England

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson will launch a plan this week to get Britain “moving again” after the coronavirus lockdown, when the government will set out measures to boost infrastructure construction, interior minister Priti Patel said on Sunday.

Johnson will make a speech on Tuesday to set out plans to fast-track building projects such as hospitals, schools, housing, and road and rail infrastructure, part of efforts to try to stem a fall in support for his government.

LONDON (AP) — Centrist politician Micheál Martin became Ireland’s new prime minister Saturday, fusing two longtime rival parties into a coalition four months after an election that upended the status quo.

The deal will see Martin’s Fianna Fail govern with Fine Gael — the party of outgoing leader Leo Varadkar —and with the smaller Green Party. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, bitter opponents whose roots lie in opposing sides of the civil war that followed Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom, have never before formed a government together.

LONDON Jun 27 (APP): Speakers including President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Masood Khan, Pakistan High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Mohammad Nafees Zakaria and British Parliamentarians in a webinar/video conference on Kashmir called upon the international community and the United Nations to take serious notice of human rights and sexual abuses, tortures, rapes and killings of innocent and oppressed people of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK).

LONDON, June 27. /TASS/: Berlin needs to continue constructive dialogue with Moscow, including for reasons of Russia’s strategic influence in Syria and Libya, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview to several European newspaper, including The Guardian.

"There are good reasons to keep engaging in constructive dialogue with Russia. In countries like Syria and Libya, countries in Europe’s immediate neighbourhood, Russia’s strategic influence is great," she said. "I will therefore continue to strive for cooperation."

LONDON (AP) — A male suspect stabbed and wounded a police officer before he was shot dead in Glasgow on Friday. Authorities are not treating the incident that left five other men wounded as terrorism, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Finalising the European Union’s package of measures to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic is a “massive priority” for Germany’s presidency of the EU, German Deputy Finance Minister Joerg Kukies said on Friday.

EU leaders agreed in April to build a trillion-euro emergency fund to help the 27-nation bloc rebound from the pandemic, but the final details have yet to be agreed.

“We really need to act quickly now if we want the funds to be available on January 1, 2021,” Kukies told an online event.

LONDON (Reuters) - Last fall, European Space Agency satellites detected huge plumes of the invisible planet-warming gas methane leaking from the Yamal pipeline that carries natural gas from Siberia to Europe.

Energy consultancy Kayrros estimated one leak was spewing out 93 tonnes of methane every hour, meaning the daily emissions from the leakage were equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide pumped out in a year by 15,000 cars in the United States.

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi Sunak sees a very high bar for bailing out companies that are struggling as a result of the coronavirus crisis, Bloomberg Television reported on Friday.

Sunak also said the economy was past the acute phase of the crisis, and that the best way to preserve jobs was to allow businesses to continue to reopen.

LONDON, June 25 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday condemned the "appalling" scenes in Brixton in south London where 22 police officers were injured and police cars smashed up when they tried to break up an "unlicensed" street party Wednesday night.

A spokesman for the prime minister said the British government would shortly be launching a consultation on doubling the maximum sentence for assaulting an emergency worker.

"These were appalling scenes. Violence against the police will not be tolerated," the spokesman said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil slipped below $40 a barrel on Thursday after a more than 5% fall the previous session, as record-high U.S. crude inventories and a resurgence in coronavirus cases cast doubt on a recovery in fuel demand.

U.S. crude stocks rose 1.4 million barrels, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. [EIA/S] This hit crude prices, although other details the EIA reported such as a fall in gasoline stocks as demand rose, lent limited support.