England

LONDON, June 24 (Reuters) - Britain wants to allow people to have holidays abroad again but the government is wary of the risks, a minister said on Thursday ahead of an announcement on whether a narrow list of quarantine-free travel destinations would be expanded.

Anger is growing at Britain's onerous restrictions on foreign travel: pilots, cabin crew, travel agents and other workers from the travel industry held protests on Wednesday, begging the government to open up more routes. 

LONDON (AP) — The British government is being urged by its own climate advisers to deliver on its promises to deal with climate change or risk undermining a key environmental summit that it is hosting at the end of the year.

Among some 200 recommendations in a report published Thursday, the advisory Climate Change Committee said policies are urgently need to make homes more energy-efficient, accelerate the shift to electric cars and encourage people to eat less meat.

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SEA (AP) — Britain’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is helping to take on the “lion’s share” of operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq, U.K. naval commanders said. It has also piqued the interest of Russian warplanes, who try to keep tabs on its cutting-edge F-35 jet in a “cat-and-mouse” game with British and U.S. pilots.

LONDON, June 20 (NNN-Xinhua) — Civic leaders in Liverpool Saturday pleaded with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s World Heritage Committee to keep the city’s World Heritage status.

A letter, signed by City Mayor Joanne Anderson, Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and the CEOs of English Premier League clubs Everton FC and Liverpool FC, has been sent to the committee ahead of a critical decision over the city’s World Heritage status to be made in July.

LONDON, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Britain reported more than 10,000 coronavirus cases for a third consecutive day on Saturday as there has been a 79 percent rise in the highly contagious Delta variant in the country in the past week.

Britain has reported another 10,321 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,620,968, according to official figures released Saturday.

LONDON (AP) — Former U.K. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, a longtime Conservative lawmaker who gained international fame refereeing the country’s bruising political drama over Brexit, said Sunday he has switched allegiances and joined the opposition Labour Party.

Bercow was a Conservative member of Parliament for 12 years until being elected in 2009 to the neutral role of Speaker, responsible for running House of Commons business and interpreting its rules of procedure.

LONDON, June 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Coronavirus-related deaths worldwide passed a grim milestone of 4 million on Thursday as many countries struggle to procure enough vaccines to inoculate their populations.

While the number of new cases and deaths have abated in countries like the United States and Britain, several nations have vaccine shortages as the Delta variant becomes the dominant strain around the world.

It took more than a year for the COVID-19 death toll to hit 2 million, while the next 2 million were recorded in just 166 days.

LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered an embarrassing defeat in a election on the outskirts of London on Friday, when his governing Conservative Party lost a previously safe parliamentary seat to the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives had comfortably held the leafy, affluent Chesham and Amersham constituency in southern England since its creation in 1974, capturing more than 50% of the vote on every occasion. At the last poll in 2019, Conservative Cheryl Gillan, who died this year, won by a majority of 16,223 votes.

LONDON (AP) — Scotch single malt whisky makers breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after the United States agreed to suspend tariffs on one of Scotland’s main exports in the wake of the resolution of a long-standing transatlantic trade row over subsidies to aircraft companies Boeing and Airbus.

President Donald Trump imposed the 25% tariffs on select products of the European Union, including Scotch single malt whiskies, in October 2019 as part of the trade dispute. While the U.K. is no longer an EU member, it belonged to the bloc when the tariffs were introduced.

June 16 (Reuters) - Britain is considering easing travel restrictions for double vaccinated people, a move which would placate airlines who are threatening legal action against the government’s strict curbs on trips abroad.

Pressure is building in the aviation industry, with airlines desperate for restrictions to be relaxed in time for July and the peak season when they make most of their profits, but Britain sticking to quarantine requirements which deter travel.