Man who jumped from edge of space dies paragliding

17 July 2025 Share Save Ottilie Mitchell & Hollie Cole BBC News Share Save

Watch: Felix Baumgartner leaps into the record books in 2012

Felix Baumgartner, who once broke the world record for the highest skydive by jumping from the edge of space, has died in a motorised paragliding accident in Italy. The 56-year-old fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel while flying over the village of Porto Sant’Elpidio in the eastern Marche region. Porto Sant’Elpidio’s Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella said reports suggested he may have suffered a sudden medical issue mid-air. The Austrian daredevil made headlines in 2012 when he broke the world record – and the sound barrier – for the highest-ever skydive, jumping from a balloon more than 39km (128,000 ft) up in the stratosphere.

Baumgartner was described as “a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flights” by Ciarpella, who offered the town’s condolences for his death. Fans have left their own tributes beneath one of the skydiver’s final social media posts, a video of him working on the motor of his paraglider. Another post from around 14:30 local time (13:30 BST) bore the text “too much wind” and featured a picture of a full windsock against a cloudy sky. The extreme sportsman was known as “Fearless Felix” for his adventurous stunts.

Reuters Baumgartner flew across the English Channel in 2003 with an oxygen tank strapped to his back

He set one of his earliest records in 1999 for the world’s lowest base jump, from the 30m (98ft) high hand of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue. In the same year, he set the world record for the highest parachute jump from a building, when he launched himself from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Then, in 2003, he completed a flight across the English Channel wearing a specially made jumpsuit with carbon-fibre wings. But the extreme sportsman was best known for his space leap. Speaking at a news conference after his record-breaking jump, he said: “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble.” He added: “You don’t think about breaking records anymore, you don’t think about gaining scientific data – the only thing that you want is to come back alive.”

Italy plan to process migrants in Albania dealt blow by EU court

13 hours ago Share Save Sarah Rainsford Southern and Eastern Europe correspondent Reporting from Rome Share Save

Reuters

A ruling by the EU’s top court has dealt a further blow to Italy’s attempts to create a fast-track system in Albania for processing asylum applications offshore. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said that the way the Italian government currently defines whether a country is “safe” to return someone whose application is rejected contravenes EU law. That “safe country” concept is central to the deal that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni struck with Albania in 2023 to send migrants intercepted at sea straight there for accelerated processing. Anyone from a “safe country” who was refused asylum was supposed to be deported within a week.

But the ECJ has ruled that a nation can only be included on the government’s list if the entire population there is safe, which means Italy will have to revise its procedure. It currently identifies Egypt and Bangladesh, for example, as safe, whilst accepting that certain groups there require protection.

The ruling brought an angry reaction from the government in Rome which said the European court was overstepping its role, adding that the decision would weaken the ability of countries to “defend national borders”. The European court also said that the government must make public any evidence and sources it uses in reaching its conclusions on safe countries, so that asylum seekers can challenge the decision in their cases. “Today, the court makes clear that a country cannot be designated as safe unless it offers effective, generalised protection, for everyone and everywhere, and unless that claim can be independently verified and challenged,” Katia Scannavini of ActionAid Italy explained. “The so-called Albania model collapses at its legal core,” she argued. The fate of Italy’s Albania project is being watched closely by other governments including in the UK which are keen on handling asylum applications offshore as they try to reduce the number of irregular migrants arriving in their countries. Meant as the centrepiece of Meloni’s tough approach to immigration, the Albania deal has hit legal obstacles from the very start. The handful of migrants who were sent there were all eventually returned to Italy after the intervention of lawyers. Many times over budget, the centres that were built have never yet been used as intended.

‘This puts significant halt to Albania plan’

Italy has signed a deal with Albania, where it planned to process up to 36,000 asylum seekers per year.

The European Union’s top court has backed Italian judges who questioned a list of “safe countries” drawn up by Rome, as it prepares to deport migrants to detention centres in Albania.

The hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) ruling and said it “weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration”.

Meloni’s plan to outsource migrant processing to a non-EU country and speed up repatriations of failed asylum seekers has been followed closely by others in the bloc.

The costly scheme has been frozen for months by legal challenges.

Italian magistrates have cited the European court’s decision that EU states cannot designate an entire country as “safe” when certain regions are not.

On Friday, in a long-awaited judgement, the Luxembourg-based ECJ said Italy is free to decide which countries are “safe”, but warned that such a designation should meet strict legal standards and allow applicants and courts to access and challenge the supporting evidence.

In its statement, the ECJ said a Rome court had turned to EU judges, citing the impossibility of accessing such information and thus preventing it from “challenging and reviewing the lawfulness of such a presumption of safety”.

The ECJ also said a country might not be classified “safe” if it does not offer adequate protection to its entire population, agreeing with Italian judges that had raised this issue last year.

Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, had signed a migration deal in November 2023, and last year, Rome opened two centres in Albania, where it planned to process up to 36,000 asylum seekers per year.

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The detention facilities have, however, been empty for months, due to the judicial obstacles. Last week, a report found that their construction cost was seven times more than that of an equivalent centre in Italy.

Government’s approach ‘dismantled’?

The European court made its judgement considering a case of two Bangladeshi nationals who were rescued at sea by Italian authorities and taken to Albania, where their asylum claims were rejected based on Italy’s classification of Bangladesh as a “safe” country.

Dario Belluccio, a lawyer who represented one of the Bangladeshi asylum seekers at the ECJ on Friday, said the Albanian migrant camps scheme had been killed off.

“It will not be possible to continue with what the Italian government had envisioned before this decision … Technically, it seems to me that the government’s approach has been completely dismantled,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Meloni’s office complained that the EU judgement allows national judges to dictate policy on migration, “further reduc(ing) the already limited” capacity of parliament and government to take decisions on the matter.

“This is a development that should concern everybody,” it said.

Meanwhile, though the Albanian scheme is stuck in legal limbo, Italy’s overall effort to curb undocumented migration by sea has been successful.

There have been 36,557 such migrant arrivals in the year to date, slightly up from the same period of 2024, but far below the 89,165 recorded over the same time span in 2023.

Buying asylum-seeker housing paused in city

Protests against houses of multiple occupation have taken place in other parts of the region, such as this one in Peterlee

Buying houses for asylum seekers to live in has been temporarily paused in a city.

Labour leader of Sunderland City Council Michael Mordey said there would be a pause on the purchase of homes for asylum seekers after a Home Office decision.

It follows a similar pause initiated in County Durham in June.

The Home Office said the allocation of asylum seekers to dispersed accommodation in Sunderland had been paused as the city had met its targets.

The European Court of Justice has struck down the legal basis of Italy’s Albania migration deal, casting legal uncertainty over Rome’s €653.5 million plan to process migrants outside EU territory.

At the heart of the case is the designation of so-called “safe countries of origin” – nations that, in Italy’s view, do not pose risks for returning asylum seekers.

According to a ruling published on Friday by the ECJ, such classifications must be enshrined in national legislation and be subject to judicial oversight. The Court added that a country cannot be deemed “safe” if it does not offer “sufficient protection” to all individuals within its borders.

The ruling follows preliminary questions raised by judges at the Rome Tribunal regarding the legality of detaining migrants who were rescued in the Mediterranean and then transferred to Albania. Many of those migrants were from Egypt and Bangladesh – countries the Italian government had unilaterally labeled as safe.

The ECJ also clarified that its ruling applies under the current legal framework and remains in force until the new EU Migration and Asylum Pact takes effect in June 2026.

The forthcoming regulation will allow member states to classify countries as safe with exceptions for clearly identifiable categories of people. However, the judges noted that EU lawmakers retain the power to bring that date forward.

In a sharply worded response, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office called the ruling “surprising” and accused European judges of overstepping. “Once again, the judiciary – now at the EU level – is claiming powers that do not belong to it, at the expense of political responsibility,” read a statement posted on Meloni’s social media.

Still, Meloni vowed to press ahead: “For the ten months remaining before the EU Migration Pact takes effect, the Italian government will explore every possible technical and legal solution to safeguard citizens’ security.”

However, Italy’s National Association of Magistrates (ANM) pushed back on Meloni’s claims of judicial interference, national media reported.

“No one was acting against the government,” said ANM president Cesare Parodi. “Italian judges offered an interpretation that has now been upheld by the European Court. That’s a matter of fact, not politics.”

(cs)