United Kingdom

LONDON, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- At least 922 healthcare workers in the United States have died of COVID-19, a recent report has found.

According to the report published by Lost on the Frontline, a joint project between U.S. nonprofit Kaiser Health News and UK newspaper the Guardian, 167 of the health workers have been identified, with their profiles published as part of the report.

The tally consists of doctors, nurses and paramedics, as well as crucial support staff such as hospital janitors and administrators.

LONDON, Aug 11 (APP): Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (UK) Mohammad Nafees Zakaria Tuesday said the Constitution of Pakistan guaranteed fundamental rights for all its citizens irrespective of the religion, caste, colour or creed and thus minorities rights were fully protected in the country.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said its latest round of trade talks with the United States made positive progress in many areas, and that both sides agreed negotiations should continue at pace in the coming months.

After leaving the European Union earlier this year Britain is trying to tie up swift trade deals with major partners like the United States to capitalize on its new freedom to strike bilateral deals rather than EU-wide ones.

“Positive progress continues to be made in many of the areas covered by an agreement,” the British trade department said in a statement.

LONDON (AP) — The British economy has fallen into recession after official figures Wednesday showed it contracting by a record 20.4% in the second quarter as a result of lockdown measures put in place to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

The slump recorded by the Office for National Statistics follows a 2.2% quarter-on-quarter contraction in the first three months of the year. It was toward the end of that period — on March 23 — that the U.K. joined other countries in Europe in locking down its economy.

LONDON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Washington's so-called "Clean Network" program will "bolster a worrying movement" toward the split of the global internet, said a recent BBC article.

"The U.S. government has for a long time criticized other countries for controlling access to the internet ... and now we see the Americans doing the same thing," the article quoted Alan Woodward, a computer security expert at the University of Surrey in Britain, as saying.

"It's shocking," said Woodward, adding, "this is the Balkanization of the internet happening in front of our eyes."

London, Aug 11 (AP/PTI) The number of people in employment in the UK fell by 220,000 in the three months after the country was put into lockdown as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, official figures showed Tuesday.

That quarterly decline, which took the total number of people in employment to 32.92 million, is the biggest since the deep recession in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) - A national security law is being used to silence opposition in Hong Kong where media freedom needs to be maintained, a junior British Foreign Office minister said on Monday, after the arrest of media tycoon Jimmy Lai.

“Deeply concerned by arrest of ⁦Jimmy Lai & 6 others in #HongKong,” Nigel Adams said on Twitter.

“Media freedom must be upheld. More evidence the National security law being used as pretext to silence opposition.”

DOVER, England (Reuters) - Britain’s Border Force brought migrants ashore in the port of Dover on Monday after picking them up from an inflatable boat as they crossed the Channel, the latest in a surge of crossings that is causing political tensions with France.

Taking advantage of a spell of hot weather and calm sea conditions, more than 500 migrants have made it to British shores since Thursday, many in overloaded rubber dinghies.

LONDON, August 9. /TASS/: The policy of "deterrence and dialogue" towards Russia chosen by NATO and Britain consists of 95% of deterrence and only 5% of dialogue, Russia’s Ambassador in the UK Andrei Kelin said in an interview with the Chinese TV channel CGTN on Saturday.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said reopening schools in September was a social, economic and moral imperative and insisted they would be able to operate safely despite the ongoing threat from the pandemic.

His comments follow a study earlier this month which warned that Britain risks a second wave of COVID-19 this winter twice as large as the initial outbreak if schools open without an improved test-and-trace system.