meeting declaring the ukraine war wouldn't have started under him and won�*t end without him. he called vladimir putin very smart and very cunning, and he promised america will get its money back from ukraine. with the zelenskyy meeting set up for this friday, is president trump really the one to end the war in ukraine and cut back on two kebabs ukraine and cut back on two mmma ukraine and cut back on two kebabs a week? pay more to fly and ditch your gas boiler. yes, britain's climate future depends britain�*s climate future depends on it, or so we�*re told. is this on it, or so we're told. is this a fair plan or just a joyless sacrifice where they turn us into a nation of jeremy corbyn into a nation ofjeremy corbyn and nigel farage has hit back after a reform uk meeting in norfolk's poshest town was mysteriously cancelled. is this a rare example of free speech being under threat? >> pub has so much resources and here is why spill the tea. >> and old age pensioners. viral tiktokers using gen 2 slang have saved an historic pub. i�*ll be

saved an historic pub. i'll be joined by one of those campaigners campaigners later in the show for saving a great british boozer that�*s coming up soon. but first, here�*s your headlines with sophia wenzler. >> martin. thank you. good evening. it's just gone. 7:00. these are your headlines. donald trump has confirmed president zelenskyy will visit him on fhday zelenskyy will visit him on friday to sign a very big agreement. the us president held his first cabinet meeting at the white house since his inauguration last month, joined by his billionaire adviser elon musk. attention quickly turned to the minerals deal with ukraine. >> president zelenskyy is going to be coming on friday. that's now confirmed, and we�*re going to be signing an agreement, which will be a very big agreement. and i want to thank howard and scott for the job you guys did in putting it together. really did an amazing job. and that will be on rare earth and

other things. i think that. >> he went on to say the united states would not be making security guarantees for ukraine in its deal to end the war with russia, but that europe would. meanwhile, downing street has confirmed that ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy will meet with keir starmer and other european leaders in london on sunday. it is thought that mr zelenskyy is planning to make the trip to discuss defence. elsewhere, sir keir starmer has refused to say if the deal to give away the chagos islands to mauritius would be funded by the increase in defence spending. the prime minister told the commons that the increase to 2.5% of gdp is our capability on defence and security in europe, and described the deal being negotiated with mauritius as extremely important for our security. tory mp kieran mullen asked sir keir during the prime minister�*s questions to give an unequivocal answer on where the money would come from, but the

prime minister declined to say whether money for the deal would come out of the increase in defence spending, gb news can exclusively reveal. more than 2000 small boat migrants have crossed the channel illegally since the start of the year. the latest group of 138 arrived last night, brought into dover by border force after being picked up border force after being picked up in uk waters. earlier, another boat was intercepted after some on board refused french rescue and continued towards britain. the government is pushing new laws to criminalise those who reject rescue, as labour vows to smash the gangs. the vatican has said pope francis condition has improved slightly and his mild kidney problems have been resolved. the vatican also says the pope's ct scan has shown a normal evolution of the pulmonary inflammation, and buffy the vampire slayer and gossip girl actress michelle trachtenberg has died aged 39.

the actress was found dead at her home in new york city after officers responded to a 911 call just after 8 am. local time this morning. trachtenberg was best known for her work as dawn summers in buffy and playing georgina sparks on gossip girl. an investigation into her death has been opened, but criminality is not suspected. that�*s is not suspected. that's according to the police. those are the latest gb news headlines. now it's back to martin. >> for the very latest gb news direct to your smartphone. sign up direct to your smartphone. sign up to news alerts by scanning the qr code or go to the qr code, or go to gbnews.com/poll. >> michaela community school. >> michaela community school. >> very, very good evening to you and thank you, sophia. now, new figures from the centre for migration control reveal a staggering trend. migrants who

are overwhelmingly dependent on uk benefits are still being handed settled status in huge numbers. now take this 42% of numbers. now take this a2% of congolese migrants in britain are on benefits. for iraqis, it's lrlr% afghans 42%. and yet it's 44%, afghans 42%. and yet in the past four years alone, the government has granted settled status to over 26,000 afghans, 22,000 iranians and nearly 18,000 eritreans, all among the highest benefit claiming groups. meanwhile, the british taxpayer, of course, is left to foot the bill with record levels of immigration and a welfare system already under massive strain. why is the government rewarding dependency with the right to stay? well, i�*m joined now by by the research director at the centre for migration control, rob bates, and i'm also joined by my panel and that is the former panel. and that is the former defence secretary. geoff hoon is a derby county fan, but i'll let

a derby county fan, but i�*ll let him off that. and the former conservative mp alexander stafford. gentlemen, welcome to the show. rob, i'm going to the show. rob, i�*m going to start with you. first of all, thank you for giving this exclusively to farage tonight. an incredible set of figures. tell me how you got this data, because you and i are continually talking about the data that the home office, the department of work and pensions do not want us to have. how do you get this data? >> so dwp and hmrc are incredibly reluctant to release this information for the most recent years. what we can do, however, is look back on the most recent data that was released in 2021 and follow the trends of those data sets that were released from 2013 onwards. and if you take that all together, you identify a very clear trend in that certain nationalities are disproportionately represented in those claiming universal credit, housing benefit, child support and whatnot. and i think this is a really important discussion that we need to have, because it really gets to the heart of who is our immigration system actually serving, what is the point of it and what is the

purpose of it? and i think if we were to actually have policymakers and politicians that were to look at those benefit that were to look at those benefit claim rates per nationality and take that into account when issuing visas, we'd account when issuing visas, we�*d end up with a system that is much more effective and actually works in the favour of british taxpayers. at the moment, we've got over 1 taxpayers. at the moment, we've got over1 million foreign born individuals in this country that are claiming some form of benefit, and that probably comes to a bill of about £8 billion per year for those individuals before you even take into account their actual benefit claims. 50 there are huge costs involved in this, and it�*s very involved in this, and it's very important that we start taking it seriously. >> if you go back to that first graphic there, the benefit claims per 1000. at the bottom we got the white chart. that is the median. that's the uk propensity to claim benefits. and we can clearly see from this rob bates the ratio going up to claim benefits with the congolese. what is that something like four and a half times more likely to claim benefits than brits? >> yeah, it's 4.4.2 times. there are actually 40 countries, 40 nationalities across the board that have a higher claim rate than the british. there�*s

actually probably a few more than that. it's just unfortunately, due to data restrictions and the fact that we are not able to disentangle children from these from these figures. the figure actually probably for working age populations is probably higher for these nationalities. and the real point is that we currently have a system in place, indefinite leave to remain, where once an individual is granted that, they then have carte blanche to claim these benefits and to enjoy all the rights that come with that. and unfortunately, there doesn�*t seem to be any real conversation on whether this is an appropriate system to still be in place in britain in 2025. obviously, kemi badenoch made some announcements that they would be extending that period, but we need to really have a conversation about whether it is suitable for a period of mass migration where it's running net 500,000 a year. it's obviously introduced at a time when net migration was actually in the minus figures. it was actually running at about —40,000 when it was first introduced. and i think there's a obviously a clear ticking time bomb with the huge levels that we've seen. those huge levels that we've