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One Person Dies as Migrants Aim to Cross English Channel

10 March 2025, United Kingdom, Dover: A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel. Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/dpa
10 March 2025, United Kingdom, Dover: A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel. Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/dpa
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One Person Dies as Migrants Aim to Cross English Channel

10 March 2025, United Kingdom, Dover: A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel. Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/dpa
10 March 2025, United Kingdom, Dover: A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, from a Border Force vessel following a small boat incident in the Channel. Photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/dpa

One person has died after a boat carrying migrants trying to cross the English Channel from France got into difficulties overnight, said a local French authority on Thursday.
The French local authority responsible for the North Sea and English Channel regions said 15 people had been rescued and brought back to shore at the port of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, Reuters reported.
Both the British and French governments have made tackling migrants crossing the English Channel illegally - often in perilous conditions as they travel in dinghies or small boats - a high priority.
Data in January showed Britain's Labour government had removed 16,400 illegal migrants since coming to power last July, marking the highest rate of such removals since 2018, although Labour's political opponents say the government needs to do more.

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UK’s Heathrow Defends Decision to Shut Airport Amid Blame Game 

A girl holds a balloon as people walk at Terminal 2 of the Heathrow International Airport, a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out the power at the airport, near London, Britain, March 22, 2025. (Reuters)
A girl holds a balloon as people walk at Terminal 2 of the Heathrow International Airport, a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out the power at the airport, near London, Britain, March 22, 2025. (Reuters)
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UK’s Heathrow Defends Decision to Shut Airport Amid Blame Game 

A girl holds a balloon as people walk at Terminal 2 of the Heathrow International Airport, a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out the power at the airport, near London, Britain, March 22, 2025. (Reuters)
A girl holds a balloon as people walk at Terminal 2 of the Heathrow International Airport, a day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation wiped out the power at the airport, near London, Britain, March 22, 2025. (Reuters)

Britain's Heathrow defended its decision to shut down operations at Europe's busiest airport last Friday as the blame game intensified over an 18-hour closure which cost airlines tens of millions of pounds and stranded thousands of passengers.

As questions mounted over how such a critical part of Britain's infrastructure could fail and whether all Heathrow's four terminals needed to shut, both National Grid and Heathrow agreed that the failure of the transformer was an unprecedented event.

But the airport was forced to defend its closure after the boss of National Grid told the Financial Times that the electricity transmission network remained capable of providing power to the airport throughout the crisis.

Heathrow said the fire at a nearby substation late on Thursday interrupted its operations, forcing it to shut while it reconfigured systems and switched to power from an alternative substation.

"Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted," a Heathrow spokesperson said.

"Given Heathrow's size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge."

John Pettigrew, the CEO of National Grid, said there were two other substations able to provide power to Heathrow, showing that the grid was resilient.

"Two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power," he told the FT.

While airlines such as British Airways, the worse affected, add up the bill for the closure, the government and Heathrow have both commissioned reviews into what happened.

"It's really important that we do learn the lessons from this, and that's why I think those two reviews...are going to be really critical," Transport Minister Heidi Alexander told Sky News on Monday.

Asked on LBC Radio about whether she had confidence in Heathrow's CEO Thomas Woldbye, Alexander said she wanted to see the results of the reviews.