United Kingdom

LONDON, June 18 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered an embarrassing defeat in a election on the outskirts of London on Friday, when his governing Conservative Party lost a previously safe parliamentary seat to the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives had comfortably held the leafy, affluent Chesham and Amersham constituency in southern England since its creation in 1974, capturing more than 50% of the vote on every occasion. At the last poll in 2019, Conservative Cheryl Gillan, who died this year, won by a majority of 16,223 votes.

LONDON (AP) — Scotch single malt whisky makers breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after the United States agreed to suspend tariffs on one of Scotland’s main exports in the wake of the resolution of a long-standing transatlantic trade row over subsidies to aircraft companies Boeing and Airbus.

President Donald Trump imposed the 25% tariffs on select products of the European Union, including Scotch single malt whiskies, in October 2019 as part of the trade dispute. While the U.K. is no longer an EU member, it belonged to the bloc when the tariffs were introduced.

London, Jun 16 (PTI) Around 1 million people in the UK aged 21 and 22 will begin to be called forward on Wednesday to book their coronavirus vaccine, as the National Health Service (NHS) led COVID-19 vaccination programme expanded the age-based rollout to cover further younger categories.

June 16 (Reuters) - Britain is considering easing travel restrictions for double vaccinated people, a move which would placate airlines who are threatening legal action against the government’s strict curbs on trips abroad.

Pressure is building in the aviation industry, with airlines desperate for restrictions to be relaxed in time for July and the peak season when they make most of their profits, but Britain sticking to quarantine requirements which deter travel.

LONDON (AP) — Northern Ireland’s biggest political parties appear set to agree on a new government Thursday after ending a standoff that threatened to scuttle the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing administration.

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party has picked Northern Ireland Assembly member Paul Givan as its choice of first minister. But the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein had threatened not to fill the post of deputy because of a feud about protections for the Irish language.

LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) - Britain is keeping all options on the table as a response in a dispute with the European Union over part of their Brexit deal covering Northern Ireland, Brexit minister David Frost said on Wednesday, adding that talks were not making much progress.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he could trigger emergency measures in the Northern Ireland protocol after its implementation at the beginning of this year has seen disruption to trade between Britain and its province.

(Reuters) --- London's police corruptly concealed failings in the investigation of the 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, an 8-year inquiry into the handling of the case has found.

Morgan was found murdered in a pub car park in south-east London on March 10 1987, though no one has been brought to justice for the killing.

London, Jun 15 (PTI) The Delta variant of coronavirus, first identified in India, doubles the risk of hospitalisation compared with the Alpha variant first found in the UK, but Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines provide good protection against the strain, says a study published in The Lancet journal.

Researchers at Public Health Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, UK, found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offered better protection against the Delta variant compared to the Oxford-AstraZeneca preventive, known as Covishield in India.

London, Jun 14 (PTI) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce a four-week delay to an end to all legal lockdown restrictions in the country when he makes a statement later on Monday in relation to so-called Freedom Day , which was set for June 21.

The last and fourth stage of the lockdown roadmap is now expected around July 19 instead amid a worrying spike in cases of the Delta variant, which experts fear will result in greater hospitalisations in the coming weeks.

LONDON, June 13. /TASS/: G7 leaders have urged Belarusian authorities to hold "new free and fair elections," according to the final communique approved on Sunday after the three-day summit of leaders of the UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, the US, France and Japan in the seaside resort of Carbis Bay in Cornwall, UK.