United Kingdom

LONDON (AP) — It’s not just the economy. While inflation and recession fears weigh heavily on the minds of voters, another issue is popping up in political campaigns from the U.K. and Australia to the U.S. and beyond: the “China threat.”

The two finalists vying to become Britain’s next prime minister, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, clashed in a televised debate last month over who would be toughest on China.

LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Britain's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is 22 percentage points ahead of her rival Rishi Sunak in the contest to become the country's next prime minister, a poll of Conservative Party members by Opinium Research showed on Saturday.

Among a sample of 450 party members who had decided how they would vote in the ongoing leadership election put Truss, who other polls have also shown to be the clear frontrunner, on 61%, with former finance minister Sunak on 39%, Opinium said.

LONDON, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev issued a veiled threat on Friday to Ukraine's Western allies who have accused Russia of creating the risk of a nuclear catastrophe by stationing forces around the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia power station.

Ukraine has accused Russia of firing at Ukrainian towns from the site in the knowledge that Ukrainian forces could not risk returning fire. It says Moscow has shelled the area itself while blaming Ukraine.

Russia says it is Ukraine that has shelled the plant.

LONDON (AP) — Heathrow Airport in London said Thursday that its limit on the number of passengers is easing a travel crunch that has led to flight cancellations and lost luggage as soaring demand for summer trips runs up against pandemic-era staffing shortages.

Britain’s busiest airport has capped the daily number of departing passengers at 100,000 until Sept. 11 and asked airlines to stop selling tickets and cut flights, stirring criticism. The cap has cut down on last-minute flight cancellations and improved baggage delivery and on-time planes, Heathrow said in a statement.

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - China, which Russia has sought as an ally since being cold-shouldered by the West over its invasion of Ukraine, has called the United States the "main instigator" of the crisis.

In an interview with the Russian state news agency TASS published on Wednesday, China's ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, accused Washington of backing Russia into a corner with repeated expansions of the NATO defence alliance and support for forces seeking to align Ukraine with the European Union rather than Moscow.

LONDON (AP) — The number of coronavirus deaths fell by 9% in the last week while new cases remained relatively stable, according to the latest weekly pandemic report released by the World Health Organization Wednesday.

The U.N. health agency said there were more than 14,000 COVID-19 deaths in the last week and nearly 7 million new infections. The Western Pacific reported a 30% jump in cases while Africa reported a 46% drop. Cases also fell by more than 20% in the Americas and the Middle East.

LONDON (AP) — British health authorities say they will offer a polio booster dose to children aged 1 to 9 in London, after finding evidence the virus has been spreading in multiple regions of the capital, despite not confirming any cases of the paralytic disease in people.

In a statement on Wednesday, Britain’s Health Security Agency said it had detected polio viruses derived from the oral polio vaccine in sewage water from eight boroughs of London, but had not identified any cases.

09 August 2022; MEMO: The BBC has come under fire over its "typical" misinformation about Palestine following the publication of an article explaining Israel's latest aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip.

LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - One of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies said on Monday that Russia would achieve its aims in the conflict in Ukraine on its own terms, warning that the West had a long-term plan to destroy Russia.

"Russia is conducting a special military operation in Ukraine and is attaining peace on our terms," former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia's security council, told TASS in an interview.

LONDON, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Metropolitan Police (Met), Britain's largest police force, strip-searched 650 children, mostly black boys, between 2018 and 2020, data from a research published on Monday showed.

Of the 650 minors aged 10 to 17 searched by the Met officers, 95 percent were boys and 58 percent of the boys were black, according to the research published by Rachel de Souza, the children's commissioner for England.

In 23 percent of the cases, there wasn't an appropriate adult present, the report said.