England

LONDON (AP) — The British government has ordered the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges. WikiLeaks said it would appeal.

Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the extradition order on Friday, her department said. It follows a British court ruling in April that Assange could be sent to the U.S. over WikiLeaks’ publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

LONDON (AP) — The ethics adviser to Britain’s scandal-hit Prime Minister Boris Johnson has quit and accused the Conservative government of planning to flout conduct rules, weeks after a separate investigation criticized the U.K. leader for overseeing a culture of government rule-breaking.

Christopher Geidt stepped down late Wednesday with a terse statement saying “with regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.” Johnson’s office said it was surprised by the decision.

LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday that the West had "shot itself in the head" by trying to limit energy imports from the oil and gas fields of Siberia due to the Ukraine conflict, in sharp contrast to China which has increased deliveries of energy.

The war in Ukraine - and the West's attempt to isolate Russia as punishment for the invasion - have sent the price of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soaring while Europe has vowed to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas.

LONDON (AP) — Britain canceled a flight that was scheduled to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda late Tuesday after the European Court of Human Rights intervened, saying the plan carried “a real risk of irreversible harm.”

The decision to scrap the flight capped three days of frantic court challenges from immigrant rights lawyers who launched a flurry of case-by-case appeals seeking to block the deportation of everyone on the government’s list.

LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been abruptly transferred from the prison where he is serving an 11-1/2 year sentence to an undisclosed location, nearly two years since he was poisoned with what the West said was a nerve agent.

Navalny, by far Russia's most prominent opposition leader, casts President Vladimir Putin's Russia as a dystopian state run by thieves and criminals where wrong is cast as right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed elite.

LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Kingdom (UK) on Monday introduced a bill to change parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit trade deal, while the European Union (EU) said unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and threatened legal action.

"PRACTICAL PROBLEMS"

LONDON (AP) — British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says the first deportation flight to Rwanda will take off Tuesday evening, regardless of how many people are on board, as immigration attorneys launch case-by-case appeals on behalf of the migrants scheduled for removal.

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Britain on Friday condemned Russian proxy authorities in Donbas for what it called an "egregious breach" of the Geneva convention in sentencing to death two British nationals captured in the separatist region while fighting for Ukraine.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said he was talking to Ukraine rather than Russia about Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were convicted of "mercenary activities" by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

Aslin's family said he and Pinner "are not, and never were, mercenaries."

LONDON (AP) — Explorers and historians are telling the world about the discovery of the wreck of a royal warship that sank in 1682 while carrying a future king of England, Ireland and Scotland.

The HMS Gloucester, traveling from southern England to Scotland, ran aground while navigating sandbanks off the town of Great Yarmouth on the eastern English coast. It sank within an hour, killing an estimated 130 to 250 crew and passengers.

LONDON, June 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Campaigners on Wednesday launched a court bid to block UK government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as it attempts to stop migrant boat crossings from France.

The government in London said last month that it intends to fly a first planeload of asylum-seekers to Rwanda on June 14.

But the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Care4Calais and Detention Action have now issued judicial review proceedings in the High Court against what they call an “unlawful policy”.