United Kingdom

22 Oct 2021; MEMO: Less than a third of Brits support UK trade deals with Saudi Arabia, according to recently released government figures on public attitudes which were revealed as the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, meets senior figures in the oil-rich kingdom.

A survey carried out by the Department for International Trade (DIT) earlier this year showed just 27 per cent of the public would support a trade deal with Saudi Arabia compared with 64 per cent for both Australia and New Zealand, for example, and 57 per cent for the US.

LONDON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - British police on Thursday charged a 25-year-old Londoner of Somali heritage with stabbing a lawmaker to death in a church, a case that has raised fears about the safety of elected politicians.

Prosecutor James Cable told the court that Ali Harbi Ali, the son of an ex-media adviser to a former prime minister of Somalia, was an Islamic State supporter who had for years planned to kill a member of parliament.

20 Oct 2021; MEMO: All investigations into the war crimes and abuses committed by British soldiers in Iraq have now been closed, without resulting in any prosecutions.

The Service Police Legacy Investigations (SPLI), which was staffed by Royal Navy Police and Royal Air Force Police, has investigated the claims by Iraqi civilians of British soldiers' serious criminal behaviour which are alleged to have taken place from 2003 during the US-led invasion, until 2009.

LONDON (AP) — The world needs to cut by more than half its production of coal, oil and gas in the coming decade to maintain a chance of keeping global warming from reaching dangerous levels, according to a U.N.-backed study released Wednesday.

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The brother of a suicide bomber who killed 22 people in Manchester in May 2017 has left Britain ahead of a scheduled appearance on Thursday at a public inquiry investigating the attack, the inquiry was told on Tuesday.

Salman Abedi blew himself up at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena venue, as parents arrived to collect their children. Among those killed were seven children, the youngest aged eight, while 237 people were injured.

LONDON (AP) — Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform that promises to connect people virtually but could raise concerns about privacy and the social platform gaining more control over people’s online lives.

The company said in a blog post Sunday that those high-skilled workers will help build “the metaverse,” a futuristic notion for connecting online that uses augmented and virtual reality.

NAIROBI/LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Ali Harbi Ali, the son of an ex-media adviser to a former prime minister of Somalia, has been arrested by British police under anti-terrorism laws following the killing of lawmaker David Amess, a source close to the investigation and British media said.

Amess, 69, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party, was knifed repeatedly as he met constituency voters in a church on Friday in Leigh-on-Sea, east of London.

17 Oct 2021; MEMO: Two​​ cyclists broke the world record for the largest GPS drawing ever created, spelling out 'Refugees Welcome' to raise funds for a charity welcoming in refugees.

Georgie, from Glasgow, and David, from Bournemouth, are part of a community of cyclists called Thighs Of Steel, who have raised over a quarter of a million pounds for grassroots refugee projects by cycling thousands of miles from London to Athens every summer since 2015.

However, this year was different.

LEIGH-ON-SEA, England, Oct 16 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday laid flowers outside the church where a lawmaker was stabbed to death a day earlier, in what police say was a terrorist attack probably linked to Islamist extremism.

The attack on David Amess, from Johnson's Conservative Party, comes five years after the murder of Jo Cox, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, and has prompted a review of the security of elected politicians.

LEIGH-ON-SEA, England (AP) — A long-serving member of Parliament was stabbed to death Friday during a meeting with constituents at a church in England, in what police said was a terrorist incident. A 25-year-old man was arrested in connection with the attack, which united Britain’s fractious politicians in shock and sorrow.