United Kingdom

LONDON, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — England set out measures to boost international travel on Friday, abandoning expensive COVID-19 testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers, scrapping its traffic light system and adding eight countries to its safe list.

Travellers returning to England from Turkey, Pakistan, and the Maldives will not have to quarantine on their return as they are removed from the so-called COVID red list for travel, British transport minister Grant Shapps said.

LONDON, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Different epidemic waves are brought about by different variants of SARS-CoV-2. The major sources of these variants can travel cross border and exist in animal reservoirs, an article has said.

The article published this week on News Medical, an open-access medical and life science hub, showed a bell-shaped curve, which is typical of a seasonal viral respiratory infection, was observed in Asia. Comparatively, the bell-shaped curve recorded in Western countries experienced one or two peaks.

18 Sep 2021; MEMO: The UK today removed Turkey from its red coronavirus travel list, allowing travel without compulsory hotel quarantine on arrival, and so easing travel and tourism between the two countries, Anadolu Agency reports.

With the latest update, Britain's traffic light system is now scraped and a simpler, "go" and "don't go" system was introduced.

LONDON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Global goals tackling poverty, inequality, injustice and climate change face a $100 trillion funding shortfall and are likely to be missed unless 10% of global economic output is directed to the U.N. targets every year to 2030, a report on Friday said.

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals set targets on everything from the environment to health and equality and have the support of all member states, yet the supply of finance from governments, investors, banks and companies to help meet them has consistently fallen short.

16 Sep 2021; MEMO: A new report has found that conditions in hotels housing asylum seekers are sub-standard and sometimes unsafe.

For the report, over 50 asylum seekers in Glasgow provided information to academics at Edinburgh Napier University and their co-producers Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment.

LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban-controlled central bank said it had seized nearly $12.4 million in cash and gold from former top government officials on Wednesday, including former vice president Amrullah Saleh.

In a statement, the central bank said the money and gold had been kept in officials' houses, although it did not yet know for what purpose.

Saleh's whereabouts are unknown. He has vowed to resist the Taliban, who stormed to power a month ago, and last week a family member said the Taliban had executed his brother Rohullah Azizi.

LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - A unit in Afghanistan's central bank leading a 15-year effort to counter illicit funding flows has halted operations, four staff members said, threatening to hasten the country's slide out of the global financial system.

Since 2006, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Afghanistan (FinTRACA) has gathered intelligence on thousands of suspicious transactions and helped convict smugglers and terrorist financiers, according to its website.

LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demoted his foreign secretary on Wednesday in a major reshuffle, removing his more under-fire colleagues to refocus the government on raising living standards after COVID-19.

After months of criticism of several of his top team for missteps and gaffes, Johnson finally started a process some say he wanted to do many weeks earlier, to make the changes he feels he needs to press on with his "levelling up" agenda.

15 Sep 2021; MEMO: The United Kingdom banned China's ambassador from Parliament in response to Beijing placing sanctions on MPs who spoke up about its treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province, the BBC reports.

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang was prevented from joining the British Parliament by Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, and John McFall, the speaker of the House of Lords.

LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Britain will begin a broad-based COVID-19 vaccine booster programme for older and more vulnerable people soon as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government relies on vaccines rather than further lockdowns to navigate a "bumpy" winter.

British officials said COVID-19 vaccines had saved more than 112,000 lives and averted 24 million infections as they proposed a third shot for frontline health workers and those aged over 50 or clinically vulnerable, starting with people most at risk.