Europe

    The UK military is to join Nato forces intercepting and returning people trying to reach Europe from Turkey, as David Cameron prepares to meet European leaders to discuss the escalating migration crisis. The prime minister announced that the Royal Navy was deploying the amphibious landing ship RFA Mounts Bay as the first UK contribution to the Nato deployment in the Aegean Sea. The vessel, which carries a Wildcat helicopter, will join naval vessels from Germany, Canada, Turkey and Greece as part of Nato’s first intervention in the migration crisis. The announcement came several hours after another boat carrying people sank with the loss of 25 lives including at least three children. Fifteen people were rescued after the boat capsized near the Turkish resort of Didim. It com...

    Brexit could bring Calais jungle to Britain The Calais jungle refugee camp could be relocated to Britain if the UK chooses to leave the European Union, according to France's economy minister. In an interview with the Financial Times, Emmanuel Macron warned that Brexit would threaten the bilateral relationship between the UK and France. He said the Le Touquet Agreement, which allows British authorities to conduct border checks on the French side of the Channel, thereby keeping illegal migrants out, could be scuppered if the UK decides leaves the EU. The day this relationship unravels, migrants will no longer be in Calais and the financial passport would work less well, Mr Macron said. The newspaper also reported that Mr Macron believes many financial services workers will l...

    A British man who flew to Germany using his girlfriend's passport only realised the mistake when he had arrived at his destination - having gone through security. Josh Reed, who is 6 ft 3 and has a beard, travelled from London Stansted to Dortmund on a Ryanair flight with petite brunette Sophie's ID, reports The Sun . According to the 21-year-old, security at the gate only checked his boarding pass, meaning he only spotted that he had the wrong travel documents when he landed in Germany. But at no point did anyone else notice that he wasn't girlfriend Sophie Watkins. Nightclub doorman Josh told The Sun: We have different surnames and we couldn't look more different. It makes you wonder how easy it would be for people that look alike to get through on fake passports. A spok...

    France has detected its first sexually transmitted case of Zika in a woman whose partner had traveled to Brazil, the epicentre of an outbreak of the virus, a senior health official said on Saturday. US officials said earlier this week they were investigating 14 reports of the mosquito-borne disease that may have been transmitted through sex, including to several pregnant women. Francois Bourdillon, head of France's Institute for Public Health Surveillance (IVS), said the infected woman was the country's "first confirmed indigenous case of transmission". "This was a woman who had never travelled. Her partner had come from Brazil, so she was tested," Bourdillon said in an interview broadcast on BFM TV, adding that both patients were doing well. Marie-Claire Paty, who helps m...

    A security team guarding Jude Law was attacked by migrants as the Hollywood star visited the jungle camp in Calais. The 43-year-old actor was in France with a film crew and Brit-winning singer Tom Odell , 25, to witness the horrors of the squalid makeshift village, which is due to be demolished. But shortly after the cameras stopped rolling, their minders were ambushed by some of the migrants and had their phones stolen. It is ¬understood Jude was already on the production team’s bus when the thugs struck. A source said: “We were shocked to see some of the migrants acting like football hooligans. “The security team had stones thrown at them, and two had their phones smashed then stolen. Jude and Tom were told to stay in the bus shortly before the ambush as the atmosphere w...

    Admission to the Louvre today costs more than £12 – the highest price in history in sterling terms – at the rate of exchange offered by your post office. Against the euro, £1 buys 11 per cent less than it did just three months ago, effectively adding a tenth to prices in the euro area. Six months ago, the pound looked fairly robust against the dollar, with a value of almost $1.60; yesterday, sterling sank below $1.40, its lowest level for seven years. While the basic New York subway fare has remained at $2.75 since last summer, the cost for British tourists has risen by 24p to almost £2. Market uncertainty over the EU referendum has seen sterling slide. That spells financial embarrassment for UK passport holders. It gets worse: the currencies in many destinations, from Dub...

    A crowd is reported to have cheered as a building designated to house migrants in Germany was burnt out in a suspected arson. The blaze in the town of Bautzen early this morning caused serious damage to the former hotel which was being converted. Cops claim onlookers tried to prevent firefighters from tackling the blaze. Officers said members of the crowd took "unashamed delight" in watching the fire. Two drunken men were arrested after they refused to leave the scene, the BBC reports. The converted hotel was supposed to house 300 migrants. Stanislaw Tillich,premier of the state of Saxony, described those involved as "criminals." The latest incident comes just days after protesters in Clausnitz - also in Saxony - blocked a bus taking migrants to accommodation in the town. ...

    Welle French authorities are ordering hundreds of refugees to vacate a large swathe of a vast camp along the English Channel in Calais. Those occupying the southern sector of the camp, often referred to as the jungle because it is the most densely populated section, have until Tuesday evening to vacate the premises before it is razed by authorities. The order comes from the state authority for Calais, which adds that police are authorized to remove anyone still on the premises. Official estimates as to the number of people in the targeted area vary widely – from 800 to 4000. This section of the camp is replete with cafes, shops and houses of worship. Many of the refugees in the camp are fleeing civil war and conflict in Syria, Iraqi and Afghanistan but others, from Africa,...

    The jihadist Twitter account Al-Baraka news allegedly shows Isis vehicles driving on a newly cut road through the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and Al-Hassaka in Syria. Photograph… Up to 5,000 jihadists are feared to be in Europe after returning from terrorist training camps, the head of Europol has said. Rob Wainwright, director of the EU-wide law enforcement agency, predicted further attacks by Isis following the massacres in Paris that killed 130 people in November. “Europe is currently facing its biggest terror threat in more than a decade,” he told Germany’s Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper. “One can expect Islamic State (Isis) or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe with the aim of achieving many casualties a...

    Brace yourself: for the next four months, the news bulletins will be dominated by talk of the UK's referendum on whether to stay or leave the European Union. And, probably on June 23, we all get to vote. Many people's first reaction is something like this. But stay with us. The referendum is arguably more important than any general election, changing Britain’s relationship with Europe and, in turn, the rest of the world. The arguments will range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The prosaic to the poetic. You’ll hear about what it means if you’ve ever aspired to work abroad, watched Netflix on holiday in Spain or hired a Polish builder. But you’ll also hear grand talk about power, sovereignty and Britain’s place in the world. There’ll also be nonsense: scaremongering, di...