United Kingdom

LONDON (AP) — A former British soldier facing terrorism charges who snuck out of a London prison on a food delivery truck was captured Saturday, police said.

Daniel Abed Khalife was nabbed while riding a bicycle along a canal path west of London after a four-day manhunt.

Khalife escaped from the Wandsworth Prison kitchen Wednesday and got outside the gates by strapping himself to the bottom of a catering truck.

LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces another difficult vote to fill a vacant seat in parliament after a lawmaker who was given an eight-week suspension for groping two men at a London club last year announced he plans to resign.

Chris Pincher, who now sits as an independent, announced on Thursday he would leave the House of Commons more than a year after he was suspended from the ruling Conservative Party by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year.

LONDON, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Average house prices in the United Kingdom (UK) fell by 4.6 percent year-on-year in August, the biggest yearly drop since 2009, as the "impact of higher rates flows through," UK mortgage lender Halifax said on Thursday.

On a monthly basis, the average house price fell by 1.9 percent in August, the largest monthly fall since November 2022, marking the fifth consecutive month of decreasing house prices.

LONDON (AP) — British police hunted across the country on Thursday and put ports and airports on alert for a former soldier who escaped from a London prison while awaiting trial on terrorism charges.

Opposition politicians demanded to know how Daniel Abed Khalife managed to slip out of medium-security Wandsworth Prison and why he was not being held at a maximum-security facility.

Khalife, 21, is accused of planting fake bombs at a military base and of violating Britain’s Official Secrets Act by gathering information “that could be useful to an enemy.”

LONDON (AP) — Britain is rejoining the European Union’s $100 billion science-sharing program Horizon Europe, the two sides announced Thursday, more than two years after the country’s membership became a casualty of Brexit.

British scientists expressed relief at the decision, the latest sign of thawing relations between the EU and its former member nation.

LONDON, September 5. /TASS/: The destruction of the UK-made Challenger 2 tank near Rabotino in the Zaporozhye area is the first such incident in the last 30 years these tanks have been used in battle, The Guardian reported citing military experts.

The Guardian points out that only one such tank, which entered combat in 1994, was hit in 2003 in Iraq, but that tank was destroyed in a friendly fire incident, not an enemy attack. Meanwhile, the report points out that such statistics can be explained by the small number of tanks produced and their infrequent deployment.

LONDON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Armenia's prime minister has said his country's policy of solely relying on Russia to guarantee its security was a strategic mistake because Moscow has been unable to deliver and is in the process of winding down its role in the wider region.

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published on Sunday, Nikol Pashinyan accused Russia of failing to ensure Armenia's security in the face of what he said was aggression from neighbouring Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

LONDON, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Grant Shapps, who has been serving as Britain's energy secretary, has replaced Ben Wallace as Britain's new defense secretary, the office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Thursday.

It is the fifth cabinet job for Shapps, 54, in a year. His previous roles were energy secretary, transport secretary and home secretary.

"I'd like to pay tribute to the enormous contribution Ben Wallace has made to UK defense & global security over the last 4 years," Shapps wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, following the appointment.

29 August 2023; MEMO: The Humans for Rights Network has identified an increasing number of cases in which child refugees who have arrived in the United Kingdom on small boats are being held in adult prisons alongside sex offenders. Several of these minors, particularly those from Sudan and South Sudan, appear to have been victims of trafficking or exploitation.

30 August 2023; MEMO: Amnesty International has condemned Israel’s “punitive” demolition of Palestinian child detainee’s home, stressing he is being punished for a fault he did not commit.