United Kingdom

LONDON, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to lift all COVID-19 lockdowns in two and a half months as lockdown-sceptic Tories called on him to commit to a timetable for easing the restrictions with a complete end to controls by the end of April.

In a letter to the prime minister, leaders of the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) said the "tremendous pace" of the vaccination rollout means restrictions in England should begin easing from early March, the London-based Evening Standard newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK has written an open letter calling on world leaders to pressure the Saudi authorities to release the detained scholar Salman al Salman Al-Ouda. The following is the full text of their open letter released on 13 February:

To whom it may concern

Re: Salman Al-Ouda, political detainee by Saudi Authorities

After the death of his wife in an accident in 2017, Salman Al-Ouda became everything for his family especially his young children.

LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday he shared concerns about the level of access given to a World Health Organization COVID-19 fact-finding mission to China, echoing criticism from the United States.

The White House on Saturday called on China to make available data from the earliest days of the novel coronavirus outbreak, saying it had “deep concerns” about the way the findings of the WHO’s COVID-19 report were communicated.

LONDON, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will host a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders Friday to discuss efforts to ensure an equal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and prevent future pandemics.

Johnson will call for a new global approach to pandemics, drawing on lessons from the divisions that characterised the initial international response to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a press statement released Saturday night by Downing Street.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to appeal to leaders of the world’s richest nations to unite in a “colossal mission” to get COVID-19 vaccines to every country and to lead a sustainable recovery from the pandemic, according to remarks released Saturday.

Johnson is set to chair a virtual meeting of leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Friday. It will be the first session led by Johnson since the U.K. took over the G-7′s presidency in January.

LONDON, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- The British economy shrunk faster than at any point in 100 years in 2020, as headline gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 9.9 percent, according to new data from the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday.

The last quarter of 2020 saw a rise of 1.0 percent in GDP but was sharply down on the 16.1 percent growth seen in the previous three months, said the ONS.

LONDON (Reuters) - The UK Supreme Court on Friday allowed a group of 42,500 Nigerian farmers and fishermen to sue Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) in English courts after years of oil spills in the Niger Delta contaminated land and groundwater.

Senior judges said UK-domiciled Shell, one of the world’s biggest energy companies, did have a common law duty of care, in the latest case to test whether multinationals can be held to account for the acts of overseas subsidiaries.

BRAEMAR, Scotland (Reuters) - Britain recorded the lowest temperature in 26 years on Thursday after a bitingly cold blast of Siberian weather swirled in from Russia, pushing temperatures down to minus 23 Celsius in the Scottish Highlands.

The temperature in the village of Braemar fell to minus 23C (minus 9.4 Fahrenheit) at 0813 GMT, the lowest temperature recorded since 1995, and the lowest February temperature in Britain since 1955 when Winston Churchill was still prime minister.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Thursday, paring recent gains, as renewed lockdowns and the emergence of new coronavirus variants weighed on the prospects for a swift demand recovery.

Brent crude fell 44 cents, or 0.7%, to $61.03 a barrel by 1321 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude lost 42 cents, or 0.7%, to $58.26.

The Brent benchmark had risen in the previous nine sessions, its longest sustained period of gains since January 2019. Wednesday had marked the eighth daily gain for U.S. crude.

LONDON (Reuters) - Scottish support for independence has fallen four percentage points, probably due to divisions among Scottish nationalists, but 47% of Scots still support breaking up the United Kingdom by going it alone, a poll indicated on Thursday.

A Savanta ComRes poll for The Scotsman showed 47% would vote for independence and 42% would vote against, up 4 percentage points, with 10% still undecided.