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UK Paid Rwanda Additional $126 mln for Contested Migrant Plan

Demonstrators hold placards while protesting against the government's policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, outside the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in London, Britain, 15 November 2023. EPA/NEIL HALL
Demonstrators hold placards while protesting against the government's policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, outside the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in London, Britain, 15 November 2023. EPA/NEIL HALL
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UK Paid Rwanda Additional $126 mln for Contested Migrant Plan

Demonstrators hold placards while protesting against the government's policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, outside the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in London, Britain, 15 November 2023. EPA/NEIL HALL
Demonstrators hold placards while protesting against the government's policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, outside the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in London, Britain, 15 November 2023. EPA/NEIL HALL

Britain paid Rwanda an additional 100 million pounds ($126 million) in April, on top of 140 million pounds it previously sent, as the bill for its contested plan to relocate asylum seekers to the East African country continues to rise.
The Rwanda scheme is at the center of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's strategy to deter illegal migrants but as yet none have been moved there because of legal battles since the scheme was announced in 2022, Reuters said.
The divisive policy is now seen as a threat to Sunak's leadership - with an election expected next year - after his immigration minister resigned this week.
On top of the 240 million pounds Britain has sent to Rwanda, London is also set to pay the East African country an additional 50 million pounds next year, according to a letter published by the British interior ministry on Thursday.
The revelations about the growing cost of a policy - which legal experts have warned could yet fail - was slammed by the opposition Labour party and will likely draw fresh criticism from some lawmakers within Sunak's own party.
"Britain can’t afford more of this costly Tory chaos & farce," Labour's shadow interior minister Yvette Cooper said on social media platform X.
But the new minister for legal migration, Tom Pursglove, justified what he called the 240 million-pound "investment" on Friday, saying that once the Rwanda policy was up and running it would save on the cost of housing asylum-seekers in the UK.
"When you consider that we are unacceptably spending 8 million pounds a day in the asylum system at the moment, it is a key part of our strategy to bring those costs down," Pursglove told Sky News.
The money sent to Rwanda would help its economic development and get the asylum partnership with the UK up and running, Pursglove added.
The payments to Rwanda were not linked to a treaty the two countries signed on Tuesday, the interior ministry letter said.
The treaty seeks to respond to a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court that the deportation scheme would violate international human rights laws enshrined in domestic legislation.
"The Government of Rwanda did not ask for any payment in order for a Treaty to be signed, nor was any offered," the letter said.
Sunak appealed to his Conservative lawmakers on Thursday to unite behind his Rwanda plan after Robert Jenrick quit as immigration minister on Wednesday, saying the government's draft emergency legislation to get the scheme up and running did not go far enough.

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World

Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.