United Kingdom

LONDON (Reuters) - Swedish activist Greta Thunberg urged European leaders on Thursday to take emergency action on climate change, saying people in power had practically “given up” on the possibility of handing over a decent future to coming generations.

In an open letter climateemergencyeu.org also signed by several thousand people, including climate scientists, economists, actors and activists, the 17-year-old called for countries to start treating climate change and ecological breakdown “like an emergency”.

16 July 2020; MEMO: Shamima Begum, a UK woman who joined Daesh in 2015 as a teenager, has today won her appeal to be allowed to return to the UK.

Dubbed a “Daesh bride” for having left the UK to marry a member of Daesh, British-born Shamima was 15 years old at the time of her departure. She was stripped of her British citizenship on national security grounds four years later.

LONDON (AP) — An artist has erected a statue of a Black Lives Matter protester atop the plinth in the English city of Bristol formerly occupied by a statue of a slave trader.

Marc Quinn created the life-size resin and steel likeness of Jen Reid, a protester photographed standing on the plinth after demonstrators pulled down the statue of Edward Colston and dumped it in Bristol’s harbor on June 7.

LONDON (Reuters) - Levels of childhood immunisations against dangerous diseases such as measles, tetanus and diphtheria have dropped alarmingly during the COVID-19 pandemic, putting millions of children at risk, United Nations agencies said on Wednesday.

“The avoidable suffering and death caused by children missing out on routine immunisations could be far greater than COVID-19 itself,” World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a joint report with UNICEF.

LONDON/BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he was responsible for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to ban Huawei from Britain’s 5G network, a remark that London brushed off and Beijing said said proved the British move was political.

Johnson on Tuesday ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by the end of 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker was not welcome in the West.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there would be an inquiry into the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the future but now was not the time as the battle to combat it was ongoing.

“We will seek to learn the lessons of this pandemic in the future and certainly we will have an independent inquiry into what happened,” he said on Wednesday.

LONDON (AP) — Politicians and public health leaders have publicly committed to equitably sharing any coronavirus vaccine that works, but the top global initiative to make that happen may allow rich countries to reinforce their own stockpiles while making fewer doses available for poor ones.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain faces a potentially more deadly second wave of COVID-19 in the coming winter that could kill up to 120,000 people over nine months in a worst-case scenario, health experts said on Tuesday.

With COVID-19 more likely to spread in winter as people spend more time together in enclosed spaces, a second wave of the pandemic “could be more serious than the one we’ve just been through,” said Stephen Holgate, a professor and co-lead author of a report by Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS).

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Huawei equipment to be purged completely from Britain’s 5G network by 2027, risking the ire of China by signalling that the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker is no longer welcome in the West.

The seven-year lag will please telecoms operators such as BT (BT.L), Vodafone (VOD.L) and Three (0215.HK) which feared they would be forced to spend billions of pounds to rip out Huawei equipment much faster. But it will delay the roll out of 5G.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will place a “huge priority” on national security when considering Chinese telecoms firm Huawei’s role in the country’s 5G network, justice minister Robert Buckland said on Monday.

“National security comes first ... and I know that the NSC (National Security Council) and the whole of government will be placing a huge priority on our national security,” he told BBC radio.

An announcement on Huawei’s role would be made “as soon as practicable”, he said.