United Kingdom

    Doctors working in the NHS have been told they must leave the UK after they were refused visas by the Home Office, medical professionals have warned. The Independent spoke to one man who was forced to return to India and abandon his postgraduate degree to take up GP training because an immigration cap meant he was unable to apply for visa. When he was accepted onto a GP training programme in the UK he left his Master’s degree early to take up his place on the course. But he was unable to obtain a Certificate of Sponsorship form his employer because they had already reached the cap on European Economic Area (EEA) workers. A training job is hard to come by. It is frustrating. Especially because it means you can’t help the industry when it’s very short of doctors, sai...

    The inquiry heard that Grenfell’s ventilation system was meant to extract smoke in the event of a fire but was faulty at the time of… The smoke ventilation system at Grenfell Tower was reported to have failed eight days before the fatal blaze claimed 71 lives but a proposal to fix it for £1,800 was ignored, the public inquiry has heard. The system was meant to extract smoke from lobbies outside flats in the event of a fire and its failure has been identified by experts as a factor in the escape routes from the building filling with thick black smoke that may have prevented evacuation and rescue. However, the system was not designed to clear smoke from multiple floors at once. Martin Booth, the managing director of PSB, which made the system, told the inquiry it re...

    The EU is split on post-Brexit security cooperation, the UK home secretary has said, as he introduced a new government counter-terrorism strategy with an appeal for Brussels to focus on maintaining strong links. Sajid Javid, outlining the approach, called Contest, in a speech in London, said it would be wrong and reckless for either side to seek a reduction in security and terror cooperation after Brexit. After the speech, Javid said the European commission was seeking to treat the UK as a third country, and that interior ministers he was meeting took a very different view. Security links have been one of the more contested areas of Brexit talks, with Theresa May facing resistance from some in the EU over her desire for a new treaty on cooperation. Officials have a...

    Britain’s youngest female terror plotter has been found guilty of preparing an attack on London with the first all-woman Islamic State cell. Safaa Boular, now 18, secretly discussed the murderous scheme with her sister and mother using coded language which had an Alice in Wonderland tea party theme. Instead of cucumber sandwiches and cakes, her sister Rizlaine, 22, bought a large knife to bring carnage to Westminster in April last year. Boular first began planning a grenade and gun attack on the British Museum when she was thwarted from joining her IS husband in Syria. She passed the baton to her sibling after she was arrested and remanded in custody for trying to travel to the war zone. Following an Old Bailey trial, she was found guilty of preparing acts of ter...

    Britain will face a full spectrum Russian threat for years to come, a new report has claimed. The Kremlin's use of hackers, trolls, paid protesters and misinformation are all part of a destabilisation strategy, Tory MP Bob Seely suggests. In a peer-reviewed report for think tank the Henry Jackson Society, the Conservative MP says the covert and overt forms of malign influence used by Moscow should be termed contemporary Russian conflict. He suggests the Kremlin considers non-military tools to be potentially more powerful than military tools, with instruments such as information warfare, cultural manipulation and social media hacktivism being used to achieve foreign policy goals without the use of direct force. Mr Seely argues Russian President Vladimir Putin views...

    Meghan Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, may have watched her daughter marry the love of her life and make history as she married into the royal family, but there was another moment from the weekend that the duchess’s mum will cherish forever. After arriving in the UK ahead of the wedding to meet her daughter’s future in-laws, Ragland met a number of members of the royal family including the Queen. When Meghan’s mum did finally meet the 92-year-old monarch, over tea at Windsor Castle with Meghan and Harry a day before the nuptials, it clearly went well. And the 62-year-old yoga instructor also appeared to form relationships with other members of the royal family, including Prince Charles and Camilla, who walked Ragland out of the church after the ceremony arm-in-arm....

    Arlene Foster has threatened to pull out of a deal to prop up Theresa May’s Government if it adopts a Brexit deal that treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader warned that customs parity with Britain was a red line for her party, whose 10 MPs support the Conservatives in Westminster under a supply and demand arrangement. Cabinet ministers are currently examining ideas to solve the Irish border issue after Britain quits the European Union. One idea reportedly proposed by Brexit Secretary David Davis – and dismissed by Downing Street – would see Northern Ireland covered by a joint regime of UK and EU customs regulations, allowing it to trade freely with both, plus a 10-mile wide “special economic zone” on...

    The Nuffield Trust said Labour should tread cautiously in embarking upon a radical restructure. Labour will flesh out how it would dismantle Andrew Lansley’s structural NHS reforms to bring more health provision back in-house, in a wide-ranging consultation on NHS restructuring under a future Labour government. The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, said Labour had now rejected the possibility of working within the existing structures, calling them unfit for purpose, and said the party would consult in the coming months over how it could re-establish a universally public NHS. The party is committing for the first time to a wholesale restructure of the health service. Overhauling NHS structures have traditionally been politically risky. The former Conservativ...

    Cancer patients in the UK may not receive enough follow-up after a diagnosis, a new study by researchers in Chicago suggests. The study, presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, suggests five years of monitoring is insufficient for some cancers and too long for others. The research suggests some NHS patients may receive too few years of follow-up care. This study highlights the importance of monitoring some cancer patients for extended periods, said Dr Robert Dood, of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. Failing to monitor patients at greatest risk means opportunities to save their lives may be missed. His researchers used the American SEER database, which covers about 28% of the US population, to analyse when p...

    A former counter terror detective says police investigating the poisoning of spy Sergei Skripal must be prepared for obstruction if they pursue suspects in Russia. Brian Tarpey accused Russian authorities of playing games with him and colleagues when they went to Moscow to interview a witness to the fatal poisoning of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. The Russians said that far from being the killer, he himself was a victim who was poisoned by Litvinenko. To this day, I still don't know if we interviewed the man we thought he was. Businessman Kovtun and another Russian Andrey Lugovoy, both former KGB officers, were later named in a UK public inquiry as Litvinenko's killers. Monday will mark three months since the nerve agent poisoning of former double...