UK rejects visa for girl left destitute in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa
An eight-year-old girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa has been barred from coming to the UK to join her parents.The Guardian reported on the case of Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown after the hurricane.Her mother, Kerrian Bigby, a carer, moved from Jamaica to be with Lati-Yana’s British father, Jerome Hardy, a telecommunications worker, in April 2023, leaving their daughter to be cared for by her grandmother.The couple married this year and after saving up for the £4,000 visa application fee for Lati-Yana to join them, applied in June.After Hurricane Melissa, the couple urged the Home Office to expedite their visa decision, saying “an urgent situation had become an emergency”.
The hurricane destroyed the house Lati-Yana was living in with her grandmother, who Bigby said was no longer physically able to look after her, in Cash Hill, Hanover, which was badly damaged by the storm.Unicef has launched an appeal to help an estimated 1.6 million children in the region get access to essentials such as clean water, education and nutrition supplies.Officials at the Home Office have now rejected the visa application.In its refusal letter to Lati-Yana, Home Office officials state: “While it is acknowledged the effects of the natural disaster have significantly affected you and the wider population of Jamaica, I am also aware that you continue to reside with family members.
Stating that your grandmother is unable to provide care, evidence of this has not been demonstrated,It has therefore not been demonstrated that you could not be cared for by relatives in the country you currently reside,”Lati-Yana’s parents said they were devastated by the decision and would appeal against it,However, their lawyer said an appeals backlog of 106,000 cases meant it could take up to two years for the case to be heard,Bigby said: “As her mother, being separated from my daughter is incredibly painful.
I cannot sleep at night knowing she is far away and not receiving the care and support that every child needs.The emotional toll on both of us is significant.Reuniting with my daughter is not just a wish, it is a necessity for her development and my ability to fulfil my responsibilities as her mother.I am so distressed, I can’t eat or sleep.”Naga Kandiah, of MTC Solicitors, who is representing the family, said the Home Office appeared to be taking a stricter view of such cases.
“The Home Office’s approach demonstrates a troubling lack of compassion and understanding for a vulnerable young girl who is currently separated from her parents,” he said.Kandiah urged the Home Office to urgently reconsider its decision, “ensuring that Lati-Yana’s welfare and best interests are properly safeguarded”.The Home Office had a statutory duty to make the child’s best interests a primary consideration, he added.About half of the visa fee is paid to the Home Office and the other half is an NHS surcharge to cover any health service costs Lati-Yana might incur in the future.The surcharge is refundable if a visa application is rejected but the rest is not.
The couple will have to pay several thousand pounds more for their appeal.A Home Office spokesperson said: “All visa applications are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with the immigration rules.”
Airbus issues major A320 recall after mid-air incident grounds planes, disrupting global travel
Airlines around the world cancelled and delayed flights heading into the weekend after Airbus announced on Friday that it had ordered immediate repairs to 6,000 of its A320 family of jets in a recall affecting more than half of the global fleet.The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is the main certifying authority for A320 aircraft, issued the instruction on Friday night as a “precautionary action”.The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters.The setback appears to be among the largest recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane’s more than 350 operators, about 3,000 A320-family jets were in the air
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One in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, NSPCC finds
Nearly one in 10 UK parents say their child has been blackmailed online, with harms ranging from threatening to release intimate pictures to revealing details about someone’s personal life.The NSPCC child protection charity also found that one in five parents know a child who has experienced online blackmail, while two in five said they rarely or never talked to their children about the subject.The National Crime Agency has said that it is receiving more than 110 reports a month of child sextortion attempts, where criminal gangs trick teenagers into sending intimate pictures of themselves and then blackmail them.Agencies across the UK, US and Australia have confirmed a rising number of sextortion cases involving teenage boys and young adult males being targeted by cyber-criminal gangs based in west Africa or south-east Asia, some of which have ended in tragedy. Murray Dowey, a 16-year-old from Dunblane, Scotland, killed himself in 2023 after becoming a victim of sextortion on Instagram and Dinal De Alwis, 16, killed himself in Sutton, south London, in October 2022 after being blackmailed over nude photographs
Small changes to ‘for you’ feed on X can rapidly increase political polarisation
Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found.A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk’s social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side.The degree of increased division – known as “affective polarisation” – achieved in one week by the changes the academics made to X users’ feeds was as great as would have on average taken three years between 1978 and 2020.Most of the more than 1,000 users who took part in the experiment during the 2024 US presidential election did not notice that the tone of their feed had been changed.The campaign was marked by divisive viral posts on X, including a fake image of Kamala Harris cosying up to Jeffrey Epstein at a gala and an AI-generated image posted by Musk of Kamala Harris dressed as a communist dictator that had 84m views
‘Call us rubbish’: Ben Stokes hits back at claims that England approach is ‘arrogant’
Ben Stokes has accepted the criticism that followed his England side’s two-day defeat in Perth as part of being in the results business but said he draws a line at the notion his players were “arrogant” in their approach.That particular word was used by former Australia fast bowler Mitchell Johnson in a strongly-worded column for the West Australian newspaper and has been a theme of the wider reaction.The majority of England players sitting out a two-day tour match in Canberra this week in favour of extra training in Brisbane only added fuel to the fire.Perceptions can only be truly changed out in the middle but the size of the task ahead of England is now considerable. This much-hyped Ashes series resumes with a day-night second Test that gets underway on Thursday at the Gabba – a ground that last witnessed an England victory back in 1986
Imran Sherwani, Great Britain Olympic hockey hero, dies aged 63
Imran Sherwani, who starred in the Great Britain hockey team that won Olympic gold in 1988, has died at the age of 63, his family have announced.Sherwani revealed in 2021 that had he been diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s in 2019, and his family continue to raise awareness of the condition. He represented Great Britain and England 94 times, culminating in scoring two goals in his team’s 3-1 final victory over West Germany in Seoul.Sherwani’s second goal that effectively clinched the contest sparked a famous reaction from BBC commentator Barry Davies, who asked: “Where were the Germans? But frankly, who cares!”It sparked British hockey’s greatest moment for thousands watching at dawn back home in the UK. Imran was the third Asian player to play for GB after Sutinder Kehar and Kulbir Bhaura, his 1988 teammate
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