Yunus interfering in UK politics: Hasina's niece Tulip alleges smear campaign
Siddiq's claims come weeks after Yunus, while on his UK trip, declined to meet her, which she said was to "clear the misunderstandings". Months ago in January, Siddiq stepped down from her role as Treasury minister following corruption allegations involving her family members, including Hasina.The Labour MP said that statements made by Yunus in a TV interview had affected her chances of getting a fair investigation, meaning the ongoing corruption enquiries into her should be dropped, Sky News reported.Yunus in March said that Siddiq "has so much wealth left behind in Bangladesh" and "should be made responsible".SIDDIQ TERMS ALL THE ALLEGATION AGAINST HER AS 'BASELESS, UNLAWFUL'In a letter sent on Monday, June 23, to Muhammad Yunus and Bangladesh's ACC, Siddiq's legal team stated that it is time for the chief adviser and the probe agency to end the investigation, calling it a baseless and unlawful effort to damage her reputation and disrupt her public role.advertisementSiddiq termed all the allegations against her as a "political vendetta.""I will not be allowing them to drag me into their world of dirty politics and nothing is going to stop me from pursuing the job that I was elected to do with an overwhelming majority, which is representing the people of Hampstead and Highgate," she told Sky News on Monday."So they need to stop this political vendetta, this smear campaign, and this malicious persecution right from the beginning," she added.Earlier this month, Siddiq sought a meeting with the Bangladeshi leader during his official UK visit to clarify what she described as a "misunderstanding" related to corruption allegations. However, the chief adviser declined, stating he did not want to "disrupt an ongoing legal process".The Bangladeshi probe agency accused Siddiq of illegally receiving land during the rule of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina. Officials of the interim regime in Dhaka estimate that roughly $234 billion (approximately 27.38 lakh crore Taka) was illegally taken out of the country through corruption during Hasina's time in office. They claim that a significant portion of these funds has been hidden or used in the UK.PROCEEDINGS AGAINST SIDDIQ MAY PROCEED IN ABSENTIA: DHAKAYunus's Press Secretary, Shafiqul Alam, denied Siddiq's charges of interference in British politics. He added that all cases pending against her would be resolved in the Bangladesh courts.advertisementIn response to Siddiq's letter, Shafiqul Alam stated that the chief adviser and Bangladesh's ACC have no justification or authority to involve themselves in UK political matters."The Anti-Corruption Commission relies not on hearsay but on documentary evidence and witness testimony," Sky News quoted Alam as saying. "We hope both the British legal system and the British press appreciate that any pending criminal charge will be resolved in the courts under the provisions of the laws of the land.""Since the courts have summoned Miss Siddiq and warrants have also been issued, it is her responsibility to defend her position in court," Alam added."If she needs any legal support and is unable to obtain it herself, Bangladesh will provide it. If Miss Siddiq wilfully ignores the court summons, proceedings against her may proceed in absentia," Alam concluded.- Ends
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Time of India
40 minutes ago
- Time of India
The US can survive tariffs. That doesn't mean they're worth it
On hearing of the Continental Army's pivotal victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, John Sinclair told Adam Smith, 'The British nation must be ruined.' As Sinclair recalled, the author of The Wealth of Nations (published the year before) urged him to calm down. 'Be assured, my young friend, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.' Dedicated though he was to the benefits of free trade, Smith would doubtless say the same about today's turn toward mercantilism. It's a blow, but not the end of the world. That's worth noting: Catastrophism, a popular mode of discourse these days, is usually unhelpful. But champions of President Donald Trump's approach to trade are apt to make the opposite mistake — namely, thinking that if the roof hasn't fallen in, the policy must be succeeding. If it results in slower growth and persistent underperformance, that might not be 'ruin,' but it sure isn't victory. Once Trump's new system of tariffs has settled down — if it ever does — what might it cost? What might 'less than ruin' amount to? by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like New Container Houses Indonesia (Prices May Surprise You) Container House | Search ads Search Now Undo According to most estimates, the direct economic losses are certainly tolerable, especially for a huge and relatively closed economy like the US. One recent study explores the upper limit on what's at stake by calculating the benefits of liberal trade compared with no trade at all. For the US, the costs of closing the economy altogether would fall in the range of 2% to 8% of gross domestic product. The costs of less trade, as opposed to no trade, would naturally be smaller still. Earlier this month the Federal Reserve published a research note on the effects of specific tariffs. Its economists modeled an increase of 60 percentage points in the US tariff on imports from China, with and without a 'baseline' tariff of 10% on other trading partners, assuming for one set of scenarios that the trade deficit is unchanged and for another that it shrinks. According to their model, the 60% extra tariff on China, the 10% baseline tariff on everybody else plus a 25% reduction in the trade deficit would cut US GDP by a little under 3%. (China's losses would be about the same; thanks to shifts in the pattern of trade, the rest of the world would come out about even.) Live Events These and other such studies reveal the complexity of the changes caused by trade barriers. For example, surely tariffs would reduce imports and hence shrink the trade deficit. Why assume, as some of the Fed's scenarios do, that the deficit doesn't change? Actually, it's far from obvious that the trade deficit will narrow. You'd expect a smaller trade deficit to make the dollar appreciate — in due course increasing imports, cutting exports and undoing the initial effect. In any case, the overall external balance is determined by the gap between its saving and investment, which tariffs affect only indirectly. Or consider the surprisingly small estimated cost of closing the economy completely. One of the assumptions behind the estimated losses of 2% to 8% of GDP is that the ease of replacing domestic goods with imports — the so-called elasticity of substitution — can be estimated from current trade data. But as the economy approaches autarky, this elasticity might fall abruptly as certain critical foreign products prove difficult or impossible to replace. The costs of abolishing imports might then be much bigger than projected. (Granted, a rational mercantilist would be careful not to press too far: An entirely closed economy isn't the goal.) The list of other complications is endless. What's the effect of trade on competition and innovation? It depends. Up to a point, competition through trade is likely to spur innovation, but if foreign competition is severe enough to shut a domestic industry down, said industry won't be more innovative. The dynamic effects of trade — that is, the effects of trade on growth — are even harder to estimate than the static effects captured in the studies mentioned above. Amid all the uncertainty, two points seem worth emphasizing. First, despite the complexities, economists generally agree that trade does deliver net gains — that, on this, Adam Smith was right. If suppressing trade is costly, then exactly how costly is not the most important question. You don't do it. To be sure, the US has a huge domestic market and is richly endowed with natural resources. These advantages mean that trade is likely to deliver smaller gains than it does for other economies. But, to repeat, small gains are better than none. Second, the costs of the new mercantilism aren't confined to the implications for GDP of moving from a settled regime of liberal trade to a settled regime of managed trade. That shift involves massive economic and geopolitical dislocations, which are likely to be costly in themselves. Economic restructuring expends resources; it creates jobs and destroys them. The 'China Shock' was disruptive — but vainly trying to reverse it will be disruptive all over again. In the first case, there were aggregate benefits; in the second, there'll be aggregate losses. Geopolitical dislocation could involve the biggest costs of all. The new mercantilism puts US-led alliances and multilateral institutions under enormous strain. The view that the US has been exploited by these arrangements isn't unwarranted — there's been some free-riding, no doubt — but on balance US global leadership has been an exercise in enlightened self-interest. Dismantling the global trading order, and casting this as overdue retaliation against selfish so-called friends, is to cast away American power. It would be bad policy if undertaken in return for small economic gains. In return for substantial, even if less-than-ruinous, economic losses, it's insane.
News18
41 minutes ago
- News18
British Families Of Air India Crash Victims Allege They Received Wrong Bodies: Report
Last Updated: Some families of British victims of the Air India crash reportedly received wrongly identified remains. However, no similar repatriation errors were reported by families in India. Families of British Air India crash victims were sent wrong bodies, while some received commingled remnants of more than one person killed in the June 12 incident, the Daily Mail has claimed, even though no such blunder was reported in India. According to the report, some families have claimed the bodies of their loved ones were wrongly identified before being flown to their country. In some cases, families also received commingled remnants of more than one person, which had to be separated before the internment could go ahead. Two instances of mistaken identity have so far come to light, according to the report. It claimed the revelation was made after Inner West London coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox sought to verify the identities of the repatriated Britons by matching their DNA with samples provided by the families. Quoting aviation lawyer James Healy-Pratt, who represents many of the British families, the report stated that at least 12 of the British victims of the Air India crash were repatriated. Pratt told the publication that his team was waiting for a formal response from Air India and its emergency response contractors, Kenyons International Emergency Services, on the same. Air India flight AI 171, operated with Boeing 787-8, en route to London Gatwick, crashed soon after takeoff from Ahmedabad on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 passengers onboard and another 19 on the ground. All victims were identified, and their bodies were handed over to the families for the last rites. On Tuesday, Air India said it has completed the 'precautionary" inspection of the locking mechanism of the fuel control switch (FCS) on its Boeing 787 and 737 aircraft fleet, and no issues were found. Aviation safety regulator DGCA last week directed airlines to inspect the fuel switch locking system in their Boeing 787 and 737 planes by July 21 after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said in its preliminary report that fuel switches were cut off before the Air India plane crash last month. In its preliminary report on the Boeing 787-8 crash, AAIB said the fuel supply to both engines of the plane was cut off within a gap of one second, causing confusion in the cockpit soon after takeoff. Boeing 787s are part of Air India's fleet, while B737s are operated by its low-cost subsidiary Air India Express. Besides these, other domestic carriers, IndiGo, Spicejet and Akasa, also have these types of aircraft in their operations. With this, the two airlines, Air India and Air India Express, have complied with the directives of the DGCA issued on July 14, Air India said in the statement. In 2018, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flagged the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature on certain models of Boeing aircraft, including 787s and 737s. It was mentioned in a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB), but there was no airworthiness directive, indicating that the issue was not a safety concern. Air India has a total of 33 wide-body Boeing 787s, while Air India Express has around 75 narrow-body 737s. view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
India-UK trade deal has a message for Trump
As global economies navigate an increasingly protectionist and politically volatile era, the importance of sound, mutually beneficial trade agreements cannot be overstated. The recently concluded India-UK Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which is set to be signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's visit to the UK on Thursday, serves as a timely reminder that effective trade negotiations are less about deadlines and more about balancing long-term strategic interests. For the Trump administration, currently engaged in protracted trade talks with India, this deal offers critical lessons in both diplomacy and economic statecraft. The India-UK FTA was not born out of a rushed timeline or coercive economic pressure, but out of patient diplomacy and mutual respect for each other's red lines. The negotiations stretched over three years, having begun in 2022 and concluded in May 2025. The road was not smooth. Former British PM Boris Johnson ambitiously declared that the agreement would be completed by Diwali 2022. That deadline came and went. Fourteen rounds of negotiations followed, each grappling with complex issues: the UK's demand for tariff cuts on liquor, and India's push for liberal visa regimes and social security protection for its skilled professionals. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Public Policy Degree MCA healthcare Project Management Operations Management Artificial Intelligence Management Data Science Others Technology Healthcare Cybersecurity Finance Design Thinking MBA others Data Science Leadership PGDM Data Analytics Digital Marketing CXO Product Management Skills you'll gain: Economics for Public Policy Making Quantitative Techniques Public & Project Finance Law, Health & Urban Development Policy Duration: 12 Months IIM Kozhikode Professional Certificate Programme in Public Policy Management Starts on Mar 3, 2024 Get Details Skills you'll gain: Duration: 12 Months IIM Calcutta Executive Programme in Public Policy and Management Starts on undefined Get Details Also Read: India, UK to sign free trade deal during PM Modi's visit by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Struggling With Belly Fat? Try This at Home Home Fitness Hack Shop Now Undo Yet, rather than forcing a suboptimal compromise, both sides chose to take the time needed to hammer out a balanced and enduring agreement. It was only after leadership changes -- Modi's re-election in India and Keir Starmer's victory in the UK -- that talks found fresh political will and resumed momentum in January 2025. Just four months later, a deal was reached. That timeline is instructive. The trouble with Trump's tariff-driven strategy In contrast, the Trump administration's approach to trade negotiations has leaned heavily on tariff threats and artificial deadlines. Talks between India and the US have gone through five rounds already, with a sixth round on the horizon in New Delhi. The first self-imposed deadline of July 9 has already lapsed. The second, August 1, is also likely to pass without a deal. Live Events While Trump refrained from sending a tariff notification letter to India (as he did to 20 other countries), the looming possibility of higher tariffs hangs in the air. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent comments that 'quality matters more than timing' seem like a rare voice of caution within a strategy otherwise driven by urgency and coercion. But his admission that returning to tariff threats might be used as leverage further underscores how the US views trade not as a dialogue, but as a deal to be bagged swiftly. Trade negotiations, especially between large and diverse economies like India, the UK and the US, involve complicated policy, legal, and political considerations. India is a democratic country with deeply rooted economic priorities and political sensitivities. The issues on the table -- ranging from tariff structures to labour mobility and social security entitlements -- affect millions of stakeholders. Such complexity cannot be resolved by setting short-term deadlines or threatening economic penalties. The India-UK deal demonstrates a more collaborative and strategic approach. Neither country was willing to compromise on its core demands, but both showed genuine political will to arrive at common ground. The result is likely to be a more durable and respected agreement, rather than one constantly under threat of renegotiation or collapse. Also Read: Trump deals bring some clarity for world's manufacturing base What Trump should learn The Trump administration must recognize that credible, long-term trade partnerships are not built on fear, but on trust and respect. By turning up the heat with tariff threats, the US risks alienating partners like India, who value sovereignty and policy independence. Instead, the US could take a cue from the UK's patience and diplomatic persistence. Moreover, India's posture in these talks signals it is willing to wait rather than cave under pressure. That should give US negotiators pause. A rushed deal, achieved by threats or arbitrary deadlines, may lead to short-term political optics but will lack the strategic depth and sustainability that a deal like the India-UK FTA is likely to enjoy. In the arena of international trade, patience is not a weakness; it's a strategy. The India-UK FTA showcases that deals which reflect both parties' interests, developed over time through robust negotiation, are far more likely to be successful. The Trump administration would do well to learn from this model. Forcing the pace with tariff threats may backfire, especially when dealing with democracies like India that are willing to wait for the right deal rather than surrender under pressure. If Washington genuinely seeks a 'win-win' agreement, it must be willing to play the long game just as the UK did.
