- JOHN Grogan is to reprise his battle to wrest Keighley from Tory control.

He has been selected by Labour to contest the Parliamentary seat at the General Election, on June 8.

In 2015, he failed in his bid to unseat sitting Conservative MP Kris Hopkins, who was returned with a 3,053 majority.

But Mr Grogan said this week he was confident the polls nationally would tighten in the coming weeks and that he was looking forward to a "robust but civilised" campaign.

"I'm delighted to be standing again in Keighley," he said.

"I was asked to put forward my name in a couple of safe Labour seats, but I wanted to stand my ground and fly the party flag in Keighley and Ilkley once again.

"The constituency is 23rd on the national list of target seats for Labour and if we are to get rid of the Conservative majority in Parliament, it is crucial that it is a Labour gain on June 8."

Mr Grogan said he first campaigned for Labour in Keighley in 1979, when the late Bob Cryer stood and took the seat by just 78 votes.

And he began his latest campaign today with the constituency's last Labour MP, Ann Cryer, exactly 20 years after her election victory and the party's national success.

Mr Grogan, 56, who lives at Burley-in-Wharfedale, was MP for Selby from that same year until 2010.

"When we were in Parliament together Ann and I voted the same way on 95 per cent of votes," he said.

"As we remember that great victory in 1997 we of course are also looking forward to the coming campaign.

"I anticipate some robust discussions on policy in the next five weeks, but I'm sure the local campaign will be civilised and courteous as it was last time.

"I expect the national polls to tighten as the campaign goes on and electors begin to look beyond the Conservatives' mantra of 'strong and stable'.

"There is not much stability in Keighley's schools at the moment, for example, as they face very significant cuts in funding.

"In the coming weeks I will set out Labour's policies for Keighley and Ilkley regarding education, health, transport, Brexit and housing."

On the issue of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Grogan said neither he nor Mrs Cryer had voted for him in the leadership contest.

But he added: "I think he has made a strong start to the campaign.

"Both of us know his many qualities from our time working together on the backbenches on issues such as Iraq."

Ross stressed on Tuesday that the US will seek bilateral deals to reduce its trade deficit.

The US pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in January. The remaining 11 member countries, including Japan, are pursuing the possibility of getting the deal implemented without the US.

The Pacific-Rim countries will hold a ministerial meeting in Vietnam in late May to discuss the trade deal.

An NHK correspondent says the US administration is eager to not only protect domestic manufacturers, but also to boost exports of US farm goods.

He also said that the administration may start pressuring trade partners to enter bilateral negotiations.

The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi's plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China's biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join.

China says between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years.

Judging by recent precedent in China's political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term.

Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi's second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries' hopes for development and not in the idea of "who proposed it or what term in office there is later".

"The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone," Qian said.

China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity.

Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies.

Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes.

Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry's cooperation department, played down such concerns.

"Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will ... actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform," Zhang said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Rosneft executives will receive a 1.5 billion ruble ($25.8 million) bonus, one hundred times more than the same period in 2016, Russia's Vedomosti newspaper reported Wednesday. The sum also equals more than half of the total executive bonuses received in 2016.

The decision comes despite a small slump in the company's revenue, which fell from 1,485 billion rubles ($25.6 billion) in the final quarter of 2016 to 1,410 billion rubles ($24.3 billion) in the first quarter of this year.

Rosneft said that the premiums were linked to the company's successful privatization and acquisition of Russian oil company Bashneft.

“The deal was conducted in an unprecedentedly difficult situation in the shortest possible time," a Rosneft representative told Vedomosti.

The company is yet to announce how the bonus will be divided among top executives.

Rosneft was privatized in December 2016, when the Russian government sold its 19.5 percent stake in the company to a consortium consisting of the British-Swiss commodities trading firm Glencore and the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund. The sale generated 10.5 billion euros ($11.3 billion) for the Russian budget, the Kremlin announced.