United Kingdom

LONDON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday said that the United States, the world's top military power, was directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine because U.S. spies were approving and coordinating Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian forces.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war.

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Anatoly Chubais, the former privatisation tsar of post-Soviet Russia who quit his post as a Kremlin special envoy due to the war in Ukraine, is in intensive care in Europe with a rare immune disorder, two sources close to Chubais told Reuters.

Chubais, 67, believes he is suffering from Guillain–Barre syndrome, a disease caused by the immune system damaging the peripheral nervous system, said the sources.

"He thinks it's a disease," the first source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "Doctors say they found it in time."

01 August 2022; MEMO: The Big Ride for Palestine took to the roads and cycle tracks of England's midlands and north-west over the weekend to raise awareness of the Palestinian issue and funds for children and para-cyclists in the besieged Gaza Strip. More than 250 riders left Derby city centre on Friday morning and headed for Manchester via Stoke on Trent.

LONDON (AP) — Two people are running to be Britain’s next prime minister, but a third presence looms over the contest: Margaret Thatcher.

The late former prime minister dominated Britain in the 1980s, and has left a large and contested legacy. Critics see her as an intransigent ideologue whose free-market policies frayed social bonds and gutted the country’s industrial communities. But for the governing Conservative Party, Thatcher is an icon, an inspiration and the presiding spirit who made Britain fit for the modern era.

LONDON (AP) — Moves by rich countries to buy large quantities of monkeypox vaccine, while declining to share doses with Africa, could leave millions of people unprotected against a more dangerous version of the disease and risk continued spillovers of the virus into humans, public health officials are warning.

Critics fear a repeat of the catastrophic inequity problems seen during the coronavirus pandemic.

LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) - Britain's defence minister Ben Wallace said on Friday that Russia was failing in "many areas" in its war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin might seek to change strategy again.

"The Russians are failing at the moment on the ground in many areas ... Putin's plan A, B, and C has failed and he may look to plan D," Wallace told Sky News television.

LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) - London's High Court has rejected President Nicolas Maduro's latest efforts to gain control of more than $1 billion of Venezuela's gold reserves stored in the Bank of England's underground vaults in London.

The court ruled on Friday that previous decisions by the Maduro-backed Venezuelan Supreme Court aimed at reducing opposition leader Juan Guaido's say over the gold, should be disregarded.

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the European countries using the euro currency shot up to another record in July, pushed by higher energy prices fueled by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the economy still managed better-than-expected, if meager, growth in the second quarter.

Annual inflation in the eurozone’s 19 countries rose to 8.9% in July, an increase from 8.6% in June, according to numbers published Friday by the European Union statistics agency.

LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - Russia on Thursday said there was no deal yet with the United States on swapping detained U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner and a former marine for a jailed Russian cast by prosecutors as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had made a "substantial offer" to Russia to release U.S. citizens held in Russia, and a source said that Washington was willing to exchange convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the "Merchant of Death." 

LONDON (AP) — A British judge jailed a man who killed his grandfather for life Thursday in the first crown court sentencing to be televised in Britain.

Judge Sarah Munro’s remarks were the first to be broadcast live on news channels after a change in law to allow cameras in British crown courts, which deal with serious criminal cases.

The legal change was made in 2020, but it was only implemented Thursday because of delays due to the coronavirus pandemic.