United Kingdom

LONDON/ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, Sept 27 (Reuters) - An ally of President Vladimir Putin issued a stark new nuclear warning to Ukraine and the West on Tuesday as Russia began releasing results of referendums it bills as a prelude to it annexing four Ukrainian regions.

Moscow's latest broadside came as European countries rushed to investigate unexplained, major leaks in two Russian natural gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea that posed risks of explosions and the sinking of any ships that enter the area.

LONDON (AP) — TikTok could face a 27 million-pound ($29 million) fine in the U.K. over a possible breach of U.K. data protection law by failing to protect children’s privacy when they are using the video-sharing platform.

The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office said Monday that it has issued the social media company a legal document that precedes a potential fine. It said TikTok may have processed the data of children under 13 without appropriate parental consent, and processed “special category data” without legal grounds to do so.

LONDON, Sep 25 (APP): Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday said that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres had assured that they would be soon arranging a donors’ conference for the rehabilitation of the flood affected people of Pakistan. 

 The prime minister chaired a meeting via videolink to review relief and rehabilitation activities in the flood hit areas of the country.  

The meeting was attended by federal ministers and the relevant authorities, PM Office Media Wing said in a press release. 

LONDON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Liz Truss said allies should stand firm on Ukraine and ignore Russian President Vladimir Putin's "sabre-rattling".

Truss, who met U.S. President Joe Biden and France's Emmanuel Macron on her first foreign trip as prime minister to New York last week, in an interview with CNN called on like-minded democracies to be firm against "autocratic regimes".

LONDON, September 24. /TASS/: The European Union has to take seriously the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in an interview with BBC on Saturday.

"When people say it is not a bluff, you have to take them seriously," Borrell said commenting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement made on Wednesday. "Certainly it’s a dangerous moment."

LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, may debate bills incorporating Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine into Russia on Sept. 29, the state-run TASS news agency said on Saturday, citing an unnamed source.

Moscow launched referendums on joining Russia in the four occupied regions of Ukraine on Friday, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western nations, who dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognise their results. 

Pro-Moscow authorities have made clear they consider the votes to be a foregone conclusion.

LONDON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that any weapons in Moscow's arsenal, including strategic nuclear weapons, could be used to defend territories incorporated in Russia from Ukraine.

Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said that referendums being organised by Russian-installed and separatist authorities in large swathes of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory will take place, and that "there is no going back":

LONDON (AP) — On a blustery November day last year Britain’s future king stood before world leaders to deliver a rallying cry that they should “act with all despatch, and decisively” to confront a common enemy.

The clarion call — in the vast, windowless hall of a Glasgow convention center at the opening of the U.N. climate conference — concerned an issue long dear to the heart of the then-Prince Charles.

LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech on Wednesday was a worrying escalation and the threats he made must be taken seriously, British foreign office minister Gillian Keegan told Sky News.

Putin ordered Russia's first military mobilisation since World War Two, warning the West that if it continued what he called its "nuclear blackmail" that Moscow would respond with the might of all its vast arsenal.

LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday paved the way for the formal annexation of swathes of Ukrainian territory, backing referendum plans in areas of Ukraine its soldiers control in a direct challenge to the West that could sharply escalate the war.

After nearly seven months of war, including a critical battlefield defeat in northeastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pondering his next steps. Annexation could be his answer.