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Haulage firms and lorry drivers have been fined more than £4m after migrants were found in their vehicles – with the number of fines up 50% on last year.

More than 3,300 fines were issued by UK Border Force staff in 2014-15, up from 2,177 in 2013-14.

The fines can be as much £2,000 per migrant and can be levied against both drivers and their employers.

Hauliers say the system is “unfair” but the Home Office said many lorries did not have “basic standards of security”. The fines, known as civil penalties, can be imposed as lorries enter the UK, and also when they are searched by UK officials at ports in France – such as Calais – and Belgium, under the so-called juxtaposed controls system.

The number of penalties issued over the last five years are: 2010/11 – 1,497 – 2011/12 – 1,385 – 2012/13 – 998 – 2013/14 – 2,177 – 2014/15 – 3,319 (the appeal period has not concluded, so number could fall)

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A German conservative MP, Martin Patzelt, has taken two Eritrean refugees into his home and is helping the young men find jobs locally.

Mr Patzelt, of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), lives near Frankfurt (Oder) in eastern Germany. The Eritreans have been staying with him for a month. Such initiatives help to “get rid of the polarisation and hostility” towards migrants, he told German ARD TV. Many Eritreans have fled to Europe. The country in the Horn of Africa has an authoritarian government which forces citizens into military service – often for many years and in deplorable conditions.

Generally Eritreans and Syrians are granted refugee status when they reach Germany, allowing them to stay there.
But Germany is gripped by an intense debate over migrants, as the numbers have soared this year – largely because of the boatloads crossing the Mediterranean. That is putting local authorities under pressure.

Mr Patzelt has a large house in Briesen, a village near Frankfurt, and the two Eritreans – Haben, 19, and Awet, 24 – are sharing the top floor with one of his grown-up sons, Germany’s Die Welt daily reports. He met the pair at his local Catholic church and invited them back. Later he offered to put them up at his home. They communicate in broken English, but the Eritreans are taking German lessons, reports say. One now has some temporary work in the local administration, and the other in a supermarket, thanks to Mr Patzelt’s help.

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Russia has renewed its efforts to get the United Nations to recognise 1.2 million sq km (463,000 sq miles) of the Arctic shelf that it lays claim to.

It made a similar move for the resource-rich territory in 2001, but that was rejected by a UN commission because of insufficient evidence.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the fresh bid is backed by scientific data. But all other countries bordering the Arctic – Norway, Denmark, Canada and the US – reject Moscow’s claim.

All five nations have been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.

The competition for Arctic resources has intensified in recent years as the shrinking polar ice opens new opportunities for exploration.
Russia said its new submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf contained new arguments. “Ample scientific data collected in years of Arctic research are used to back the Russian claim,” Russia foreign ministry said in a statement.

Russia previously staked a claim to the Arctic seabed in 2007 by dropping a canister containing the Russian flag on to the ocean floor from a submarine at the North Pole.
The new move comes a week after the Kremlin said it was strengthening its naval forces in the Arctic as part of a new military doctrine.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the plans included a new fleet of icebreakers.

Earlier this year, Russia’s military conducted exercises in the Arctic that involved 38,000 servicemen, more than 50 surface ships and submarines and 110 aircraft.

Mexican police are searching for three men shown on surveillance video leaving the building where photojournalist Ruben Espinosa was killed.

The bodies of Mr Espinosa and four women were found in a flat in the Narvarte district of Mexico City on Friday. They had been tied up and shot dead.

Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios Garza said the three men were the prime suspects in the murder, which has shocked Mexico City residents.

The surveillance footage shows them leaving the flat at 15:02 local time, 50 minutes after Mr Espinosa sent a text message to a friend, his last known communication. Investigators said one of the men was pulling a suitcase.

Another can be seen getting into a red Ford Mustang which belonged to one of the victims. The car was found abandoned on the outskirts of Mexico City on Monday. The bodies of the five victims were found by one of their friends in the flat on Friday evening.

Investigators said three of the four women had been raped and the body of Mr Espinosa showed signs of torture. Mr Rios Garza said they were looking into all possible motives for the crime.

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A police helicopter has crashed in a jungle area of north-west Colombia, killing at least 16 officers.

The policemen were on an operation to try to arrest one of the leaders of the Usuga Clan, a powerful drug-smuggling gang that operates in the region.The Black Hawk helicopter crashed in a remote mountainous area of Antioquia.

Colombian Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said it probably “crashed against the side of the mountain, possibly due to low cloud cover”.

Antioquia is 450km (280 miles) north-west of the capital, Bogota.An initial police investigation had blamed the loss of the aircraft on technical failure.

The presence of criminal gangs and left-wing rebels in the area of the crash led to rumours that the helicopter had been shot at. But Mr Villegas said two other aircraft taking part in the operation didn’t report any gunfire. An earlier report from Colombian police said 15 officers had died and two injured.

Last week, 11 air force personnel died in a helicopter crash near the Colombian Caribbean coast. The police operation was aimed at arresting Luis Orlando Padierna Pena, known as Inglaterra (England), El Tiempo newspaper reported. The alleged head of the clan is Dairo Antonio Usuga David, known as Otoniel.

The US has offered a reward of up to $5m for information leading to his arrest.