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    A student has accused British authorities of racial discrimination after her family was forced to miss her graduation because they were refused entry to the country. Aster Abebe’s family were due to fly in from the US to see her graduate from the University of York on 15 July but their trip was derailed when they were told they were unable to board a flight from Brussels at the last moment. The 21-year-old said her extended family, who are all of Ethiopian descent, had spent a year planning the trip to the UK but it was ruined when three of her cousins were turned away at the boarding gate after being told UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) would not allow them into the country. The party of six, including her aunt, father and four cousins, had planned to take a Ryanair fligh...

David Blanchflower: Professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee from June 2006 to May 2009 I keep waiting for the good news that the Brexiters told us would come once the vote to leave the EU was in. The vote was an unexpected shock to the markets that was always going to take a while to work its way into the main economic data. A year on, Britain is the slowest-growing country in both the G7 and the EU28. In the first quarter of 2017, the UK grew 0.2%, whereas the eurozone grew by 0.6%. As a result of the Brexit vote and the economic uncertainty it unleashed, Britain is fast becoming the sick man of Europe. That seems unlikely to change soon. Once again this month, there is only thin economic gruel in the data. ...

    has insisted he did not promise to write off student debt as he campaigned for the youth vote in the general election. The Labour leader has faced claims he used students as election fodder by indicating he would wipe out the sums they owed for their education. During the run-up to the June 8 vote, Mr Corbyn said he wanted to look at ways to reduce, ameliorate, lengthen the period of paying it off or some other means of reducing that debt burden. In the interview with NME, he added: And I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it. Mr Corbyn said the comments had not been a commitment to erase student debt ...