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UK and India strike trade deal after three years of talks

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UK and India strike trade deal after three years of talks

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Britain and India on Tuesday announced a “landmark” trade deal that included concessions to New Delhi on access to UK employment markets in return for big cuts to Indian tariffs on exports of whisky and cars.

The deal will exempt the UK operations of Indian employers from paying national insurance on Indian staff relocating to the UK for up to three years, making it cheaper to move people to Britain than previously.

The UK’s Labour government hailed the deal as a “bright shining light” at a time when US President Donald Trump’s tariffs have roiled the world economy.

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But it faced domestic criticism over the national insurance move, just days after the anti-immigration Reform UK party swept local elections in England.

Reform leader Nigel Farage claimed that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had “betrayed working Britain”.

India pushed hard during the three-year long negotiations for the “Double Contribution Convention”, which will give Indian employers in the UK relief from Britain’s 15 per cent national insurance levy paid by companies. The deal to avoid double taxation also covers national insurance contributions paid by employees.

New Delhi has agreed to cut whisky and gin tariffs, which will be halved from 150 per cent to 75 per cent before falling to 40 per cent by the tenth year of the deal. Car tariffs will fall from more than 100 per cent to 10 per cent, subject to a quota.

Talks on the deal accelerated in the wake of Trump’s imposition of global tariffs last month, with London and New Delhi keen to seal closer trade ties.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X that the deal was “ambitious and mutually beneficial”, adding that Starmer would visit India soon.

British ministers hope the India trade deal could be a prelude to the signing of an agreement with Trump in the coming days, ahead of a deal with the EU to start improving bilateral trade links at a summit on May 19.

The UK government estimates the India deal will boost Britain’s economy by 0.1 per cent by 2040. Officials insisted it would not involve changes to the British visa system or broader immigration strategy, at a time when Reform and the Conservatives are campaigning hard on the issue.

British officials said Indian employees relocating to the UK would still be subject to salary thresholds for visas and have to pay the NHS surcharge for immigrant workers, despite the national insurance exemption.

The agreement comes after UK chancellor Rachel Reeves controversially raised national insurance contributions for employers at her first Budget last October.

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Dame Harriett Baldwin, the Conservative party’s shadow minister for business and trade, said in parliament that the deal “looks like it’s subsidising Indian labour while undercutting British workers”.

The centrist Liberal Democrats also questioned the national insurance agreement, saying the move needed careful scrutiny by MPs.

Trade minister Douglas Alexander told MPs the national insurance part of the trade deal was “reciprocal” and would “benefit UK workers and their employers as the opportunity within India expands”.

The UK government said the national insurance agreement was similar to arrangements it had with countries such as Switzerland, Norway and Canada. Indian employers are among the biggest users of intra-company transfer visas into the UK.

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The UK government said cuts in tariffs on Indian products would help provide British shoppers with “cheaper prices and more choice” in areas including clothes, footwear and food products such as prawns.

India will keep tariffs in place for dairy products, while the UK is keeping restrictions in place on some agriculture products such as milled rice.

Although full details are not yet available, the trade pact is expected to be one of the most significant new agreements signed by Britain since it left the EU, following accords with Australia and Japan.

Based on 2022 trade, the deal would involve India cutting tariffs worth more than £400mn a year when the agreement came into force, rising to about £900mn after 10 years, said the UK government.

It added that it expected the deal to increase bilateral trade by £25.5bn and UK GDP by £4.8bn in the long run. Bilateral trade between the UK and India was £42.6bn in 2024 while UK GDP was £2,851bn.

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The announcement said the deal would bring “market certainty” to UK services exports currently worth £500bn a year. However, the Law Society of England and Wales said the deal had failed to include legal services and was a “missed opportunity”.

Sam Lowe, trade lead at consultancy Flint Global, said that being among the first countries to strike a trade deal with India was a win for the UK, but the ultimate benefits would only become clear over time. 

Additional reporting by Amy Borrett

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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