Step away from the touristy boulevard of La Rambla in Barcelona and you enter the narrow streets of Raval, a district full of Asian restaurants, international shops and the occasional mosque.
The neighbourhood offers visitors a very different side to life in the Catalan capital. It is also a monument to city’s multiculturalism – and the rise in migration across the entirety of Spain in recent years, which have seen a sharp jump of 3.1 million immigrants since 2021, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute.
That has prompted a sharp backlash. Like elsewhere across Europe, migration has become a lightning-rod issue in Spain , fuelling the rise of far-right parties, and negative attitudes towards migration. The Spanish government is now being forced to reckon with its more lenient policies.
Why Martha Stewart apologised for her Halloween costume
Martha Stewart has apologised for dressing as a homeless person for Halloween, and admitted she “really screwed up”.
The 85-year-old lifestyle guru, who is worth roughly $400m, posted a now deleted photo of herself wearing torn clothes, dirt on her face and a sign saying “I am hungry help me!!!”
Quick to receive backlash
- Stewart said her costume was intended to bring “more awareness to a very serious subject”.
- The post was quick to receive backlash in the comments.
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Stewart’s apology
It’s hard to admit when you’ve really screwed up. My earlier statement didn’t go far enough. I know many people are suffering economically. Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry.
martha stewart
Stewart’s career
Stewart gained a reputation as a domestic authority in the 1980s after publishing a series of lifestyle books.
She founded her highly successful magazine in 1990, which led to the launch of her eponymous lifestyle TV show three years later.
- In 2004 she was sentenced to five months in prison after being found guilty of lying about the nature of a stock sale three years prior.
How fake alerts for nuclear warning were sent in Ukraine
Millions of Ukrainians were told that a Russian nuclear strike was imminent after a suspected cyber attack by Moscow.
Four messages, posted to Ukraine’s nationwide Air Alert app at 10.48pm on Sunday, warned about an incoming strike by one of Moscow’s Oreshnik missiles – but it wasn’t true.
Hackers interfere with app
Unknown hackers had interfered with the app, causing the system to send false notifications, according to the Ukrainian air force.
The app is used to share real-time warnings about Russian air strikes to roughly seven million people.
Residents often have minutes to find shelter in the event of an attack after receiving the notification.
However, the Ukrainian air force said it was possible that the app had been compromised by Russia around 10 minutes after the alerts.
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Millions thrown into panic
The Air Alert app appears to have been subjected to enemy influence.
In a post on Telegram, the Ukrainian air force said the app had been hacked and that there was “no radiation threat”. It is believed to be the first time it has been hacked.
The false warnings sent on Sunday night included one posted in Russian, which said: “Don’t worry, an Oreshnik is overhead! A nuclear alert has been activated across Ukraine.”
Russia also hit by cyber attack
There was a separate alert warning of radiation fallout, which instructed Ukrainians to shelter inside, wear a gas mask and consume iodine.
A chemical attack and street fighting alert also went off, ordering residents to seek the closest shelter and cover their faces.
Russia said the mobile app for its emergencies ministry had also been hit by a cyber attack. The ministry was working to restore the app, Russian state media said.
Five teenagers stabbed at Halloween party – what we know
Five teenagers have been seriously injured after being stabbed at a Halloween party in Hampshire, police have said.
The force has appealed for witnesses and anyone with information to come forward.
What we know so far
- Officers were called to Park Road in Chandler’s Ford, near Eastleigh, shortly after 10.30pm on Saturday.
- Hampshire Police said it believes an unknown group gained entry to a party before the stabbings.
- An eyewitness told the BBC they saw someone running out of the house shouting he had been stabbed, and that he was being chased by two people.
- The injured teens – three boys aged 16 and two aged 17 – were taken to hospital.
- Another eyewitness said ambulances and an air ambulance had attended.
- A police cordon remained in place on Sunday while officers continued their investigation.
My thoughts are with the parents of the boys, the boys and the whole community.
Senior investigating officer Det Ch Insp Elizabeth Pirie acknowledged the impact on local residents.
Eastleigh MP Liz Jarvis told the BBC: “The community is in shock this morning that such an awful thing could have occurred.”
A closer look at the detail
- Two churches in the area have opened their doors to offer support.
- Jarvis urged people to not “share information online” and “let the police do their job”.
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Virgin Media O2 plans major job cuts – what we know
Virgin Media O2 is set to cull thousands of jobs as the telecoms giant attempts to plug billions of pounds of debt and navigate a market with increasingly cheaper rivals.
Here is everything we know so far.
Mounting debt and competition
Virgin Media O2’s total debt stands at £27.2bn, according to its latest accounts.
The broadband provider is also tackling competition from smaller, cheaper providers like Hyperoptic, Community Fibre, Gigaclear and YouFibre, as well as behemoths like BT.
BT recently inked a deal to buy rival TalkTalk, which Virgin Media O2 has firmly opposed.
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Senior leadership changes under way
Virgin Media O2 has not finalised the number of roles to be cut, but it is likely to be a large chunk of its 16,000-strong workforce, the BBC reported.
The majority of the affected roles are not customer-facing and a number of senior leadership changes are already under way.
Virgin Media O2 is also expected to review its use of contractors and suppliers alongside the job cuts.
Union working to ‘mitigate number of redundancies’
Disappointing and very unsettling.
Virgin Media O2 declined to comment. The Prospect union, which represents staff, called the cuts “disappointing and very unsettling”.
Prospect’s Noel McClean said the union was “working with employers to explore ways to mitigate the number of redundancies”.
How varying your bedtime could be bad for your heart
Varying your bedtime – including staying up late on weekends or doing shift work – could be bad for your heart and increase the risk of strokes, according to new research.
Sleep experts also found that varying the length of sleep too much – like having a long lie-in or pulling an all-nighter, may also have poor health outcomes.
Increased risk of heart problems
The study looked at several factors: how many hours a person slept each night, how much of the night was spent in light, deep and REM sleep, as well as how long a person was awake after first falling asleep.
- Researchers also looked at whether sleep duration, bedtime and wake-up time changed from night to night over roughly six months, as well as the usual times a person fell asleep and woke up.
- The number of “sleep cycles” completed each night were also examined.
- The results showed changes in sleep timing from night to night were linked to a 20 to 23 per cent higher risk of a heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
While we often focus on getting a full eight hours of sleep every night, having a regular sleep schedule – consistent , wake times, and sleep duration from night to night – is a practical, actionable step anyone can take that may help protect their heart and blood vessels.
Dr Nguyen Minh Tuan Viet, a neuroscientist and Lead researcher ON THE STUDY
A closer look at the study
Researchers analysed sleep data from more than 10,000 adults as part of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research programme in the US.
Participants, who had an average age of 53 and had no signs of a heart or metabolic disease, wore sleep tracking devices for around six months.
They were then followed for almost four years to see if they suffered heart issues.
The effects
- 1Every 29-minute increase in sleep from night to night was also linked with a 29 per cent higher risk of having a disease of the heart muscle, which leaves the heart unable to pump enough blood through the body, and a 20 per cent higher risk of heart failure.
- 2Meanwhile, having a greater number of complete “sleep cycles” each night led to a 28 per cent lower risk of atrial arrhythmia, a common type of irregular heartbeat.
- 3In contrast, sleeping longer than usual was linked to a 55 per cent higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
Could the UK see a serious bird flu outbreak?
In the western US state, mink raised for their fur are dying from bird flu.
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Pandemic potential
While scientists have long recognised the pandemic potential of bird flu, the presence in minks takes the threat status to the next level, says Professor Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London.
“This creates an even higher risk to humans than before,” she said.
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How the virus could evolve
Minks’ nose and lungs are similar to humans’ – so much so that closely related ferrets are used in research instead of people.
While for most people, flu is relatively mild, the infection causes a surge of deaths every winter.
And every so often, the virus undergoes some major genetic changes leading to a higher toll, which gets called a pandemic flu.
Not easily spread
Bird flu has occasionally spread to poultry farms, as well as some dairy farms in the US. So far, there have been a small number of farm workers who have caught bird flu from animals and died.
Because the virus is adapted to birds, this strain of flu does not seem to spread easily from person to person. But previous research suggests that one genetic change to strains found on US dairy farms could improve transmission to humans.
Autumn outbreak is a red flag
Another worry is that the mink could be perfect incubators, allowing different flu strains to swap genes. Called reassortment, this process is known to have triggered previous human pandemics, including the one in 2009.
Mink can harbour both human and bird flu strains. The fact this mink outbreak is happening in autumn, when human seasonal flu rises, is also a red flag, says Dr Simon Williams, a public health researcher at Swansea University.
He said: “It increases the risk of a virus with pandemic potential reassorting in somebody working on that farm who has seasonal flu.”
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Flu pandemic preparations
- The UK Health Security Agency declined to comment on whether it had taken any specific measures in response to the mink outbreak when asked by The i Paper.
- But the agency’s Dr Richard Puleston said it “stands ready to initiate an appropriate public health response” if needed.
- As of 2025, the NHS fortunately had £25m worth of PPE stockpiled following the Covid-19 pandemic. Rapid diagnostic tests also shouldn’t be overlooked in terms of the UK’s ability to combat an outbreak.
Yet in neighbouring Portugal, the numbers tell a different story. Like Spain, Portugal’s foreign population soared during this period, rising by more than 800,000 between 2021 and 2025, until they made up 14 per cent of the country’s entire population. But then a new government came in and changed its policies on migration – and the numbers have since started to slow.
In the UK, where immigration has been a contentious political issue for decades, fuelling support for Brexit and now Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, the Government continues to struggle with migration policy. Illegal immigration via small boats crossing the Channel, and some asylum seekers being housed in houses in multiple occupation, have proven particular flashpoints.
So as Britain wrestles with its migration issue, what can it learn from how Spain and Portugal have either encouraged or restricted migration?
Why Spain has been an outlier in Europe
When it comes to migration in recent years, Spain’s government has been something of an outlier.
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who heads a socialist government, has said that apart from humanitarian values, immigration has helped to boost Spain’s economy, and has encouraged more people to move to the country.
The state of Spain’s economy has certainly helped his pro-migration message: the International Monetary Fund predicts growth of 2.5 per cent this year.
The message has been helped by the fact that around half of the new arrivals are from Latin America, can speak Spanish and more easily integrate into Spanish society.
However, Spain’s more welcoming attitude now appears to be changing. Earlier this year, Sánchez angered other EU countries by announcing a controversial migration amnesty, whereby migrants already in the country illegally could obtain legal status and work permits. Although the government expected 500,000 to apply, about 1.2 million have done so.
In August, a majority of EU countries blamed Spain’s lax migration policy for encouraging more an 80,000 people to cross illegally from Morocco to Ceuta, a tiny Spanish enclave, on a single day.
Now, a backlash is brewing. A majority of people in Spain now believe there are too many migrants, polls suggest. Three recent surveys found that between 53 and 60 per cent of Spaniards viewed immigration in negative terms or thought it put added pressure on public services.
One in five of Spain’s population of nearly 50 million was born outside the country.
And in a snap election set for 29 November, polls predict a potential right-wing coalition government will emerge – composed of the conservative People’s Party and the far-right Vox party. Support for anti-immigrant populist Vox has risen to around 18 per cent in the polls. Meanwhile, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the People’s Party leader, is demanding a points system and quotas for immigration, and priority for Latin Americans.
Kate Hooper, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told The i Paper: “It is a little early to tell what the result of the election [in Spain] would mean for immigration policy. It depends on to what extent you are seeing the centre-right being pressured by Vox.”
How Portugal put the brakes on
Just across the border, however, Portugal has taken a diametrically opposed stance towards migration after years of soaring numbers.
Between 2017 and 2024, more than 1.1 million people arrived in Portugal, after the previous centre-left government allowed foreign workers to enter without work visas and apply for residency after only a year of work.
In the four years from 2021 until 2025, the country’s foreign population rose by 824 914 people – with 2022 and 2023 in particular seeing very high numbers of 326,090 and 275,929 respectively, according to the Portuguese government.
The new arrivals included around 250,000 people from South Asia, many of whom were unable to speak Portuguese.
These numbers raised the population of foreign-born nationals from 4 per cent to 14 per cent of the total, and prompted growing support for the far-right Chega (Enough) party.
“Portugal has this centre-right government which has been under pressure from Chega to get tougher on immigration,” Hooper said. “They had a similar situation to Spain. In both cases legal immigration has not been working very well.”
However, with the arrival of Portugal’s current centre-right government in 2024, the numbers began tailing off. In 2025, only 59,113 new foreign citizens arrived in the country – the first time in nine years when the number of immigrants remained largely unaltered compared with the previous year, according to the Minister of the Presidency.
The drop was thanks to a succession of new restrictions on immigration, including tightened visa rules – with work visas now primarily targeted at highly skilled professionals with a job offer; increasing the time needed to obtain citizenship (to seven years for EU citizens and people from Portuguese-speaking countries, and 10 years for non-EU nationals); and restricting family reunions, with a mandatory legal residence waiting period.
A border force was also re-established.
In 2024, the government ended the “expression of interest” scheme that had allowed tourists to enter the country and adjust their status to legal residents locally. Now foreign nationals must obtain work or residence visas before entering. The change prompted a 60 per cent reduction in entries in the second half of the year, according to ministers.
What the UK could learn
In Britain, the issue of immigration has fuelled support for the far right, as in Spain and Portugal.
Before the Brexit referendum in 2016, EU citizens made up the majority of all net migration to the UK. Since the vote, this has fallen – net migration of EU citizens in 2025 was estimated at minus 42,000, according to the Migration Observatory.
For non-EU immigration, numbers were 627,000 in 2025, 20 per cent lower than the previous year.
The UK’s foreign-born population has hit around 13 million, or around 19 per cent of the total UK population.
However, last year, net migration to the UK was 171,000, much lower than the record highs of 950,000 in 2022 and 2023.
The government of Andy Burnham has made clear it wants to move closer to the European Union – a stance that would likely involve having to liberalise migration rules for EU nationals, reversing a clampdown following Brexit.
“If Britain moved from the current relationship to the one the EU has with other member countries, then we would probably have free movement,” said Ben Brindle, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. “Brussels would probably be quite firm on that.”
Brindle said that in terms of numbers, it would no longer be graduate-only level migrants who were allowed in. “Net migration would be 200,000 or higher and people would be allowed to work in lower-skilled jobs. We would not be able to limit access to welfare as we do now,” he added.
However, the political risks would be enormous. Such a move could result in more of the backlash being seen in Spain and Portugal. Brindle said it would then be up to British politicians to decide if migration policy would change for people from the rest of the world.
“I think it is very unlikely that the rules would be liberalised for non-EU citizens [if Britain opened up to more migration from the EU],” Brindle said.
Whatever happens, the UK is not alone among European nations when it comes to the delicate balancing act of keeping migration at sufficient levels to power its workforce – while avoiding the risk of handing the levers of power to far-right parties.