Tory Brexiters contradict Badenoch criticism of UK-India trade deal | Conservatives

A series of senior Conservatives have contradicted Kemi Badenoch after she criticised a landmark UK-India trade deal because it temporarily exempts seconded Indian workers from national insurance payments in the UK. Tories including Oliver Dowden, who was deputy prime minister under Rishi Sunak, said the deal should be hailed as a dividend of Brexit that … Read more

Closure of post-Brexit subsidies wrongly blocked 3,000 English farmers from funding | Farming

Ministers wrongly refused nature funding to 3,000 farmers in England when they shut the post-Brexit subsidy scheme, the government has admitted. There was anger earlier this year when the environment secretary, Steve Reed, suddenly paused a key post-Brexit farming payments scheme with little information about what would replace it and when. The sustainable farming incentive … Read more

Trump risks driving Europe into China’s embrace. Xi Jinping will be delighted | Orville Schell

How does Xi Jinping view the circus Donald Trump is ring-mastering in Washington? There is no denying that the new president has created an opportunity for Xi to drive a wedge into the flank of the battered transatlantic alliance. China’s special representative to the EU optimistically described Trump’s treatment of Europeans as so “appalling” that … Read more

A worshipper is murdered in a French mosque. How can this be ‘just another crime’? | Rokhaya Diallo

Friday is a holy day for practising Muslims – a time to observe the faith more deeply and, where possible, attend prayers at the mosque. That’s exactly what Aboubakar Cissé did early on Friday 25 April. In the southern French village of La Grand-Combe, Cissé, a 22-year-old carpenter originally from Mali, volunteered at his local … Read more