‘I worked for British in Kabul for years. Let me reunite with my sons’
A security guard who worked for the British embassy in Kabul for almost two decades is calling on the Home Office to help him reunite his family after he was evacuated during the Taliban takeover, but his two eldest sons were forced to stay.
Hamidullah Fahim and his wife Zaghona were brought to the UK with two young children in December 2023, on a dedicated scheme for employees of the British Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
However he couldn’t bring his two eldest sons, who are now 21 and 22, because they are over the age of 18. Mr Fahim is now pleading with the Home Office to be reunited with them in the UK.
Though the family applied for Najibullah and Hasibullah to be evacuated to the UK from Afghanistan, where they currently live with their grandmother, their applications have been rejected twice by officials.
Mr Fahim said that while the family tries to speak to the two eldest sons regularly on the phone, it has been hard to be apart.
“It has affected them and us both. We want to do whatever we can to be reunited with them and to let the Home Office know of the injustice that has been carried out in our case.
“It is especially difficult for our young children who get upset whenever we speak to them, and for my wife who is struggling a lot”, he explained.
His wife Zaghona is struggling to sleep, and suffers from nightmares where she sees her son being harmed, a report from a social worker found. She can be withdrawn from the family and is often tearful, according to the assessment.
Before the Taliban takeover, Hasibullah and Najibullah never lived independently and were dependent on their parents. Their parents and two young siblings, aged 13 and 15, were evacuated to Pakistan in early 2023 and left the eldest sons behind in the hope that when they got to the UK they would be able to apply for reunification.
The family of six, including the eldest sons, were told to come to Kabul airport during the chaos of the 2021 evacuation, along with hundreds of other GardaWorld staff who had worked at the British embassy, with the view that they would all be brought to the UK. However, they were told to leave the airport after a suicide bomb blast prevented their evacuation.
They were then moved on to the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which didn’t include Najibullah and Hasibullah. Mr Fahim worked as a security guard at the British embassy in Kabul from 2004 to 2021 and therefore qualified for pathway three of this scheme.
Under the terms of the scheme, an eligible person can only bring children under 18 with them to the UK. The Foreign Office, who run pathway three of this scheme, offered the family the chance to submit a separate application for their two eldest sons but Mr Fahim’s attempts to take advantage of this have not been successful, compounded by the fact that the family don’t speak English.
Nick Beales, from charity Ramfel who are supporting the family, said that the father had “persistently sought to communicate with the FCDO about sponsoring his children to relocate to the UK, but when these avenues hit a brick wall they had to proceed with making an application to the Home Office”.
In the UK, the family do not have refugee status and therefore are not normally eligible to sponsor family members under the Refugee Family Reunion policy. Their applications have so far been rejected twice by the Home Office.
One of the older sons, Najibullah, said: “Before our parents left we had a good life, we used to study and go to school… but currently we are not studying and we don’t have money to do that. When they left, I was extremely upset, I became very unwell and they gave me IV fluids, but I have hope that in future things will get better and we will be able to reunite with our parents.”
Masuda, who is 15, said that she dreams that she will be reunited with her brothers one day. She explained to a social worker: “In Afghanistan we used to make a slide out of the snow – we used to play together, it was so fun.
“It’s not good being separated especially when I see my mum crying. It affects her quite a lot.”
Mr Beales, from Ramfel, added: “The Fahim family were promised safety in the UK after their 18 years of service to the British Embassy, but the British government have instead abandoned them. At Ramfel, we see time and again how families on the Arap and Acrs schemes are denied family reunification, despite successive governments repeatedly falsely claiming that Afghans can safely reach the UK. The government’s new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill does nothing to address these failures, and focuses exclusively on yet more so-called deterrence measures. New immigration legislation should instead look at expanding safe routes so that families can swiftly reunite and rebuild their lives in the UK.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases.”
Tony Blair U-turns on net zero attack and insists Labour approach is right
Sir Tony Blair has performed a dramatic U-turn following his attack on the government’s net zero policies as the row threatened to derail Labour’s plans.
The former prime minister had warned that energy secretary Ed Miliband’s eco policies and the push towards renewable energy were wrong because voters know the financial and lifestyle sacrifices needed to meet government pledges will have virtually no impact on climate change.
His criticism, contained in the foreword to a report for his Tony Blair Institute (TBI), fuelled the fury over high energy costs that have exacerbated the cost of living crisis and damaged economic growth by piling on costs for businesses and manufacturers.
But in a reversal on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the TBI insisted that Sir Tony supports the current government’s policies.
The spokesperson said: “The TBI report is clear: we must prioritise technologies that capture carbon, place a bigger emphasis on protecting and enhancing nature, and develop new nuclear power, smart grids, and a new system of financing existing renewable solutions in developing economies. The UK government is already pursuing these, and their approach is the right one.”
They added: “The report is clear [that] we support the government’s 2050 net zero targets, to give certainty to the investors and innovators who can develop these new solutions and make them deployable.”
The U-turn comes less than 24 hours before voters go to the polls in the local elections and the Runcorn by-election, in the first major electoral test of Sir Keir Starmer’s government since last year’s election. Downing Street was asked whether officials had scrambled to secure the clarification from Sir Tony’s think tank, and did not deny that this was the case.
Kemi Badenoch’s official spokesperson told journalists: “She enjoyed the fact that, barely five minutes out from PMQs, the Tony Blair Institute felt it fit to release that statement.”
Sir Tony had called for the government to invest more in carbon capture, which sees carbon removed from the air; to allow fossil fuels to continue to be used; to make greater use of technology, including artificial intelligence; and to oversee a rollout of nuclear power.
The former PM had claimed that voters “feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”.
His intervention on Tuesday came as the Climate Change Committee warned that the UK is critically unprepared for the escalating climate crisis and accused the government of not doing enough in the face of impending floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires.
It enabled Sir Keir to claim during PMQs that his predecessor is “absolutely aligned” with the current government.
Responding to DUP MP Sammy Wilson, Sir Keir said: “What Tony Blair said is we should have more carbon capture – we’ve invested in carbon capture. That’s many jobs across different parts of the country.
“He said that AI [artificial intelligence] should be used; we agree with that. We’ve invested huge amounts in AI and the jobs of the future. He also said we need domestic targets so that businesses have their certainty.
“If you look at the detail of what Tony Blair said, he’s absolutely aligned with what we’re doing here. These are the jobs and the security of the future.”
The attempt to cool down the row came after environment secretary Steve Reed earlier on Wednesday admitted that Sir Tony’s criticisms of Labour’s net zero policies were “valid and important”.
Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Reed disagreed with a government source who accused the ex-PM of “having a public tantrum”, and said that Sir Tony “is making a valid and important contribution to a very significant debate that we’re having”.
He went on: “I agree with much of what he said, but not absolutely every word and dot and comma of it. But this government is moving to clean energy because it’s best for Britain. It’s more energy security for Britain. It’s jobs and investment right across the United Kingdom. And those are all things we all want to see.”
It was a very different tone from the one used by sources close to Mr Miliband, who was seen as the main target of Sir Tony’s ire.
The ally of the energy secretary said: “We’ve just won an election, in part on an argument that we need to speed up the clean energy transition. The PM said last week that clean energy is in the DNA of the government.”
But despite appearing to disagree with Mr Miliband’s hardline stance, Mr Reed defended the government’s actions.
These include a 78 per cent tax on energy profits, which is pushing up the price of energy; stopping drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea; and closing down coal mines. Instead, Mr Miliband has greenlighted plans for massive solar and wind farms as renewable alternatives.
Mr Reed said: “The reason we’re asking people to take that action is because it breaks our dependency on fossil fuels and the likes of Vladimir Putin. Why should anybody that cares about the security of the United Kingdom want us to remain dependent on fossil-fuel dictators?
“We want to take back control of our energy [and] generate more of it at home, because it gives us more energy security as well as lowering prices.”
Meanwhile, Sir Tony’s former political secretary, John McTernan, denied that the former PM’s claims put him at odds with Mr Miliband, adding that Sir Tony’s views “totally align with Ed Miliband’s current policies”.
Mr McTernan told Times Radio: “Labour are toast… this election has nothing to do with net zero. There’s nothing that can be done in the next 24 hours that can change the election results.
“You look at all the focus groups: if you go to any of them, what do people associate the Labour Party with? Taking winter fuel payments away from pensioners. Why are they attacking pensioners? Why are they now attacking the disabled? That’s what people are saying. It’s on the doorstep in Runcorn. It’s on the doorstep everywhere.”
Nicholas Stern, now a Labour peer, who was commissioned by Blair in the early 2000s to write a report on climate change, hit out at the TBI report, calling it “muddled and misleading”.
He said that it “downplays the science in its absence of a sense of urgency, and the lack of appreciation of the need for the world to achieve net zero as soon as possible in order to manage the growth in climate change impacts that are already hurting households and businesses across the world and in the UK”. He added: “Delay is dangerous.”
Barcelona battle Inter in Champions League semi-finals
Barcelona and Inter Milan have it all to play for after a thrilling and fascinating first leg clash ended in a 3-3 draw in Spain.
The visitors, tipped as underdogs ahead of kick off, shocked Hansi Flick’s men with barely a minute on the clock as Marcus Thuram backheeled the opening goal past Wojciech Szszesny to silence the crowd. Barcelona then found themselves near the brink of despair as Denzel Dumfries doubled Inter’s lead later in the first half.
Yet, the hosts turned up the tempo with thanks to an inspired Lamine Yamal. The teenager cut in from the right and scored a superb goal to bring the LaLiga leaders back into the match and Ferran Torres equalised just before the break.
A rapid and scintillating match continued after the restart with Dumfries heading in his second of the night, and Inter’s third, before a blistering strike from Raphinha brought the match level again and sets up the second leg perfectly.
Relive the action from the semi-final first leg with our live blog below:
Trump congratulates Carney even as White House repeats ‘51st state’ taunt
The White House has taunted Mark Carney over Donald Trump’s desire to turn Canada into America’s 51st state, saying a remarkable election result does not change that plan – even as Mr Trump himself congratulated the Canadian prime minister on his victory.
Mr Carney’s Liberal Party won following a campaign dominated by the US president’s trade war, but short of gaining an outright majority in parliament which will force Mr Carney to seek the backing of at least one minor party.
During a phone call, Mr Trump congratulated Mr Carney and the pair “agreed on the importance of Canada and the United States working together – as independent, sovereign nations – for their mutual betterment”, according to the Canadian prime minister’s office.
The two leaders also agreed to meet in person in the near future.
Yet at the same time, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that the election “does not affect President Trump’s plan to make Canada America’s cherished 51st state”.
In his victory speech in Ottawa, Mr Carney declared that Mr Trump “is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never happen.”
Family of three died during mass power cut in Spain
Spanish police in Galicia are investigating the deaths of three people in the town of Taboadela, as the fatalities from the power cut across Spain and Portugal begin to emerge.
A spokeswoman said the bodies of “a couple and their son” were found inside their home on Tuesday morning.
Officers and forensic experts are in vestigating whether the family, who reportedly inhaled carbon monoxide, died as a result of a malfunctioning domestic generator or a fuel appliance.
A woman also died during the blackout from a fire caused by a candle in her flat in Madrid.
Power has now been restored to tens of millions of people after fears it would take up to a week to fully reinstate the power supply.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has vowed to find the cause of the power cuts as the cause remains unclear.
Sanchez held an emergency meeting with private grid operators to ask them to work with the government and independent bodies to get to the bottom of what caused the incident.
He said: “We must undertake the necessary improvements to guarantee the supply and future competitiveness of our system.”
How online schools can help children form friendships as they learn
When thinking about the best education for your child, it’s naturally not just academic success that comes to mind. A good quality school experience is made up of many parts and one key element is the socialising opportunities that school can provide. Socialisation is crucial for building social skills, growing emotional intelligence and helping children form their own individual identity, as well as giving them an additional incentive to attend a place where they have fun and feel part of a community.
While it might be assumed that the social options are reduced when children attend online school, this is not the case. In fact, there are a number of advantages in terms of the structures, support and diverse social opportunities offered to children who join online schools.
Online schools give students the opportunity to form connections with a much more diverse community of students. The online model allows schools to welcome young people from around the world and this gives pupils a chance to make friends with students from differing backgrounds and cultures. Furthermore, this means they can meet more like-minded individuals and form stronger bonds and more meaningful friendships. This access to such a big and vibrant community also ensures that students can really find ‘their people’ and avoids situations where students are stuck in small circles or forced to engage with classmates that don’t share the same interests or passions.
This is something that Grace, who is now in year 13, has experienced since moving to online school. At her previous school, she was struggling with socialisation and felt that she didn’t really have a self-identity. At an online school, she has found she can be more herself. “A lot of people think that online school is about being alone, but I’ve found that without the physical element, I can express myself better,” Grace explains. Subsequently, the majority of her closest friends are from her online school and many she has met offline too. “I feel like I’ve met my people,” she says.
Isabella, who is in year 10, has also found that her experience of socialising at an online school has suited her much more than previous bricks and mortar schools. With her father’s job meaning the family moves country every three years, she has always previously struggled forming new friendships at the schools she joins. “I’m always the ‘new’ student, and it’s tough,” she says. After experiences with bullying, she found that online school is an environment she can thrive in. “You don’t have to turn on your camera or use your microphones if you’re not feeling comfortable. I’m not really a ‘social’ person, but I have made some friends here because we have these breakout rooms where we can talk to each other,” she adds.
While young people might not be meeting their fellow students physically every day, online schools put in place extensive measures to ensure that socialising is available for those who want to. This can be seen clearly at King’s InterHigh, the UK’s leading global online school which welcomes children aged 7 to 19 from across the world. Here, students join a warm and welcoming community with a huge range of opportunities for socialising. There’s dozens of clubs and societies for students across all year groups, representing a vast range of interests from chess to technology, sculpture to debate. Throughout the yearly student calendar, there are a number of events, showcases, and competitions of all kinds that provide a chance to socialise in different settings. Some happen internally, like the King’s InterHigh Arts Festival, while others allow students to interact with peers from outside their school when attending events like the International Robotics Competition.
Assemblies bring students together on a weekly basis and give them the chance to celebrate each other’s achievements, hear from their Student Council representatives, and find out what’s coming up at school. Each student is also assigned to one of the school’s eight houses and these smaller, tight-knit communities bring students a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Additionally, inter-house competitions are a fun and friendly way for students to engage and bond.
Although much socialising can come as a result of activities organised by the school, students at King’s InterHigh who are aged over 13 can continue building these relationships in a more informal setting thanks to the in-house, monitored, social media platform. Restricted solely to school students, the platform is safe, secure, and monitored to ensure a positive socialising environment for all those who choose to use it.
Online schools don’t just offer opportunities to socialise online but also offer ample opportunities to cement these connections in offline settings. At King’s InterHigh, there are global meet-ups throughout the year which bring together families allowing both children and parents and guardians to connect in real life. Regular educational school trips, from Geography excursions to science practical exams at other Inspired schools (the group of premium schools of which King’s InterHigh is part of) also allow children to socialise and have fun together in different settings.
Meanwhile, the annual summer camps, themed around a variety of interests and passions, including adventure sports, fashion, football, and tennis, are open to students across all Inspired schools and are held at spectacular Inspired campuses worldwide. Furthermore, the Inspired Global Exchange Programme offers a range of school exchange opportunities, lasting from one week to a full academic year.
Choosing where to educate your children is a big decision for any parent or guardian that involves many factors. However, when it comes to the social benefits, for the right child, online schools offer something truly transformative. To find out more about King’s InterHigh and whether it might be the right learning choice for your family, visit King’s InterHigh
Ronnie O’Sullivan leads talented Si in World Championship quarter-final
Ronnie O’Sullivan progressed into the semi-finals of the World Snooker Championship with a 13-9 victory over Si Jiahui as ‘The Rocket’ continues his bid for a history-making eighth world title.
O’Sullivan wasted little time in securing a routine 13-4 win over Pang Junxu in the second round at the Crucible Theatre and led talented youngster Si, who shockingly made the semi-finals here in 2023 at the age of just 20, 10-6 after Wednesday morning’s session. An early fightback in the evening from the Chinese player threatened to rattle The Rocket, but the seven-time world champion settled again to seal out victory and set up a meeting with Zhao Xintong.
Across the Crucible, Judd Trump surged into the semis as he won all five frames in the evening session to knock out Luca Brecel, in the process making a record 104th century of the season. Earlier, O’Sullivan’s fellow ‘Class of 92’ veterans John Higgins and Mark Williams produced a vintage encounter settled on the final black of the match. The pair were locked at 8-8 following an intriguing first two sessions and Williams moved 12-8 ahead before Higgins roared back to force a decider, with a costly missed blue from the Scot allowing Williams to prevail 13-12.
Follow all the scores, results and latest updates from the World Snooker Championship below:
The most popular party leader in Britain isn’t who you think it is
Quiz question: who is the UK’s most popular party leader? Is it Nigel Farage? No – a lot of people don’t like him. Keir Starmer, after his recent good run on foreign affairs? No. Kemi Badenoch? Come off it.
The answer is Ed Davey.
In the most recent opinion polls, the Liberal Democrat leader’s personal ratings outscore those of his Labour, Reform UK and Conservative counterparts. Not that you would know it from most of the press releases pumped out by polling companies or the way their surveys are reported by the media.
Similarly, it’s a safe bet the Lib Dems will make gains at tomorrow’s council elections in England and that they will remain largely below the public’s radar. Gains for Farage, heavy Tory losses and possibly a bad night for Labour will make more sexy headlines.
The Lib Dems, who became the largest third party in parliament for 100 years last year when they won 72 seats, quietly hope to make further inroads into the traditionally Tory blue wall and to end up controlling more councils than the Tories. Some polls put the Lib Dems in first place in the south outside London.
Badenoch is making Davey’s task easier. The Tories are so spooked by Farage that they rarely appeal to the blue wall, even though any route back from the wilderness would surely run through the 60 seats they lost to the Lib Dems last year.
Lib Dem MPs tell me there is little sign of the Tories recovering in their once-impregnable heartlands, or disenchantment with Starmer’s government driving former Tories back into Badenoch’s arms. Indeed, the Lib Dems say they have their eyes on another 20 Tory constituencies.
The Lib Dems, whose playbook as a grassroots protest party is admired by Farage, have usually built a base in local elections and used that to make parliamentary seats winnable. After last year’s spectacular gains, the process will be reversed, with parliamentary gains becoming a platform for an advance on local authorities.
Davey’s sights have widened to include Labour. One Lib Dem insider describes the mood on Middle England doorsteps as “a plague on both your houses” – unusually, with both the government and official opposition unpopular at the same time.
The Lib Dems have set up a unit to attack Labour – a far cry from the non-aggression pact Starmer and Davey quietly agreed before last July’s election after bonding at a secret dinner that I revealed.
In Labour’s eyes, the “constructive opposition” Davey promised after the election has been a lot more oppositionist than constructive. “Sheer opportunism,” snapped one senior Labour figure. The Lib Dems opposed means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance; the hike in employers’ national insurance; the “family farms tax”; and imposing VAT on private schools. The Lib Dems attack Labour from the right, not from the left, as during the Blair-Brown era; it seems Davey’s top priority is to hold on to disillusioned former Tory voters rather than win votes in Labour-held seats his party is unlikely to capture.
Like the Tories, Labour seems obsessed with Farage but some senior Labour figures suspect it is wrong to ignore the Lib Dems and the Green Party. More of the 2024 Labour voters who say they will back another party tomorrow will switch to the Lib Dems (28 per cent) than Reform (26 per cent), according to More in Common.
Davey’s silly stunts for the cameras don’t always work. Even he sometimes has doubts about them, and some Lib Dems cringed at his riding a child’s hobby horse (to emphasise a two-horse race between the Lib Dems and Tories in the home counties). But they grab people’s attention, and Davey then raises serious issues such as social care.
Some Labour MPs privately sympathise with Davey’s call for the UK to rejoin the EU customs union, and for Starmer to take a much tougher line against Donald Trump, which will strike a chord with many voters at a time when the much-vaunted US-UK trade deal still hasn’t happened. Davey is feeling vindicated following the Liberals’ remarkable comeback in Canada’s election after Mark Carney stood up to the bullying US president.
Davey has a free hit to call Trump “an unreliable ally” while Starmer does not, believing the UK would pay a price if he started to criticise him. The Lib Dem leader has the luxury of opposition and is revelling in it.
Although Farage will bask in warm headlines after tomorrow’s local elections, the results will also tell another story: the first time five parties have been in the game in a local contest, with the Greens also in the frame. The combined Labour and Tory share of the vote, at 44 per cent in the latest opinion polls, has plummeted to a historic low.
Starmer and Badenoch have something else in common: in not addressing the Lib Dem threat, they make it easier for voters to switch to Davey’s party. Both hope to squeeze the Lib Dems at the next general election, but that will be harder in an era of five-party politics. So they ignore the Lib Dem “yellow peril” at their own peril.