England

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Unilever on Monday appointed Hein Schumacher to replace Alan Jope as chief executive from July in a move that was welcomed by investors including board member and activist shareholder Nelson Peltz.

Schumacher, 51, rejoined Unilever in October last year as non-executive director and is currently the chief of Dutch dairy business FrieslandCampina.

He worked at Unilever more than 20 years ago before working for retailer Royal Ahold NV and packaged food maker H.J. Heinz in the United States, Europe and Asia.

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Russia told the United States on Monday that the last remaining pillar of bilateral nuclear arms control could expire in 2026 without a replacement due to what it said were U.S. efforts to inflict "strategic defeat" on Moscow in Ukraine.

Both Russia and the United States still have vast arsenals of nuclear weapons which are currently partially limited by the 2011 New START Treaty, which in 2021 was extended until 2026.

LONDON (AP) — Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that President Vladimir Putin didn’t seem serious about avoiding war in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine — and at one point told the British leader it would be easy to kill him with a missile.

The Kremlin denied Putin made any such threat.

LONDON, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Sunday fired chair of the ruling Conservative Party Nadhim Zahawi from the government after an investigation into his tax affairs found "a serious breach" of the ministerial code.

Zahawi, who last year was briefly Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, during a period of political turmoil, had been under increasing pressure to resign in recent weeks amid allegations that he settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill with the authorities.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fired the chairman of the governing Conservative Party on Sunday for a “serious breach” of ethics rules in failing to come clean about a tax dispute.

Sunak had faced days of pressure to sack Nadhim Zahawi amid allegations he settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill while he was in charge of the country’s Treasury.

LONDON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - British regional airline Flybe on Saturday ceased trading for the second time in three years, with all flights cancelled and 276 workers made redundant.

A statement on Flybe's website said the airline, which operated scheduled services from Belfast, Birmingham and Heathrow across the UK and to Amsterdam and Geneva, had entered administration, a form of protection from creditors.

"Flybe has now ceased trading and all flights from and to the UK operated by Flybe have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled," it said.

LONDON (AP) — Microsoft said it’s seeing some improvement to problems with its online services including the Teams messaging platform and Outlook email system after users around the world reported outages Wednesday.

In a status update, the tech company reported “service degradation” for a number of its Microsoft 365 services.

LONDON (AP) — A British judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit that accused the U.K. government of allowing the import of cotton products associated with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region — though he acknowledged there were “widespread abuses” in the region’s cotton industry.

High Court justice Ian Dove ruled against a Uyghur organization and a human rights group who claimed the government unlawfully failed to investigate conditions in which cotton was produced.

LONDON (AP) — The Church of England formally apologized Friday for its treatment of LGBTQ people, even as it said that same-sex couples still won’t be allowed to marry in its churches.

The apology from the church’s bishops came in a report following five years of debate on the church’s position on sexuality. The report will be delivered to the church’s national assembly, the General Synod, which is meeting in London next month.

LONDON (AP) — Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog.