England

LONDON (AP) — British health authorities say they will offer a polio booster dose to children aged 1 to 9 in London, after finding evidence the virus has been spreading in multiple regions of the capital, despite not confirming any cases of the paralytic disease in people.

In a statement on Wednesday, Britain’s Health Security Agency said it had detected polio viruses derived from the oral polio vaccine in sewage water from eight boroughs of London, but had not identified any cases.

LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies said on Monday that Russia would achieve its aims in the conflict in Ukraine on its own terms, warning that the West had a long-term plan to destroy Russia.

"Russia is conducting a special military operation in Ukraine and is attaining peace on our terms," former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia's security council, told TASS in an interview.

LONDON, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Metropolitan Police (Met), Britain's largest police force, strip-searched 650 children, mostly black boys, between 2018 and 2020, data from a research published on Monday showed.

Of the 650 minors aged 10 to 17 searched by the Met officers, 95 percent were boys and 58 percent of the boys were black, according to the research published by Rachel de Souza, the children's commissioner for England.

In 23 percent of the cases, there wasn't an appropriate adult present, the report said.

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The United Nations food agency's world price index declined again in July, edging further away from record highs hit in March.

The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) food price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 140.9 points last month versus a revised 154.3 for June. The June figure was previously put at 154.2.

The July index was still 13.1% higher than a year earlier, pushed up by the impact of the invasion of Ukraine, adverse weather and high production and transport costs.

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry on Friday accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, saying a leak of radiation had been avoided only by luck.

It said that as a result, the generating capacity of one unit had been reduced and power supply to another had been cut. In addition, the nearby city of Enerhodar was suffering from problems with its power and water supplies, it added in a statement.

LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England projected Thursday that the United Kingdom’s economy will enter a recession at the end of the year as it hiked interest rates by the largest amount in more than 27 years, pushing to tame accelerating inflation driven by the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is recommending Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine carry a warning of the possibility of two types of heart inflammation, an added burden for a shot that has so far failed to win wide uptake.

The heart conditions - myocarditis and pericarditis - should be listed as new side effects in the product information for the vaccine, Nuvaxovid, based on a small number of reported cases, the EMA said on Wednesday.

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday said that the United States, the world's top military power, was directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine because U.S. spies were approving and coordinating Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian forces.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war.

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Anatoly Chubais, the former privatisation tsar of post-Soviet Russia who quit his post as a Kremlin special envoy due to the war in Ukraine, is in intensive care in Europe with a rare immune disorder, two sources close to Chubais told Reuters.

Chubais, 67, believes he is suffering from Guillain–Barre syndrome, a disease caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system, said the sources.

"He thinks it's a disease," the first source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "Doctors say they found it in time."

LONDON (AP) — Two people are running to be Britain’s next prime minister, but a third presence looms over the contest: Margaret Thatcher.

The late former prime minister dominated Britain in the 1980s, and has left a large and contested legacy. Critics see her as an intransigent ideologue whose free-market policies frayed social bonds and gutted the country’s industrial communities. But for the governing Conservative Party, Thatcher is an icon, an inspiration and the presiding spirit who made Britain fit for the modern era.