Migrant destiny
That Syrian refugees have put down roots in Germany is no surprise. But the million strong population does now have a choice to make when their homeland is changing rapidly.
A decade after fleeing conflict, almost all Syrians resettled in Germany are choosing to stay, despite Berlin’s renewed focus on border closures and offering cash incentives to encourage returns. Fewer than 2,000 have taken up a cash offer to return since the fall of Bashar Al Assad.
Research by Tim Stickings for The National has found that Syrians who started arriving en masse a decade ago are sticking with their new lives.
The dramatic scenes of 2015 spawned a word in German, Willkommenskultur (welcome culture). Masses of people, carrying little but the clothes on their backs across Europe, slept at train stations, lit campfires in the streets and persuaded Germans to open their doors.
In interviews, Syrian-Germans say much has changed since. A new government in Berlin preaches border closures and deportations. A new government in Damascus has begun rebuilding from civil war, raising the question of whether Syrians still need asylum in Europe.
Yet many now have deep ties, especially with children born and raised there who never knew the old Syria. As a result, the attitude to going back has changed for those feeling the pull of two lands.
“We are not between two worlds – we are the bridge that connects them,” says one of the 2015 generation, Ahmad Al Hamid.
Chill wind
The flipside of 2015 generosity was Nigel Farage using a poster of those queues at the borders to power his Brexit campaign in the UK the following year.
Now launching he's Reform party’s plans for a "deportation command" to tackle the small boats in the English Channel. Leader Farage and sidekick Zia Yusuf said the legal obstacles to mass deportations could be removed by pulling out of international treaties and repealing UK human rights laws.
Mr Farage told an event at an airport in Oxford that the number of deportations that could be achieved over the lifetime of the next five-year parliament is about 600,000.
Polls show Reform has the support of about 30% of the electorate, making it the most popular party currently, ahead of Labour on 21% and the Conservatives on 17%.
Super boost
A worldwide expansion of ground-breaking electronic technology by a British company has taken a major step forward after significant investment from Abu Dhabi.
Paragraf, one of Britain’s most promising private technology businesses, which produces semiconductors made of graphene, has benefited from the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund contributing $35 million.
Graphene’s unique properties enable a host of devices to perform faster, more accurately and with lower energy consumption than silicon-based alternatives.
The input of $55 million in total funding, which includes a 12.8 per cent stake in the company acquired by Mubadala, will enable Paragraf to expand production of “faster, more energy-efficient technologies to the scale required by major commercial opportunities”, said Dr Simon Thomas, the company’s co-founder and chief executive.