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Holding — and winning an election — would enable Ms. May to address one of her biggest weaknesses, often pointed to by critics at a time when Britain is expected to be ‘taking control” by exiting the European Union (EU). Unlike her predecessor David Cameron, Ms. May was not elected as Prime Minister, but came to the position after rivals pulled out. It will also enable her to set her own policy agenda rather than be bound by that on which Mr. Cameron built his electoral platform in 2015, the year before the Brexit referendum.However, the election also comes as a political gamble. While recent opinion polls have put Ms. May comfortably ahead of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, polls at the time of the previous elections (and the EU referendum) had proved to be fairly unreliable indicators.
Ms. May differs from Mr. Cameron on a number of counts. On education, she is championing an introduction of selective secondary school education. When it comes to immigration, she is far tougher, and has insisted on keeping international student numbers within the migration figures.
Wanted tycoon Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday morning, based on an extradition warrant. He was later granted bail and released on a bond of £6,50,000 and is scheduled to appear in court on May 17.

“Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Extradition Unit have this morning, Tuesday, 19 April, arrested a man on an extradition warrant,” Scotland Yard said in a statement, adding that the liquor baron had been arrested on behalf of Indian authorities in relation to accusations of fraud.

“He was arrested after attending a central London police station and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.” Earlier this year, India began formal proceedings to extradite Mr. Mallya, wanted in connection with a number of charges, including defaulting on loans amounting to ₹9,000 crore.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered four federal departments to tighten the implementation of existing regulations and suggest new legislative and administrative measures to curb what the White House termed “abuses in our guest worker programmes”.

These forthcoming administrative and legislative measures will specially target the H-1B visa programme under which Indian technology companies bring thousands of computer professionals to the U.S. every year. “…top recipients of the H1B visa are companies like Tata, Infosys, Cognizant — they will apply for a very large number of visas, more than they get, by putting extra tickets in the lottery raffle, if you will, and then they’ll get the lion’s share of visas,” a senior administration official said ahead of the executive orders that the President was to sign. The official said the lottery system that selects workers under the H-1B programme could be an evident target of reforms.

In recent years, the demand for H-1B visa has far exceeded the total number of 85,000 available. Of these, 20,000 are for applicants with a master’s degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Monday that it has selected the beneficiaries for this year through the lottery system, from 1,99,000 applications. Given the uncertainties surrounding the programme, there has been a drop in applications this year, from last year’s 2,36,000.