Author: MoorningTimes

Yvette Cooper, thanks to Tuesday’s high court ruling, is facing potentially explosive decisions over where to house asylum seekers if courts rule that they must leave hotels.The Home Office, usually under Conservative ministers, has been struggling for five years to find an alternative to hotels so they can house a growing number of asylum seekers reaching these shores.Labour has said that it expects to empty the 200-odd hotels housing asylum seekers by 2029. Ministers may be forced to rip up that plan and move at a rapid pace because of the ruling’s implications.If councils take to the high court to…

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to present the Centre’s plan to simplify GST rates before a Group of Ministers (GoM) at a two-day meeting starting August 20 in Delhi. The GoM, led by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, will meet in person at Vigyan Bhawan on August 20–21, beginning at 12 noon. A six-member state panel will discuss the Union government’s proposal to shift to a two-slab GST system. A final decision is likely to be taken at the GST Council meeting on September 18–19. The move comes after Morgan Stanley, a global investment firm, said…

A man wanted for war crimes sitting across the table from the leader of the country he invaded? That is the spectacle that President Donald Trump is pushing to arrange in the next few weeks, convinced he can break the deadlock between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a summit that could help forge an end to the Kremlin’s war.The plan, however, is tangled from the start. Some European leaders maintain that no such meeting should take place before Russia agrees to a ceasefire. Many analysts doubt that Putin will actually agree to meet with Zelenskyy. And even…

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! After Monday’s White House meetings between President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, the question remains: is Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared to sit down face-to-face with the Ukrainian leader — and on what terms?Trump said he had personally called Putin to begin arranging a meeting. The Kremlin, by contrast, offered a more ambiguous response, acknowledging the idea had surfaced but refusing to confirm whether Moscow would accept.For Putin, any such encounter would carry more weight as theater than diplomacy. “Putin would not like to meet Zelensky because he does not…

The verdict on Donald Trump’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders on Monday depends entirely upon the metric used. The great fear was that this might prove a disaster along the lines of the US president’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in February – a scenario so plausible that Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and other key European leaders dropped everything to dash to the White House themselves in support.Following his red carpet welcome for Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Mr Trump reportedly backed the idea that Ukraine should hand over the Donbas to achieve a peace…

New Delhi: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has sold over 5 lakh FASTag-based annual toll permits in just four days, collecting Rs 150 crore in revenue. Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of purchases of annual passes in four days, followed by Karnataka and Haryana. Further, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh recorded the highest number of transactions through FASTag annual passes at toll plazas, a statement by NHAI said. Private vehicles can now use an annual toll pass for free passage through toll plazas on national highways and expressways, with each pass priced at Rs 3,000. Cars,…

BEIJING — They aren’t the most graceful athletes, or the fastest. But they’re learning. From Friday to Sunday, human handlers from 16 countries put about 500 bipedal robots through various motions to showcase the promise and limits of embodied artificial intelligence at what was billed as the first-ever World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.The robotic participants came in all shapes, sizes and structures and competed in 26 different sports events ranging from running to kickboxing to soccer. The unusual state-backed sports tournament at the National Speed Skating Oval, a Beijing Olympic venue, came as the United States and China race…

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Boston Mayor Michelle Wu held a raucous press conference in Beantown on Tuesday, daring Attorney General Pam Bondi to follow through on her letters to blue-city leaders threatening federal action over sanctuary city policies.Wu, a Democrat, accused the Trump administration of being a party that “doesn’t follow the law.””At a time when this federal administration is already causing so much fear and harm in our communities, these threats are serious and consequential,” she said. The remarks came after the Trump administration warned it could sue or cut federal funds if cities refused…

New Delhi: India imported auto components worth $7,174.73 million during the financial year 2024-25 (FY25), of which $1,912.82 million came from China, the Parliament was informed on Tuesday. This means China accounted for 26.66 per cent of India’s total auto component imports, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha. India’s total imports from China stood at $98.50 billion in 2022-23 and $101.74 billion in 2023-24 — representing 13.76 per cent and 15 per cent of overall imports, respectively.  Electronics, telecom instruments, computer hardware, industrial machinery, organic…

A Reform UK-led county council has served its residents a “plate of chaos” from the start of its leadership, according to its Conservative opposition, after its 22-year-old deputy leader was removed three months into the job.Joseph Boam, elected in May as a Reform councillor for Leicestershire county council, had also been stripped of his cabinet brief for adult social care and communities, said the leader of the Leicestershire Conservatives, Deborah Taylor.The Guardian understands that Boam was removed because of a clash with the council’s Reform leader, Dan Harrison, stemming from differences of opinion.Despite this, Boam said “nothing’s changed” and vowed…