A British man has walked away from the wreckage of the Air India crash that killed at least 200 people in an extraordinary tale of survival.

Vishwashkumar Ramesh was in seat 11A on the London-bound Boeing 787-8 flight when it crashed shortly after take off in Ahmedabad, western India.

Mr Ramesh's brother, Nayan Kumar Ramesh, told BBC News Vishwashkumar "has no idea how he survived" and escaped the plane as the only survivor.

There were 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian on the Gatwick Airport-bound flight, Air India said.

Struggling budget chain Poundland has been sold for £1 and now faces a shake-up which could see up to 100 stores close, the BBC understands.

Its owner Polish firm Pepco confirmed it had sold the brand for a "nominal" sum to US investment firm Gordon Brothers.

Poundland has 825 UK stores and around 16,000 staff and was struggling to compete with other discount stores, with sales down this January and February.

Following the sale a proposed restructure will be put to the High Court in England, Pepco said.

It comes after Pepco warned that increased employer National Insurance contributions which kicked in in April would put added pressure on the chain.

Pepco Group has owned Poundland since 2016, but the firm had to auction the brand off after sales slumped over the past year.

Gordon Brothers is a global investment firm which formerly owned fashion label Laura Ashley.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31268690

• Disorder spreads including fire at leisure centre
• Smaller crowd clash with police at flashpoint of Ballymena
• Police investigating property attacks as racially-motivated

LARNE, Northern Ireland, June 11 (Reuters) - Masked youths in Northern Ireland on Wednesday set fire to a leisure centre that had been sheltering migrant families, but a third night of anti-immigrant violence was smaller in scale in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena.

Violence first flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town. The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge, the BBC reported.

In the most intense violence on Tuesday, hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Ballymena, in what police condemned as "racist thuggery."

On Wednesday, a smaller crowd in the town threw rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, who responded with water cannon.

Nine officers were injured, none seriously, bringing to 41 the number hurt since the violence began, police said in a statement. They added that a hatchet was thrown at police lines during the disorder.

But 30 kilometers east in Larne, masked youths smashed windows and started fires in the lobby of a leisure centre where families whose homes were attacked in Ballymena had been briefly moved, officials said.

Women and children were taking part in swimming and exercise classes when the attack began and had to be evacuated through the fire exit, said a woman who was in the centre at the time.

The crowd was acting "like rabid animals," said the woman, who declined to give her name. She said she felt "frightened and intimidated."

Justice Minister Naomi Long said the attack was "completely unjustified and unjustifiable". Finance Minister John O'Dowd described the attackers as "racist thugs."

• Disorder spreads including fire at leisure centre
• Smaller crowd clash with police at flashpoint of Ballymena
• Police investigating property attacks as racially-motivated

LARNE, Northern Ireland, June 11 (Reuters) - Masked youths in Northern Ireland on Wednesday set fire to a leisure centre that had been sheltering migrant families, but a third night of anti-immigrant violence was smaller in scale in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena.

Violence first flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town. The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge, the BBC reported.

In the most intense violence on Tuesday, hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Ballymena, in what police condemned as "racist thuggery."

On Wednesday, a smaller crowd in the town threw rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, who responded with water cannon.

Nine officers were injured, none seriously, bringing to 41 the number hurt since the violence began, police said in a statement. They added that a hatchet was thrown at police lines during the disorder.

But 30 kilometers east in Larne, masked youths smashed windows and started fires in the lobby of a leisure centre where families whose homes were attacked in Ballymena had been briefly moved, officials said.

Women and children were taking part in swimming and exercise classes when the attack began and had to be evacuated through the fire exit, said a woman who was in the centre at the time.

The crowd was acting "like rabid animals," said the woman, who declined to give her name. She said she felt "frightened and intimidated."

Justice Minister Naomi Long said the attack was "completely unjustified and unjustifiable". Finance Minister John O'Dowd described the attackers as "racist thugs."

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Atlanta family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI will get a new day in court, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday.

The decision revives a lawsuit filed after a predawn 2017 raid in which armed members of an FBI SWAT team smashed in a front door and set off a flashbang grenade, pointing guns at a couple and terrifying a 7-year-old boy before realizing they were in the wrong house.

The FBI team quickly apologized and left for the right place, with the team leader later saying that his personal GPS device had led him to the wrong address. But Trina Martin and her then-boyfriend, Toi Cliatt, and her son were left with lasting trauma and a damaged home.

Martin and Cliatt filed a lawsuit against the federal government accusing the agents of assault and battery, false arrest and other violations. While the government is typically immune from lawsuits, they are allowed in some cases. Congress changed the law specifically to allow suits over wrong-house raids after a pair of them made headlines in the 1970s, their lawyers said.

But lower courts tossed out the case.

Public interest groups from across the political spectrum urged the justices to overturn the ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying it severely narrows the legal path for people to file law enforcement accountability cases against the federal government.

The high court ruled narrowly, reversing the appeals court on one of the issues in the case. The justices said it was wrong to toss out the case based on the Supremacy Clause, which says federal laws supersede state laws when the two conflict.

The federal law at the center of this case actually refers back to state law, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote. While the government is typically immune from lawsuits, it allows those claims in some situations that would create liability under state law.

“Congress has entered the field and expressly bound the federal government to accept liability under state tort law on the same terms as a ‘private individual,’” Gorsuch wrote.

That means there’s no need to involve the Supremacy Clause, and the case should move forward, the justices said. The ruling sends the case back to the 11th Circuit, which will continue to weigh other questions raised by the case.

• Prisoner exchange follows Istanbul talks on June 2
  

  • Emotional reunions as POWs return home
  • Kyiv and Moscow remain far apart on ending the war

CHERNIHIV REGION, Ukraine, June 9 (Reuters) - Russia and Ukraine exchanged prisoners of war under the age of 25 on Monday in emotional homecoming scenes, the first step in a series of planned prisoner swaps that could become the biggest of the war so far.

The exchange was the result of direct talks between the two sides in Istanbul on June 2 that resulted in an agreement to exchange at least 1,200 POWs on each side and to repatriate thousands of bodies of those killed in Russia's war in Ukraine.

The return of POWs and the repatriation of the bodies of the dead is one of the few things the two sides have managed to agree on as broader negotiations have failed to get close to ending the war, now in its fourth year.

Fighting has raged on, with Russia saying on Monday its forces had taken control of more territory in Ukraine's east-central region of Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv saying Moscow had launched its largest drone attack of the war.

Officials in Kyiv said some of the Ukrainian prisoners who came home on Monday had been in Russian captivity since the beginning of the war.

At a rendezvous point for the returning Ukrainian prisoners, soon after they crossed back into northern Ukraine, an official handed one of the freed men a cellphone so that he could call his mother, a video released by Ukrainian authorities showed.

"Hi mum, I've arrived, I'm home!" the soldier shouted into the receiver, struggling to catch his breath because he was overcome by emotion.

The released Ukrainian men were later taken by bus to a hospital in northern Ukraine where they were to have medical checks and be given showers, food and care packages including mobile phones and shoes.

Jubilation was tinged with sadness because outside the hospital were crowds of people, mostly women, looking for relatives who went missing while fighting for Ukraine.

The women held up pictures of the missing men in the hope that one of the returning POWs would recognised them and share details about what happened to them. Some hoped their loved ones would be among those released.

Oksana Kupriyenko, 52, was holding up an image of her son, Denys, who went missing in September 2024.

"Tomorrow is my birthday and I was hoping God will give me a gift and return my son to me," she said, through tears.

• California National Guard deployed to Los Angeles
  

  • Governor blames Trump for inflaming situation
  • White House says protests justify passing border-security bill

LOS ANGELES, June 9 (Reuters) - California officials blamed President Donald Trump on Monday for inflaming an already tense situation in Los Angeles by sending in National Guard troops, while the White House argued the sometimes violent demonstrations justified ramping up deportation efforts even further.

Trump even suggested California Governor Gavin Newsom be arrested.

As the city faced a fourth day of protests over Trump’s immigration policies, Democrats and Republicans clashed over what has become the biggest flashpoint in the Republican administration’s aggressive efforts to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.

Earlier in the day, Newsom, viewed as a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, vowed to sue the federal government over its deployment of the Guard, calling it unlawful.

"This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard," Newsom posted on X on Monday. "We’re suing him."

Returning to the White House after a night at Camp David, Trump was asked by a reporter whether his border czar, Tom Homan, should arrest Newsom. Homan has threatened to arrest anyone who obstructs immigration enforcement efforts, including the governor.

"I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great," Trump replied. "Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing."

MOSCOW, June 9 (Reuters) - Russia plans to step up cooperation with African countries, including in "sensitive areas" such as defence and security, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Russian mercenary group Wagner said last week it was leaving Mali after helping the military junta there in its fight with Islamist militants. But the Africa Corps, a Kremlin-controlled paramilitary force, said it would remain in the west African country.

Asked what this meant for Russia's role in Africa, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "The Russian presence in Africa is growing. We really intend to comprehensively develop our interaction with African countries, focusing primarily on economic and investment interaction.

"This also corresponds to and extends to such sensitive areas as defence and security. In this regard, Russia will also continue interaction and cooperation with African states."

LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - Britain will make winter fuel payments to millions of older people this winter, in a major U-turn of deeply unpopular cuts after months of political pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

After taking office last July Starmer's Labour government cut winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners in England and Wales as part of wider spending reductions which it said were necessary to fix a hole in the public finances left by the previous Conservative administration.

As President Donald Trump’s administration targets states and local governments for not cooperating with federal immigration authorities, lawmakers in some Democratic-led states are intensifying their resistance by strengthening state laws restricting such cooperation.

In California alone, more than a dozen pro-immigrant bills passed either the Assembly or Senate this week, including one prohibiting schools from allowing federal immigration officials into nonpublic areas without a judicial warrant.

Other state measures have sought to protect immigrants in housing, employment and police encounters, even as Trump’s administration has ramped up arrests as part of his plan for mass deportations.

To hear the Trump administration tell it, Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggled thousands of people across the country who were living in the U.S. illegally, including members of the violent MS-13 gang, long before his mistaken deportation to El Salvador. In allegations made public nearly three months after his removal, U.S. officials say Abrego Garcia abused the women he transported, while a co-conspirator alleged he participated in a gang-related killing in his native El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia’s wife and lawyers offer a much different story. They say the now 29-year-old had as a teenager fled local gangs that terrorized his family in El Salvador for a life in Maryland. He found work in construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities before he was mistakenly deported in March.

The fight became a political flashpoint in the administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement. Now it returns to the U.S. court system, where Abrego Garcia appeared Friday after being returned from El Salvador. He faces new charges related to a large human smuggling operation and is in federal custody in Tennessee.

Speaking to NBC’s Kristen Welken in a phone interview Saturday President Donald Trump said it was not his decision to bring Abrego Garcia back. “The Department of Justice decided to do it that way, and that’s fine,” he said. “There are two ways you could have done it, and they decided to do it that way.” Trump said it should “be a very easy case.”

In announcing Abrego Garcia’s return Attorney General Pam Bondi called him “a smuggler of humans and children and women” in announcing the unsealing of a grand jury indictment. His lawyers say a jury won’t believe the “preposterous” allegations.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said his return to the U.S. was long overdue.

“As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. “The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”

MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump’s new ban on travel to the U.S. by citizens from 12 mainly African and Middle Eastern countries took effect Monday amid rising tension over the president’s escalating campaign of immigration enforcement.

The new proclamation, which Trump signed last week, applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It also imposes heightened restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela who are outside the U.S. and don’t hold a valid visa.

The new ban does not revoke visas previously issued to people from countries on the list, according to guidance issued Friday to all U.S. diplomatic missions. However, unless an applicant meets narrow criteria for an exemption to the ban, his or her application will be rejected starting Monday. Travelers with previously issued visas should still be able to enter the U.S. even after the ban takes effect.

During Trump’s first term, a hastily written executive order ordering the denial of entry to citizens of mainly Muslim countries created chaos at numerous airports and other ports of entry, prompting successful legal challenges and major revisions to the policy.