The Home Office is refusing growing numbers of student visas for “crazy” reasons – with one applicant allegedly rejected for failing to name the number of trees on a university campus.
In another case, a student was denied a UK visa after being accused of giving the wrong founding year for their university – but it later turned out the youngster was right.
The Home Office has said it is cracking down on visa abuse after asylum claims from those entering the UK on visas more than tripled under the previous government.
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.
However, universities told The i Paper “bizarre” visa denials were crippling their ability to recruit overseas students, whose tuition fees subsidise the cost of educating Britons and keep many institutions afloat.
They have called for decisions to be investigated. It comes amid wider pressure on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to water down hardline immigration reforms.
The Government said all visa applications are “considered on their individual merits” in line with immigration rules. They said “cherry-picked extracts” from visa refusals “may not reflect the full rationale”.
‘Crazy’ decisions ‘need looking at’
However, Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said institutions are sharing cases that are “bizarre” and “just don’t make sense”.
“It’s killing us,” she said. “It’s making it very hard to predict which students will be given a visa and which will not.
“It’s forcing universities to be incredibly risk-averse about how they recruit international students, and it is a large reason why we’ve seen such a decline this autumn.”
More than 13 per cent of student visas were rejected in the first three months of this year, up from 6.1 per cent during the same period last year.
UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), the Home Office body responsible for processing visas, carries out discretionary “credibility interviews” to check that applicants’ study plans are genuine.
Universities see these interviews as an expanding source of questionable visa rejections.
Stern added: “It’s crazy. One of the things that we’ve been asking for in every conversation we’ve had with government is: can you look at the quality of decision-making? We want to play by the rules, but the rules have to be fair.”
‘Rejected for not applying to Canada’
James Miller, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), said one applicant was told they were rejected because they were unable to “describe the number of trees” on a university campus.
It was deemed that the university’s marketing had prominently displayed its greenery and that this should have been known to the applicant, according to another source familiar with the case.
Miller said many applicants are getting rejected because they had not considered other English-speaking countries.
One applicant to UWS was rejected because they had not applied to Canada after saying they had considered it, but chose the UK due to the course’s reputation.
In another case shared by Universities UK, a student said during an interview they had considered studying in Canada but not applied because of the cold weather. The visa was rejected, with a letter explaining that some places in Canada are not that cold.
Miller claimed it is becoming clear to universities that rejected applicants typically come from a very small number of countries, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana.
Student visas were banned outright from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan earlier this year because officials believed these nationals were more likely to apply for asylum once they had arrived in the UK.
Universities said they are now withdrawing visas from prospective overseas students over concerns that spurious refusals are putting them in danger of getting sanctioned by the Home Office.
New rules that came into force in June punish universities if more than 5 per cent of their sponsored study visas are rejected – down from 10 per cent before.
If institutions exceed this threshold, they could have their ability to recruit international students removed entirely.
“Students don’t actually have any opportunity to appeal the decision other than on the basis of a factual inaccuracy, and that costs the student money as well,” Miller said. “Very often they decide not to pursue it any further because they feel the odds are all stacked against them.”
‘Not fit for the job’
Steven McGuire, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said his university has cut back on actively recruiting students from countries such as Pakistan and those in West Africa, and is having to turn away legitimate students “because we can’t risk a visa refusal”.
He said some of the rejection reasons “seem very strange”. One applicant who cited international rankings as a reason for choosing UEA was refused because the rankings were public information and any candidate could say that.
In another example, the applicant correctly said UEA was in Norfolk, but the caseworker appeared to confuse Norfolk with Norwich and rejected the application.
McGuire said: “Suddenly students, who in previous years would have passed and would have studied, were failing at quite remarkable rates at the compliance interview. There was clearly a change in the thresholds which wasn’t communicated to universities.”
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank, added it was “abundantly clear” that officials doing the interviews are “not fit for the job”.
“It is the next migration scandal waiting to happen, because the way they’re doing it is so egregious,” he said.
A Government spokesperson said all applications “are considered on their individual merits in line with the requirements of the immigration rules”. They have “robust controls and checks” to protect the immigration system from abuse.
They added that universities “have only been provided with cherry-picked extracts [from visa refusals], which may not reflect the full rationale and are insufficient to support an investigation into these specific cases”.