United Kingdom

(Reuters) --- British judge Brenda Hale will step down from Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal next month when her three-year term expires, the judiciary said on Friday, a move that may deepen uncertainty over the role of foreign judges in the semi-autonomous city.

The departure of Hale, a former president of Britain's Supreme Court, comes amid international concern over the effect on the city of a national security law imposed by China's parliament a year ago.

04 June 2021; MEMO: Amnesty International has called on Iraq to reveal the whereabouts of 643 Sunni men and young boys who were kidnapped by the pro-Iran Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) during operations to retake Fallujah city from Daesh in 2016.

(Reuters) --- The top European Union court dismissed on Thursday Hungary's challenge against the opening in 2018 of a disciplinary procedure against Budapest for undermining democracy in the formerly communist country.

Budapest had challenged on procedural grounds a European Parliament vote three years ago stating that Prime Minister Viktor Orban's policies were posing "a clear risk of a serious breach by Hungary of the values on which the Union is founded."

LONDON, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Samples from a study suggesting that COVID-19 was circulating outside China by October 2019 have been re-tested at the World Health Organization's (WHO) request, a Reuters report quoted two scientists leading the research as saying on Tuesday.

While COVID-19 was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, a study published last year suggested antibodies to either the virus or a variant had been detected elsewhere prior to the first confirmed report of the virus in China.

LONDON (AP) — Buckingham Palace barred ethnic minorities from office jobs during the 1960s, the Guardian newspaper reported Thursday, citing documents in Britain’s National Archives.

The revelation, published on the newspaper’s front page, was based on papers showing that Queen Elizabeth II’s chief financial manager told civil servants in 1968 that it was not the palace’s practice to hire “coloured immigrants or foreigners” for clerical posts and other office jobs.

02 June 2021; MEMO: The BBC has removed a series of educational videos about Palestine and the origins of the ongoing Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing, following pressure from a pro-Israel lobbyist organisation, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

(Reuters) --- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he would be cautious in lifting coronavirus restrictions as it is still unclear how protected the population would be against a new surge of COVID-19 cases should lockdown end as planned in June.

Johnson has previously warned that the swift spread of the B.1.617.2 variant of concern first identified in India could derail his plans to end England's COVID restrictions on June 21.

(Reuters) --- The decision to lift final lockdown measures in England on June 21 will be made after data on infection, hospitalisation, vaccination and new variants are assessed, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Sunday.

"We will share the evidence with the country on the 14th of June to basically explain exactly where we are on infection rates, on hospitalisation, and of course, sadly, on deaths," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr.

"We have to be cautious; we have to look at the data and share it with the country."

LONDON, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Unfounded allegations by some U.S. politicians that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a Chinese lab are making it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic, and fueling online bullying, said a recent article in British scientific journal Nature.

"Even without strong supporting evidence," calls to investigate Chinese laboratories have reached a fever pitch in the United States, said the article, adding that for many researchers, the tone of the growing demands is unsettling, which could thwart efforts to study the virus's origins.

28 May 2021; MEMO: Amnesty International has called on Israel to cancel plans to forcibly displace two Palestinian families from their homes in the Batn al-Hawa area of the Silwan neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Saleh Higazi, said: "For years Israel has sought to expand illegal settlements in the area of Silwan, forcibly displacing more than 200 Palestinians from their homes."