Dying of heat
Have this year’s heatwaves really killed 2,700 people? The claim has been made in a paper by Imperial College.
– The figure was arrived at by taking the temperature recordings and modelling the theoretical number of deaths based on past heatwave events. However, actual data on deaths tells a different story. The UK Health Security Agency, which measures recorded deaths against a five-year average, declares there was ‘no signal of high mortality above the baseline’ for the week ending 31 May, the first heatwave this year.
– As for the second heatwave, provisional data shows there were 768 fewer deaths (or 7.4%) than would have been expected from the five-year average. The later figures might yet be revised upwards.
Offender numbers
How many foreign national offenders are returned to their home countries?
– In the year ending March 2026, 5,858 were deported, following a steady increase from the 2,706 deported in 2021 but still down on the peak of 6,437 in 2016. The most common countries for return were:
Albania 1,557 Portugal 163
Romania 1,013 Vietnam 118
Poland 493 Brazil 112
Lithuania 331 Netherlands 111
Bulgaria 179 India 103
Source: Home Office
Animal testing
Which animals get experimented upon?
– In 2025, there were 2.54m scientific procedures involving animals, down from 2.64m in 2024. 1.32m were straightforward experiments for medical trials or other purposes: 56% involved mice, 16% involved fish, 10% involved birds, 9% involved rats and 1% involved cats, dogs, horses or primates. 1.22m cases involved genetic alteration: of these, 85% involved mice, 14% fish and 0.5% rats and birds.
Source: Home Office
Designated terrorism
A man suspected of murdering Ann Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister, was arrested on terrorism charges. How many arrests for terrorism are there?
– In 2025, there were 3,034 arrests, compared with 250 in the whole of 2024.
However, 2,779 of these related to membership of Palestine Action, a group only designated a terrorist organisation in July 2025. If you subtract these, there were 255 terrorism arrests in 2025. As of 31 March 2026, 486 of the 3,034 arrests had resulted in terrorism charges. Of these, 412 related to Palestine Action and 74 to others.
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