England

LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin took a bitter public feud with the top army brass to a new level on Wednesday, publishing a grisly image of dozens of his fighters he said had been killed after being deprived of ammunition.

Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner private military company which is fighting on Moscow's behalf in Ukraine, has this week repeatedly accused the Russian defence ministry of deliberately starving his fighters of munitions in what he has called a treasonous attempt to destroy Wagner.

LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - A British-born woman, who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, lost her latest appeal against the removal of her British citizenship, but her lawyers vowed to keep fighting and said the case was "nowhere near over".

The British government took away Shamima Begum's citizenship on national security grounds in 2019, shortly after she was found in a detention camp in Syria.

LONDON, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The British government summoned Iran’s top diplomat in London to condemn “serious threats” to the lives of UK-based journalists after a Persian-language TV network was forced to relocate.

Charge d’Affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin was hauled in “to make clear the UK will not tolerate threats to life and media freedom”, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement.

LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Dozens of British employers trialling a four-day working week have mostly decided to stick with it after a pilot hailed as a breakthrough by campaigners for better work-life balance.

Employees at 61 companies across Britain worked an average of 34 hours across four days between June and December 2022, while earning their existing salary. Of those, 56 companies, or 92%, opted to continue like that, 18 of them permanently.

LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - His army has made three humiliating retreats in Ukraine in the past year and nearly 200,000 of his men have been killed or wounded according to U.S. officials, but Russia's defence minister is still in a job thanks to President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader has various reasons for keeping Sergei Shoigu, 67, in post, according to Western officials, veteran Kremlin watchers and former Western military commanders: he's ultra loyal, helped Putin become president, and decision-making on Ukraine is not his preserve alone.

LONDON (AP) — The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has dropped even as a U.N.-brokered deal works to keep food flowing to developing nations, with inspections of ships falling to half what they were four months ago and a backlog of vessels growing as Russia’s invasion nears the one-year mark.

LONDON, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed a mega deal by Air India to buy 250 jets from Airbus (AIR.PA), saying it would create jobs and boost exports from Britain, where the French planemaker designs and makes aircraft wings.

The deal should create 450 manufacturing jobs and bring more than 100 million pounds ($122 million) of investment to Wales, where Airbus manufactures wings, the British department for business and trade said.

LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - (Note: Language that readers may find offensive in paragraph 13)

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group has said in a rare interview that it could take two years for Moscow to control the whole of two eastern Ukrainian regions whose capture it has stated as a key goal of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said his understanding of Russia's plan was that it needed to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Moscow last year claimed as "republics" of Russia, in a move condemned by most countries of the United Nations as illegal.

 LONDON, Feb 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Britain said Thursday it had paid a whopping £ 2.3 billion to settle a long-running row with the EU, despite having quit the bloc.

A final payment of £ 1.1 billion was made this week to resolve the dispute over textiles and footwear imported into Britain from China, Treasury minister John Glen said.

Since Brexit took full effect three years ago, Britain is no longer bound by European Union rules.

LONDON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- British business leaders have said they hope that trade ties between Britain and China will deepen as the two countries work toward economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The remarks were made Wednesday during the "Icebreakers" 2023 Chinese New Year celebration, jointly hosted by the 48 Group Club, China Chamber of Commerce in the UK and China-Britain Business Council.