England

LONDON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - British police said on Tuesday a third Russian had been charged in absentia with the 2018 Novichok murder attempt on former double agent Sergei Skripal, saying they could also now confirm the three suspects were military intelligence operatives.

The attack on Skripal, who sold Russian secrets to Britain, caused one of the biggest rows between Russia and the West since the Cold War, leading to the tit-for-tat expulsion of dozens of diplomats after Britain pointed the finger of blame at Moscow.

LONDON, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- A trial of what has been described as the world's first multi-variant vaccine booster against COVID-19 kicked off in the British city of Manchester on Monday.

A married couple, both in their 60s, became the first participants in the trial, a collaboration between the University of Manchester and a National Health Service (NHS) foundation trust in the city.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s business secretary will hold emergency talks with industry leaders and consumer groups Monday as the U.K. government looks for ways to support energy companies threatened by soaring natural gas prices.

Kwasi Kwarteng said late Sunday that Britain’s energy regulator would ensure gas and electricity keeps flowing to customers if their energy supplier fails. If necessary, the government will appoint a special administrator to ensure supplies until a company can be rescued or its customers moved to new suppliers, he said.

LONDON, September 19. /TASS/: Details of the AUKUS partnership (Australia, the UK and the US) were discussed at the June G7 summit in Cornwall, but French President Emmanuel Macron was unaware of that, The Sunday Telegraph report says.

According to the report, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab assisted in the preparation of the agreement despite the warnings that such agreement will harm the relations with Beijing and Paris.

LONDON, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday unveiled plans to tackle Britain's long-standing "North-South" divide, appointing former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane as chief of a Levelling Up Taskforce.

The British government department in charge of the agenda was also given a new name -- the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was travelling to the United States on Sunday with senior Cabinet officials to urge world leaders attending the U.N. General Assembly to take urgent action on climate change ahead of this fall’s COP26 climate summit in Scotland.

Johnson is set to co-host a meeting on climate change with U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Monday. The two will discuss the need to help developing countries mitigate the impact of climate change.

LONDON, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — England set out measures to boost international travel on Friday, abandoning expensive COVID-19 testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers, scrapping its traffic light system and adding eight countries to its safe list.

Travellers returning to England from Turkey, Pakistan, and the Maldives will not have to quarantine on their return as they are removed from the so-called COVID red list for travel, British transport minister Grant Shapps said.

LONDON, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Different epidemic waves are brought about by different variants of SARS-CoV-2. The major sources of these variants can travel cross border and exist in animal reservoirs, an article has said.

The article published this week on News Medical, an open-access medical and life science hub, showed a bell-shaped curve, which is typical of a seasonal viral respiratory infection, was observed in Asia. Comparatively, the bell-shaped curve recorded in Western countries experienced one or two peaks.

LONDON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Global goals tackling poverty, inequality, injustice and climate change face a $100 trillion funding shortfall and are likely to be missed unless 10% of global economic output is directed to the U.N. targets every year to 2030, a report on Friday said.

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals set targets on everything from the environment to health and equality and have the support of all member states, yet the supply of finance from governments, investors, banks and companies to help meet them has consistently fallen short.

LONDON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban-controlled central bank said it had seized nearly $12.4 million in cash and gold from former top government officials on Wednesday, including former vice president Amrullah Saleh.

In a statement, the central bank said the money and gold had been kept in officials' houses, although it did not yet know for what purpose.

Saleh's whereabouts are unknown. He has vowed to resist the Taliban, who stormed to power a month ago, and last week a family member said the Taliban had executed his brother Rohullah Azizi.