Lead News

An estimated four million people in the UK are preparing to spend the Christmas and new year period overseas, according to a travel trade organisation. Abta said Sunday will be the busiest day for departures between Friday and January 2, with Christmas Day the quietest. It identified the most popular destinations for winter sun holidays as the Canary Islands, southern ...

The government has appointed 30 new Labour peers including a string of ex-MPs and Sir Keir Starmer loyalists. The prime minister’s former chief of staff Sue Gray has also been handed a seat in the House of Lords, confirming reports earlier in the week. It comes only two months after she left her role as the prime minister’s chief of ...

  A Labour minister has been named in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn (Tk 590 billion) from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh. Tulip Siddiq, 42, who as the Treasury’s Economic Secretary is responsible for tackling corruption in UK financial markets, is alleged to have brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of ...

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has defended the decision to reject compensation for women hit by changes to the state pension age, arguing that the taxpayer “simply can’t afford the tens of billions of pounds” in payments. He added that “90% of those impacted knew about the changes that were taking place”. However, during Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir was repeatedly ...

The Chinese embassy has told the UK to “stop creating trouble”, after a businessman accused of being a spy for China was banned from the country. The revelations about Yang Tengbo, who denies wrongdoing, and his links to Prince Andrew, have sparked renewed calls for the UK to designate China a threat to national security. The issue poses a dilemma ...

District councils could be abolished and more elected mayors introduced across England under new plans for a major redesign of local government. Ministers are set to publish a paper on Monday outlining plans for mergers in areas where there are currently two tiers of local authority – smaller district and larger county councils – in a bid to streamline services. ...

The British government said it will release 50 million pounds ($63 million) of humanitarian aid for “the most vulnerable” Syrians in Syria and in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan, the foreign ministry said Sunday. “We’re committed to supporting the Syrian people as they chart a new course,” Foreign Minister David Lammy said in a statement, reports AFP. The funds, which for ...

Britain on Sunday became the first European nation to join a major Indo-Pacific trading bloc, in what has been hailed as the country’s biggest trade deal since Brexit. The UK is officially now the 12th member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The UK formally signed the accession treaty last year, reports AFP. Officials hope membership ...

Court delays experienced by victims and defendants are unacceptable, the man leading the government’s review into the backlog of criminal cases has said. Sir Brian Leveson, a retired High Court judge, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “radical” steps would need to be taken to tackle the “crisis” which has seen cases added to the criminal justice system “faster than ...

Legal hopes are rising for Shamima Begum, the London-born woman who joined the Daesh (Islamic State group) as a teenager, following potential changes in the Syrian political landscape. Begum’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, said that the ongoing destabilisation of Syria could provide a fresh avenue for her return to Britain, the Telegraph reported. According to him, the 25-year-old, who has been ...