United Kingdom

LONDON (AP) — The British government set out plans Wednesday for a huge shift in power and wealth to left-behind regions of the country, a long-standing promise to the voters who helped put Prime Minister Boris Johnson in office.

Johnson’s Conservative government was elected in 2019 on a pledge to “level up” one of Europe’s most regionally unequal countries by improving transport links, infrastructure and economic opportunities in swaths of the country hit by shuttered industries and public funding cuts.

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson cannot answer specific questions over lockdown parties at his Downing Street office and residence because he does not want to prejudice a police investigation into 12 gatherings, his deputy said on Tuesday.

British police are reviewing more than 500 pieces of paper and over 300 photographs as part of an investigation into whether the Downing Street gatherings, including some attended by Johnson himself, broke COVID-19 lockdown laws. The inquiry is expected to take weeks.

01 Feb 2022; MEMO: Amnesty International has labelled Israel an apartheid state in a report released today, making it the latest human rights group to charge Tel Aviv with imposing a system of racial segregation.

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced renewed calls to resign on Monday after a report found that alcohol-fuelled parties at his offices and residence when COVID-19 lockdown rules were in force should never have taken place.

The report by senior civil servant Sue Gray into the lockdown gatherings - at a time when Britons were all but banned from social mixing to tackle the coronavirus pandemic - pointed to "serious failures of leadership" at the heart of the British government.

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologized Monday after an inquiry found that Downing Street parties while Britain was in lockdown represented a “serious failure” to observe the standards expected of government or to heed the sacrifices made by millions of people during the pandemic.

But Johnson brushed off calls to quit over the “partygate” scandal, promising to reform the way his office is run and insisting that he and his government can be trusted.

30 Jan 2022; MEMO: Shahd Abusalama is allowed to teach again at Sheffield Hallam University after a week's suspension due to an anonymous 'anti-Semitism' complaint filed against her.

Palestinian lecturer was suspended from teaching by the university over an anti-Israel social media post after it received a complaint against Abusalama.

LONDON/MOSCOW, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Europe needs to diversify its energy supplies, the head of NATO said on Sunday, as Britain warned it was "highly likely" that Russia, the continent's biggest natural gas supplier, was looking to invade Ukraine.

Russia has massed some 120,000 troops near its neighbour and demanded the western defence alliance pull back troops and weapons from eastern Europe and bar Ukraine, a former Soviet state, from ever joining the Western defence alliance.

LONDON, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The number of black women killed in gun violence in the United States has been rising sharply, but no one seems to care, The Guardian said in a recent report.

While the killing of Brianna Kupfer, a white woman, in Los Angeles this month garnered national attention, the death of Tioni Theus, Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton, all Black women, in two other separate killings in Los Angeles, received scant attention and were largely treated as local news, said the report released on Thursday.

27 Jan 2022; MEMO: The highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which critics say has fuelled a witch-hunt against academics critical of Israel, has claimed another victim.

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has not been interviewed by the police about their investigation into alleged parties in his Downing Street residence during coronavirus lockdowns, his spokesman said on Thursday.

Asked if Johnson had been interviewed, the spokesman said: "No."

Johnson's office has not yet received civil servant Sue Gray's report into the possible lockdown breaches, he added.