not because sending someone to a third country of unlawful, it is not, but instead because rwanda is not a safe country. they listened to the evidence of experts, especially from the united nations that has been working with refugees in rwanda for a few decades and said right now, it is not a safe country. the law we saw passed quite dramatically and in the very late hours last night said rwanda is and must always be considered a safe country. how this will work in practice as if someone arrives by a small boat and gets a deportation order that they will be order that they will be removed to rwanda, then the decision—makers, anyone who might be looking at this person's claim, can only consider rwanda a safe country, it does not matter any evidence to the contrary, and they cannot consider it. they must send that person to rwanda as a matter of law.

i will come back to you. let's go to rwanda, our correspondent is there for us and we have had several people asking that question, is rwanda a safe country? i would say that depends on who you are asking and what exactly you mean. it is safe in terms of crime, the statistics show it has a very high safe index, high on the indices of crime safety for crime and that is something that the government often talks about, we are the safest country in the world. i think that is not so far from the truth. as you head the supreme court in britain had some concerns about safety for refugees and the thing is the concern is asylum seekers could be deported from the country they had fled, especially if applications in rwanda were rejected. that is something they have worked on through this treaty signed in december which basically says

that's not going to happen. if your asylum application is rejected you can stay in the country, there are resident permits, arrangements for you. that is something the rwandans are now working through in terms of law. they have to make changes to their migrant and refugee law in order to accommodate that. the supreme court also mentioned an incident in 2018 when refugees who had come from the democratic republic of the congo in rwanda where, they demonstrated because the un cutting their rations and the rwandan police, they opened fire and killed 12 of them. the government here says that was an isolated incident and has not happened again,

human rights watch is said perhaps what is more germane as they don't seem to have been any more demonstrations and some of the people involved were arrested and jailed. i did ask a rwandan official weather if the, when refugees came i did ask a rwandan official whether if the, when refugees came they would be able to demonstrate to the government and she said they could do so based on rwandan law and also legislation. there has been a lot of criticism allegations that dissent is repressed in rwanda. that comes from political activists and human rights organisations and even when we were asking people about what they thought about the uk deal, they did not want to speak their mind if they were going to criticise the deal unless they could be anonymous. that sort of fear factor is there again. it is something kigali denies, but i would say the uk has at least acknowledged it and said there is some restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, but it is unlikely that people who relocate here will be badly treated.

if i can ask you the next question, that is how many people will be sent to rwanda? the british government says the scheme is uncapped. when borisjohnstone came here to kent to announce plans, he was speaking potentially tens of thousands of people going there each year. this morning the government said initially when those flights depart, if they take off in around 10—12 weeks as the government hopes, the numbers could be small to begin with as people get used to this scheme. we may be talking a few hundred, some people say maybe around

300 people initially in the first few weeks. the government says it wants to see flights going regularly, a steady rhythm of flights as it put it, throughout the course of the summer. they certainly seem to be implying numbers could be ratcheted up. there are some real challenges. firstly, the fact you have got to find airlines, prepare to get involved in this. the government says it has someone in mind, it also says it has an airfield. you have to take into account the capacity rwanda itself has because it cannot take tens of thousands of people all in one go. that's why the government is also exploring similar deals with other countries. we have had countries like armenia and cote d'ivoire also mentioned. i think they will want to see how it works with rwanda initially but also another really big challenge is so far around 50,000 people are being told they could potentially be eligible to go to rwanda because they have

arrived in the uk illegally since the law was changed. those people are being told the will not be able to claim asylum here and the government intention is to remove them. rwanda being the obvious choice. that backlog, 50,000 people, that will take quite a lot of time to shift and all the time you have more people arriving by small boat. as i speak at the moment, currently the lifeboat has come back into shore bringing back a group of migrants. three border force boats we have seen today bringing people today to dover. as the backlog continues to grow, it is even more of a challenge for the government to get some people out of the uk and thousands of kilometres to east africa. we are just showing the pictures of the rlni and they were off—loading passengers presumably picked up on the channel this morning.

what more can you tell is about what happened there? another really busy day in the channel, conditions are really calm. you can see france very closely in the distance and that means there has been a large number of boats lunching from the beaches of northern france. what happens is once the boat makes it halfway across the channel, the people on board become the responsibility of the uk authority. we see the border force and lifeboat go out and pick up these people, make sure they are safe and bring them back to dover. we have also heard of a tragedy in the channel, a boat that set off from a place in northern france, along the coast from calais, that had 112 people on board. that would be an unprecedented number, i have never heard so many people on board one single boat, we talk about small boats but they are getting much bigger. 112 people on board, that boat got stranded on a sand bank.

as people were attempting to relaunch it, there was really a scramble to get on board that boat. people ended up in the water and three men and one woman and a young child lost their lives. incredibly, you see the desire of people to get to the uk, because although the authorities were quickly on the scene and rescued half of those 112 people, half of them did not want to be rescued and decided, they got their boat working again, the motor was working and they continued their journey to the uk. it gives you a sense of how dangerous this is but strong the desire is to get to uk. for people who struggle to move around — because of age, illness or disability — the mobility scooter ideal but navigating roads and pavements can be risky 0ur reporter simon spark went to find out more.

when you talk about how vulnerable mobility scooter users are on the roads, transporting safety fencing like this doesn't help. it's really, oh, really bad. nor does the state of the roads themselves. and there are other issues too. they're getting bigger and bigger now, and i don't think all of them should be allowed in shops, to be honest, because they're just too big. i've been taken out by one. yeah. what happened to you? it hit my ankle. it gave way, and it damaged - a ligament in my achilles tendon. legally, you don't have to have insurance to drive one, nor have any official training. but as the number of users increases, so too have the collisions. we see claims for theft and damage come in all the time, but this year, we were we felt that we were seeing a real rise in serious incidents. so we wanted to dig into the data a bit and see what was going on. the data, which is only from 2022, shows that mobility scooter drivers were more than 2.5 times more likely to be killed in a road

accident than other road users. nationally in 2022, there were nine fatalities and 270 injured in collisions. and the trend shows these figures are increasing by 20% per year. the humberside police force area is sixth—highest in the country. so what do people in scunthorpe think about what needs to be done? i'm actually a trained mechanic. right? who can drive lorries, hgv, what have you, but i have to go through so many tests. and even i've crashed into things and what have you. there's no training at all. did you think you needed more advice on training? not really. i've been a lorry driver for 30 - years and nobody gives way to you. no, you do have to be extra cautious. - the only problem me and other people with scooters find is there isn't enough dropped kerbs. so we have to go on the road and go around parked vehicles to get around things because you just can't get

off the kerb. i mean a lot of it, it's just pure common sense. for now, common sense is the only protection, along with raising awareness of how vulnerable mobility scooter users are on the roads. now it's time for a look at the weather with stav. hello there. it was a chilly start to the day for many of us and many places will stay chilly, particularly across the east of the country. we will have more cloud. but in fact, the next few days temperatures will be below par for the time of year with the best of any sunshine out towards western areas. this arctic air has been working its way southwards across the country this week and it's going to loiter around until we get into the weekend. we start to see something a little bit warmer moving up from the south, but it'll be moving up from the south with low pressure. here's the pressure system today, high pressure to the west, lower pressure out towards the east, feeding in a lot of cloud on this northerly wind into the eastern side of the country.

best the sunshine, western scotland, northern ireland, west and wales is where we're likely to see the mid teens here, but distinctly chilly along the north sea coast. they're single figures i think for most 6 to 9 celsius. similar story as we head into tonight. we hold onto the breeze across north sea coast. one or two showers here, maybe wintry over the high ground, dries out and clearest further north and west. and this is where we actually have the lowest temperatures. touch of frost again across the far north of england into scotland. wednesday, similar story, not much change. we hold on to the northerly wind, brisk again along north sea coast where there will always be more cloud or maybe the odd light shower. it'll be chilly there, best of the sunshine and western areas again, the low to mid teens here. otherwise its single figure values once again. so that's wednesday out of the way. by thursday, start to see some subtle changes. you notice the pressure charts just changing. we've got low pressure starting to build on either side of the country.

so that will change the wind direction. certainly across the south. we're looking more of a westerly developing here, but increasing cloud through the day as those low pressure systems develop with an increasing chance of showers to particularly england and wales into northern ireland, temperatures could be up to around 13 degrees in london area, but there'll be limited sunshine once again. it's going to stay quite cool for most as you move through friday into the weekend. low pressure looks like it's going to take over, i think, and it's going to bring us some windier weather and also more cloud with showers or even longer spells of rain. but one thing you will notice, temperatures will begin to creep up as we move through the weekend into next week. but it will come with some rain.

live from london. this is bbc news. rishi sunak outlines plans for an additional £500 million in uk military aid for ukraine as he arrives in poland for a regional security talks. five people, including a child, have died attempting to cross the channel from france to britain. the bbc team was on the beach as they built set off. it comes as the uk parliament passes a controversial bill that aims to send some asylum seekers to rwanda. tens of thousands are forced to leave their homes after torrential flooding and landslides hit southern china. and a new photograph of

prince louis taken by his mother to mark his sixth birthday. hello, i'm sarah campbell, welcome to bbc news now, 3 hours of fast—moving news, interviews and reaction. just hours after rishi runak�*s flagship rwanda bill was passed just hours after rishi sunak�*s flagship rwanda bill was passed in the british parliament, five people — including a child — have died attempting to cross the sea from northern france to britain. these were the chaotic scenes on the beach near calais just before daybreak. the incident happened as migrants attempted to launch a boat. the french coastguard said the small, overloaded boat was carrying 110 people when it set off from wimereux, just south

of calais on tuesday morning. authorities have also been carrying out several