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"Like it or not, China matters to the UK," is the message British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is taking on his visit to Beijing on Wednesday, accompanied by a 60-strong business and cultural delegation. Downing Street said the visit, which will also cover Shanghai, reflects the UK's "clear-eyed and realistic" approach to China in terms of opportunities and challenges they pose by continuing to pursue cooperation while "maintaining guardrails" when it comes to the country's national security. The Labour Party government is keen to highlight its re-engagement with China with this first visit in eight years, coming close on the heels of a ministerial go-ahead for its controversial new "mega embassy" in London. "For years, our approach to China has been dogged by inconsistency blowing hot and cold, from Golden Age to Ice Age. But like it or not, China matters for the UK," Starmer said in a pre-visit statement. "As one of the world's biggest economic players, a strategic and consistent
Britain's competition watchdog said Wednesday that Google should give news sites and content creators the choice to opt out of having their online content scraped to feed its AI overviews. It's part of a set of proposals from the Competition and Markets Authority aimed at loosening the US tech giant's stranglehold on the UK's online search market. The watchdog last year labelled Google a "strategic" player in online search advertising, using new digital powers to promote more competition by forcing changes to the company's business practices. The CMA's report noted that news publishers have suffered a drop in traffic since Google rolled out its AI Overviews - summaries that appear at the top of some search queries - because fewer users are clicking through to the original articles. The watchdog said Google should give publishers "meaningful choice" over how their content is used in AI-generated responses; be more transparent about the process; and properly cite content used in AI .
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is heading to China, seeking a thaw in relations with Beijing at a time of strained ties with the United States. He's hoping for an economic boost to Britain, but risks the wrath of China hawks at home and of US President Donald Trump, who's already heaping tariffs and criticism on America's closest allies. Starmer is due to meet China's President Xi Jinping during the visit that starts Wednesday, the first by a UK leader since 2018. He is expected to be accompanied by UK Business Secretary Peter Kyle and dozens of corporate chiefs as Britain seeks Chinese technology and investment, alongside greater access to the world's second-largest economy for UK financial services, cars and Scotch whisky. "China is no longer just the world's factory; it is also becoming a global market," said Zhao Minghao, a professor in the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University. From golden era to big chill ----------------------------- Kerry Brow
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has signalled that US President Donald Trump should apologise for his false assertion that troops from non-US NATO countries avoided the front line during the Afghanistan war, describing Trump's remarks as "insulting" and "appalling." Trump said that he wasn't sure NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested, provoking outrage and distress across the United Kingdom on Friday, regardless of individuals' political persuasion. "We've never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them," Trump said of non-US troops in an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. "You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." In October 2001, nearly a month after the September 11 attacks, the US led an international coalition in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida, which had used the country as its base, and the ...
The British government has tabled a new law to prioritise UK-trained medical graduates for specialty training posts in the National Health Service (NHS), a move set to impact Indians as the largest group of internationally trained medics employed in the state-funded system. Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting tabled the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill in the House of Commons on Tuesday to address what he described as the catastrophic mismanagement of the previous Conservative government. Under the Labour government proposals, UK graduates will no longer be expected to compete with doctors from overseas for NHS training posts that lead to medical specialisations and expertise for new medics. British taxpayers spend 4 billion pounds training medics every year, so it makes little sense for many of them to then be left struggling to get speciality training places and fearing for their futures," said Streeting. The catastrophic mismanagement of the system by the previous
Following weeks of speculation, Britain's unpopular Labour government will deliver its second budget later Wednesday since it returned to power in a landslide election victory in July 2024 after 14 years in opposition. Treasury chief Rachel Reeves, the first woman to hold the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, is set to tell lawmakers that more tax-raising measures are necessary to plug a hole in the public finances. Reeves said much the same at her first budget a little more than a year ago. That budget, she had insisted, would be the one and only big tax-raising budget in this parliamentary term, which is due to run to 2029. Unfortunately for Reeves, the British economy, the world's sixth-largest, is not doing as well as she hoped, with many critics blaming her decision last year to slap taxes on business. Though there were signs that the economy was on the mend in the first half of the year when it was the fastest-growing among the Group of Seven leading industrial nations, it'
Indian-origin steel magnate Lakshmi N Mittal, until now based in Britain and a regular on the country's richest billionaires tally, has decided to quit the UK as the Labour Party-led government's feared tax shake-up for the super-rich nears, according to a UK media report on Sunday. Rajasthan-born Mittal is a resident in Switzerland for tax and will now spend much of his future in Dubai, according to the The Sunday Times'. The founder of ArcelorMittal steelworks is worth an estimated 15.4 billion pounds as per the 2025 Sunday Times Rich List', which ranked him the UK's eighth richest man. Now, the newspaper references sources close to the 75-year-old industrialist to claim he has become the latest billionaire to leave the UK ahead of a much-anticipated Budget by Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Wednesday. Mittal already has a mansion in Dubai and has now bought up tracts of an intriguing development on the nearby Naa Island in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the newspaper claims. The n
Britain's government rallied to the defence of the BBC on Tuesday after allegations of bias from its critics and the threat of a lawsuit from US President Donald Trump over the way the broadcaster edited a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the national broadcaster faces challenges, some of its own making, but is by far the most widely used and trusted source of news in the United Kingdom. With critics in media and politics demanding an overhaul of the BBC's funding and governance, Nandy said "the BBC as an institution is absolutely essential to this country". At a time when the lines are being dangerously blurred between facts and opinions, news and polemic, the BBC stands apart, she said in the House of Commons. A lawyer for Trump is demanding a retraction, apology and compensation from the broadcaster over the allegedly defamatory sequence in a documentary broadcast last year. Fallout from the documentary has already cla
British police said Sunday that one of two men arrested in connection with a mass stabbing attack that spread fear and panic on a London-bound train a day earlier has been released without charge, and that one person, a heroic member of the railway staff, remains in a life-threatening condition. In a statement Sunday evening, police said the only remaining suspect is a 32-year-old British man who remains in custody on suspicion of attempted murder. A second man initially arrested as a suspect was released without charge after it was determined the 35-year-old was not involved. Police said they are not treating the stabbings as an act of terror and are confident they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack. They have not disclosed a possible motive or the type of knife used. Our investigation is moving at pace and we are confident we are not looking for anyone else in connection to the incident," said Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Cundy of the British Transport
US President Donald Trump arrives in the United Kingdom on Tuesday for a state visit during which the British government hopes a multibillion-dollar technology deal will show the transatlantic bond remains strong despite differences over Ukraine, the Middle East and the future of the Western alliance. State visits in Britain blend 21st-century diplomacy with royal pageantry. Trump's two-day trip comes complete with horse-drawn carriages, military honour guards and a glittering banquet inside a 1,000-year-old castle all tailored to a president with a fondness for gilded splendour. King Charles III will host Trump at Windsor Castle before the president holds talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, the British leader's rural retreat. Starmer's office said the visit will demonstrate that the UK-US relationship is the strongest in the world, built on 250 years of history after that awkward rupture in 1776 and bound by shared values of belief in the rule of law and open ..