the social media company twitter has begun sudden and sweeping job cuts to save money. it s thought its new owner elon musk, who s the world s richest man, might reduce the platform s workforce of 8 thousand by as much as half. many twitter staff are finding out via email that they no longer have a job. here s our technology editor zoe kleinman. elon musk did not speak to any of the thousands of employees laid off today. instead he was a surprise guest at this investor conference in new york. meanwhile, many twitter staff woke up locked out of their work laptops. they were later told by an e mail to the personal accounts that it was the last working day at the firm. some have been told they will be paid until february next year, getting some sort of certainty after months of uncertainty. in some cases, some relief, right? because this was a thing that played out over the course of the majority of this year. there were, understandably, lots of emotional tweets. another said. f
good evening and welcome to the bbc news at six. a bbc investigation has found that albanian drug gangs are offering to pay for migrants to cross the english channel, if they are prepared to work in the uk drugs industry when they arrive. gangs are using the migrant camps of northern france as a recruitment ground. there s been a sharp rise in the number of albanians crossing the channel in small boats this year. they now account for around a third of the almost 40,000 people who have landed on england s beaches this year. lucy williamson reports. for each boat, each migrant, there can be many smugglers albanian fixers, uk guarantors, kurdish criminal gangs. the journey starts in towns like laknas, now marked by absence. the shuttered houses and empty streets signs of an exodus this year. most were drawn by uk wages ten times higher than here. and each departure makes business in laknas even harder. as the price of crossing to the uk has dropped the suburbs around tirana ar