If they make it past toughened border controls, they will be packed off to overseas processing centres while their claims are heard.

ECONOMIST: IMMIGRATION

I'm contacting the BBC having exhausted all other avenues: I've written to the deputy British high commission in Karachi, to the British high commissioner in Islamabad, to the visa processing centre in Abu Dhabi, to customer services at the UK Border Agency and finally to Mr David Miliband himself at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

BBC: Visa delays put lives on hold in Pakistan

The horsemeat controversy has hit the Irish meat-processing industry, with a number of suppliers on both sides of the border affected.

BBC: UK

Every large border town has, loitering round the bus stations, recruiters for slaughterhouses or chicken-processing plants across the mid-west.

ECONOMIST: The keenest recruits to the dream

Three farms near the border have been placed under a restriction order, along with a farm and a meat processing plant which may have had deliveries from the affected Northern Ireland site.

CNN: Seven new UK foot-and-mouth cases

Across the border in China's province of Inner Mongolia, a great amount of state-owned cashmere-processing capacity stands empty.

ECONOMIST: But promise to be very different this time