Media rhetoric about migrants and crime is rallying support for the National Rally in the countryside but, say city folk, the reality is different

Flanked by fields of corn and tree-lined ponds, the regular rumbling of planes in the distance is the only hint of Colombier-Saugnieu’s proximity to the bustling metropolis of Lyon.

But in recent days journalists from the city have begun traipsing out to the tiny commune, population 2,500, in hopes of better understanding a dynamic seemingly at play in the country’s snap parliamentary elections: the sharp divide when it comes to voters in rural and urban areas.

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BBC records former special operations chief saying abandoning people at sea was an ‘international crime’

A former Greek coastguard officer has described as “clearly illegal” the actions of colleagues who abandoned nine migrants at sea in one of 15 alleged pushbacks from Greek islands or territorial waters that reportedly killed dozens of people.

In an interview with the BBC , Dimitris Baltakos, the Greek coastguard’s former head of special operations, refused to speculate about footage the broadcaster showed him, after earlier denying the coastguard would ever be told to do anything illegal.

The investigation forms the basis for a BBC2 documentary, Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?

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Rescuers near Italy report 10 bodies found on wooden boat and 50 missing in a separate incident off Calabria

At least 10 people have died and dozens are missing after two separate shipwrecks close to the Italian coast, rescuers said.

Ten bodies were found on Monday in the lower deck of a wooden boat in the central Mediterranean by rescuers from Nadir, a ship operated by the German charity ResQship. The charity said it saved 51 people who were onboard the sinking vessel, which is believed to have departed from Tunisia.

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FOI reveals non EU migrants could be caught in ‘Windrush style scandal' at end of 2024 as Home Office struggles to contact them

More than 4 million non-EU migrants living in Britain will need to switch to digital “eVisas” by the end of this year or risk being unable to prove their legal rights, according to figures seen by the Observer .

Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs) – given to all foreign nationals with permission to live in the UK for at least six months – demonstrate proof of an individual’s right to study, access public services and claim benefits. But they are being replaced under the Home Office’s digitisation programme.

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Germans under 25 gave the far-right AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east

Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.

“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.

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Sharp rise, equivalent to population of London, means nearly 120 million have been driven from their homes

The number of people forced out of their homes around the world last year was the equivalent of the population of London, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

The latest annual assessment from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said a sharp rise in the number of people forcibly displaced during 2023 had brought the total to a record high of more than 117 million. Conflicts were largely to blame with many, such as those in Ukraine and Sudan , showing little sign of ending.

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Two teenage boys star in Matteo Garrone’s passionate exposé of how greed, trauma and corruption drive the modern-day slave trade in would-be migrants

Matteo Garrone’s new film is part adventure story, part slavery drama; the slavery which did not in fact vanish with the end of the American civil war, but thrives in the globalised present day without needing to shapeshift too much, driven by the age-old forces of geopolitics and the market.

Seydou and Moussa, played by nonprofessional acting newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall, are 16-year-old cousins in Dakar, Senegal, dreaming of escape to the fabled land of the EU as refugees, where they expect to go viral and make a fortune as music stars like the people they’re watching on TikTok. For years they have been writing songs and secretly working on building sites while pretending to go to football practice, amassing cash savings which in the succeeding months they will hand over to various gangmasters, fixers and corrupt gun-wielding soldiers.

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Exclusive: Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages expose people to ‘hyper-precarity’ and exploitation

Visas created hastily to solve labour shortages as a result of Brexit have put workers at greater risk of modern slavery and exploitation, research has found.

Strict conditions on agricultural and care visas created after Britain left the EU expose workers to “hyper-precarity” and increase their vulnerability to exploitation, a study by a coalition of leading universities and charities has concluded. Since Brexit, farm workers and care home workers have had a route to Britain on time-limited visas with stringent conditions.

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As a young Liberian woman in survival mode, Cynthia Erivo carries Anthony Chen’s unassuming drama

Understated, but with a mesmerising, shell-shocked stillness, British actor Cynthia Erivo’s arresting central performance gives this earnest drama by Singaporean director Anthony Chen ( Ilo Ilo , Wet Season ) its emotional heft. She plays Jacqueline, a traumatised refugee from war-torn Liberia who has recently arrived on a Greek island. The jagged, rocky terrain of her new home evokes her fractured mental state. But even in survival mode, subsisting on scavenged leftovers and small change, Jacqueline is too proud to beg. That same dignity prompts her to invent a story – a husband and a hotel room – when she strikes up a friendship with an empathic American tour guide, Callie (Alia Shawkat). This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.

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