United Kingdom

LONDON, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The so-called "Uyghur Tribunal" is neither legal nor credible, but just another anti-China farce concocted by a few individuals with the end goal of using Xinjiang to contain China, the Chinese embassy in Britain has said.

The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it, the embassy said in a statement released on Sunday.

A four-day hearing scheduled to end on Monday is conducted by the "Uyghur Tribunal" in London and claims to gather evidence on whether the Chinese government committed "genocide" in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

London, Jun 7 (AP-PTI) England fast bowler Ollie Robinson was suspended from international cricket pending an investigation into discriminatory tweets he posted from 2012-13.

Robinson will not be available for the second test against New Zealand starting Thursday, the England and Wales Cricket Board said on Sunday.

Robinson made his test debut in the first match of the series at Lord's, taking seven wickets across New Zealand's two innings and also hitting 42 in England's first innings.

(Reuters) --- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday called for leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations to make a commitment to vaccinate the entire world against COVID-19 by the end of 2022 when they meet in Britain next week.

Johnson will host the first in-person summit in almost two years of G7 leaders - which follows a meeting of the group's finance ministers which wrapped up earlier in the day - and said he would seek a pledge to hit the global vaccination goal. 

(Reuters) --- British health minister Matt Hancock said on Sunday it was too early to say whether the government would stick to its plan to fully lift COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in England on June 21.

Hancock said there had been a "very significant" impact from the delta variant of COVID-19 first detected in India over the last month, which is now the dominant strain in England, according to official estimates.

(Reuters) --- The European Union's ambassador to the United Kingdom said on Sunday that levels of trust between the two powers was low ahead of Brexit talks on the Northern Ireland protocol this week, but added that he was confident it would improve.

"The levels of trust are low right now," Joao Vale de Almeida told Times Radio.

"We ultimately need to re-establish a minimum level of trust that allows us to find solutions, but this being said...I remain confident that we can get there."

LONDON (AP) — The world’s richest countries signed a landmark global agreement Saturday to confront tax avoidance and make sure that giant tech companies pay their fair share, Britain’s treasury chief said.

Treasury chief Rishi Sunak said finance ministers from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations signed the pact on the second and final day of meetings in London.

(Reuters) --- British judge Brenda Hale will step down from Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal next month when her three-year term expires, the judiciary said on Friday, a move that may deepen uncertainty over the role of foreign judges in the semi-autonomous city.

The departure of Hale, a former president of Britain's Supreme Court, comes amid international concern over the effect on the city of a national security law imposed by China's parliament a year ago.

04 June 2021; MEMO: Amnesty International has called on Iraq to reveal the whereabouts of 643 Sunni men and young boys who were kidnapped by the pro-Iran Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) during operations to retake Fallujah city from Daesh in 2016.

(Reuters) --- The top European Union court dismissed on Thursday Hungary's challenge against the opening in 2018 of a disciplinary procedure against Budapest for undermining democracy in the formerly communist country.

Budapest had challenged on procedural grounds a European Parliament vote three years ago stating that Prime Minister Viktor Orban's policies were posing "a clear risk of a serious breach by Hungary of the values on which the Union is founded."

LONDON, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Samples from a study suggesting that COVID-19 was circulating outside China by October 2019 have been re-tested at the World Health Organization's (WHO) request, a Reuters report quoted two scientists leading the research as saying on Tuesday.

While COVID-19 was first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, a study published last year suggested antibodies to either the virus or a variant had been detected elsewhere prior to the first confirmed report of the virus in China.