UK to build 'big new wall' in Calais to stop migrants

The camp sprawls over about 40 acres of sand dunes once used for landfill, with different nationalities in different sections.

UK will soon start construction on a "big new wall" in the French port city of Calais to prevent refugees and migrants from entering Britain.

The four-meter (13 foot) high wall is part of a £17 million ($23 million) deal struck between Britain and France earlier this year to try to block migrants from crossing the English Channel. "We've done the fence. Now we're doing a wall," British Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill announced at a government hearing on Tuesday.

It is the latest attempt to enhance border security in Calais, home to a controversial makeshift camp known as "The Jungle," where thousands of displaced people live in squalid conditions.

The camp is a major transit point for migrants, who often hop onto the back of UK-bound cargo trucks in the hopes of entering the country illegally. Despite current security measures -- including a fence -- Goodwill acknowledged that some people were still managing to get through to the UK. "The security we're putting in at the ports is being stepped up with better equipment. We're going to start building this big new wall very soon as part of the £17 million package that we're doing with the French," he said.

The wall will be built along both sides of a 1-kilometer (0.6 mile) stretch of road approaching the Calais ferry port, according to the UK Home Office.

The Lantern of the Photuris Firefly

THE lantern, or light organ, of a particular Photuris firefly is covered with jagged scales that dramatically enhance the brightness of the light that the insect produces. * Jagged scales Consider: Researchers have found that tiny scales on the lantern surface of some fireflies form a corrugated pattern, somewhat like overlapping shingles or tiles. The scales tilt up at one end by just 3 micrometers —less than one twentieth the thickness of a human hair. Yet this tiny tilt lets the lantern shine almost 50 percent more brightly than it would if the scales formed an even surface!

An Overview of Indonesia

Land Straddling the equator between Australia and continental Asia, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago. Most of its more than 17,500 islands feature rugged mountains and dense tropical forests. With more than 100 active volcanoes, it is also the most active volcanic region on earth.

PORTRAITS FROM THE PASTIgnaz Semmelweis

IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS may not be a household name, yet his work has benefited most modern families. Born in Buda (now Budapest), Hungary, he received his medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1844. On taking up his post as assistant to a professor at the First Maternity Clinic of Vienna’s General Hospital in 1846, Semmelweis faced an appalling reality —more than 13 percent of the women giving birth there died from a disease called childbed fever. Various theories as to the cause of this disease had been proposed, yet no one had solved the mystery. All attempts to reduce the mortality rate proved futile. Troubled by the spectacle of numerous mothers suffering a slow, agonizing death, Semmelweis determined to find the cause of the disease and prevent it.

Rielyn Co

Search This Blog