United Kingdom

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain risks a big hit to trade and jobs if it cannot strike a post-Brexit deal with the European Union by the end of 2020 or fails to extend its current Brexit transition, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Wednesday.

Risks around Britain’s future relationship with the EU were compounding the uncertainty about the duration of COVID-19 restrictions on the economy, the OECD said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Deepening the European Union’s capital market has become a priority to help the economy recover from COVID-19 and reduce reliance on the City of London, a report for the EU said on Wednesday.

The EU has long sought to encourage companies to issue stocks and bonds to grow, as in the United States. But they still rely on banks for funding after efforts to build a capital markets union (CMU) failed to make significant headway.

LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - European Central Bank officials are drawing up a scheme to cope with potentially hundreds of billions of euros of unpaid loans in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The project, which comes as Europe mobilises trillions of euros to bolster the region’s economy, is aimed at shielding commercial banks from any second fallout from the crisis, if rising unemployment chokes off the income needed to repay loans.

LONDON, June 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Another 286 COVID-19 patients died in Britain as of Monday afternoon, bringing the total death toll in the country to 40,883, the British Department of Health and Social Care said Tuesday.

The figures include deaths in all settings, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community.

As of Monday morning, 289,140 people have tested positive in Britain, a daily increase of 1,387, according to the department.

LONDON, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Large-scale lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical intervention in 11 European countries may have helped avert approximately 3.1 million deaths as the measures successfully curbed the novel coronavirus transmission, according to a new study released by the Imperial College London.

From March 2 to 29, European countries began implementing major non-pharmaceutical methods, such as school closures and national lockdowns, to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

LONDON (AP) — It’s an issue that’s been argued about for months, both by experts and by people strolling through parks all over the world: Can people who don’t feel sick spread the coronavirus, and if so should we all be wearing masks to stop it?

Even the World Health Organization can’t seem to get it straight. On Tuesday the U.N. health agency scrambled to explain seemingly contradictory comments it has made in recent days about the two related issues.

The confusion and mixed messages only makes controlling the pandemic that much more difficult, experts say.

LONDON (Reuters) - The bosses of some of Britain’s biggest companies have written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urging him to embed the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in its COVID-19 recovery plan.

Britain has already said it wants to ensure its economic recovery plan is ‘green,’ mirroring similar plans in the European Union and elsewhere, but it needed to make the sustainable goals central to those plans, the letter said.

LONDON (Reuters) - There is no point having an 11th-hour Brexit free trade deal, so the format and pace of negotiations with the European Union needs to change, a junior minister said on Tuesday.

“There is no point in us arriving at an agreement at the 11th hour: we have to arrive at agreement to enable it to be implemented, ratified but also for our citizens and businesses to prepare,” Paymaster General Penny Mordaunt told parliament.

LONDON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Another 55 COVID-19 patients have died in Britain as of Sunday afternoon, bringing the total coronavirus-related death toll in the country to 40,597, the British Department of Health and Social Care said Monday.

The figures include deaths in all settings, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community.

The daily rise in the number of coronavirus deaths was the lowest since before the lockdown on March 23. No new deaths were announced in both Scotland and Northern Ireland for the second consecutive day.

LONDON (AP) — U.S. prosecutors and attorneys for Britain’s Prince Andrew sniped at one another across the Atlantic on Monday, each saying the other side was to blame for the duke’s failure to participate in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking probe.

Andrew’s lawyers said in a statement that he has offered three times this year to speak with U.S. investigators after being assured that he “is not and has never been a ‘target’ of their criminal investigations into Epstein.”