Indian author Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel Pyre is among 13 books from across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America to make it to the longlist of the International Booker Prize 2023, announced by the Booker Prize Foundation in London on Tuesday.

The UK government made its first major commitment to support UN Security Council reforms and India's permanent membership within it as part of a refreshed defence and foreign policy review tabled in Parliament on Monday.

The UK government announced on Monday that it has facilitated London-based banking major HSBC to buy the embattled UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank for 1 pound, securing the deposits of more than 3,000 customers worth around 6.7 billion pounds. Santa Clara, California-based Silicon Valley Bank - which specialised in lending to technology companies - was shut down by US regulators on Friday in what was the largest failure of a US bank since 2008. According to experts, although the UK arm of SVB was small with only around 3,000 business customers, its collapse would have presented a risk for the tech sector which is seen as crucial to Britain's economic growth.

The Opposition MP pointed to a set of changes taking place in India that had caught the Congress and UPA government off guard, such as a shift from rural to urban.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told British parliamentarians in London on Monday that functioning microphones in the Lok Sabha are often silenced against the Opposition.

'On the other side, we have an ideology of hatred and violence, a disrespectful ideology that attacks people because of their ideas. And you must have noticed one thing that this is in the nature of BJP and the RSS'

Stepping up his attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has alleged that the structures of Indian democracy are under 'brutal attack' and there is a full-scale assault on the institutions of the country.

The United Nations human rights office on Thursday said any submissions made by representatives of the so-called 'United States of Kailasa (USK)', founded by Indian fugitive Nithyananda, at its public meetings in Geneva last week were 'irrelevant' and will not be considered in the final outcome drafts.

Referencing to a decline in manufacturing in democratic countries such as India and the US in recent years as production shifted to China, Gandhi said the shift had produced mass inequality and anger which needed urgent attention and dialogue.

The BBC is not driven by an "agenda" but by purpose and will not be put off reporting impartially and without fear or favour, the UK-headquartered media organisation's chief has said days after the income tax department survey operation at its New Delhi and Mumbai offices.

The British government has claimed Begum could seek a Bangladeshi passport given her heritage but her family has argued that she is British and has never held Bangladeshi citizenship.

The British government has strongly defended the BBC and its editorial freedom in Parliament after the Income-Tax department's survey operations on the United Kingdom-headquartered media corporation's New Delhi and Mumbai offices over three days last week.

The Income Tax authorities have left the offices of the BBC in New Delhi and Mumbai after three days of lengthy questioning of some of its staff, the United Kingdom-headquartered public broadcaster said on Thursday.

The palace said the Queen Mary Crown was removed from display at the Tower of London to be repurposed for the ceremony on May 6 with jewels paying tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II.

While there has been no official statement related to the action, British government sources said they are 'closely monitoring reports of tax surveys conducted at the offices of the BBC in India'.

The Indian high commission in London on Friday appealed for students to contact the mission for help and counselling amid fears that over 50 of them may have become victims of modern slavery while working at care homes in North Wales.

'I'm lucky. What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude'

A number of Indian medical experts on Monday supported calls from an eminent British Indian cardiologist for a full safety review into the use of Oxford/AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, administered in India as Covishield, over feared serious side effects such as heart attack and stroke.

Lord Jo Johnson, younger brother of former British prime minister Boris Johnson, has resigned his non-executive directorship of a UK-based investment firm linked with the now-withdrawn Adani Enterprises Follow-on Public Offer (FPO). 'The Financial Times' newspaper referenced UK Companies House records to reveal that 51-year-old Lord Johnson had been appointed as a director of London-based Elara Capital Plc in June last year and resigned on Wednesday, the day when the Adani Group announced withdrawal of the FPO. Elara, which described itself as a capital markets business raising funds for Indian corporates, was among the bookrunners on the FPO.

The local police force where Rishi Sunak filmed a social media video in a moving car without a seatbelt on Friday fined the British Prime Minister for the legal breach.