.
The state chapter of NAGGMDP, Richard Obe, the president’s representative, and Adekunle Owolabi, the secretary, both signed a statement outlining their grievances with the government.
The grievances include, according to the statement:
– Medical staff shortage, with some general hospitals only providing one doctor per local government area. Additionally, the doctors criticized the doctors’ refusal to consult with them about a sudden increase in taxes starting in April 2025.
– Eight newly hired doctors who have been working since October 2024 have not received salaries or benefits.
– Unpaid hazard allowances for January 2024 and October 2023.
– Outstanding promotions from June to December 2024
– Unpaid allowances and salary gaps for other members
The state government must immediately address these issues, according to the NAGGMDP.
Among them are:
– Rapid recruitment of additional doctors in the Ondo State.
– Full reimbursement for statutory benefits and salary arrears
– Changes to the new taxation structure
– Payment of newly hired officers’ outstanding salaries and benefits
– Payment of eligible members’ owed hazard allowances and payment of promotion arrears
The doctors warned that ignoring these demands during the warning strike would lead to an unfavorable strike that would have a long-term impact on the state’s already fragile healthcare system.
They expressed their commitment to providing healthcare to the general public, stating that they were unable to work in such challenging circumstances.