Briefly

INDIA

New Delhi, London aim to finalize FTA this year

The United Kingdom and India formally launched free trade agreement talks in New Delhi on Thursday with the aim of wrapping up a deal by the end of the year that could boost annual bilateral trade by billions of dollars. Britain has made a deal with India one of its post-Brexit priorities as, free from the European Union's common trade policy, ministers look to gear trade policy toward faster-growing economies around the Indo-Pacific region. Meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal and his British counterpart Anne-Marie Trevelyan said they would also launch an "early harvest" or a limited-scope interim trade agreement in the next few months, before finalizing the free trade agreement.

UNITED STATES

Top Republican lashes out at Biden's reform

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lashed out at President Joe Biden on Wednesday, accusing him of widening the US political divide with his push for voting rights reform and call to change the Senate rules. Biden, in a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, called for a break in the Senate's supermajority rule so Democrats can override Republican opposition to voting rights reforms that he called crucial to saving US democracy. "The president's rant yesterday was incorrect, incoherent and beneath his office," the conservative senator said, calling it "pure demagoguery". Biden was scheduled to meet with Senate Democrats on Thursday to discuss voting rights and changing the rules of the Senate to sidestep Republican opposition.

Prince Andrew must face sex assault case

Britain's Prince Andrew failed to persuade a US judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit accusing the Duke of York of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager. In a decision made public on Wednesday, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Giuffre, 38, could pursue claims that Andrew battered her and intentionally caused her emotional distress while the late financier Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking her. The Manhattan judge said it was premature to assess Andrew's efforts to "cast doubt" on those claims, though the 61-year-old prince could do so at a trial.

Agencies - Xinhua