United Kingdom

LONDON (AP) — The British government is working to fix a technical problem that caused electronic border gates at airports around the country to stop working late Friday, leading to hourslong waits for travelers entering the U.K. at the start of a busy holiday weekend.

Travelers posted photos of long lines at airports around the country as all incoming passengers were forced to use manned passport desks, instead of the automatic gates equipped with electronic passport scanners.

LONDON, May 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Net migration in the UK hit a record 606,000 in 2022, official figures showed on Thursday, heaping pressure on the government, which has pledged to cut dependency on foreign labour.

Responding to the figures, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described legal immigration levels as “too high”.

“It’s as simple as that and I want to bring them down,” he told ITV in an interview.

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) - British actor Hugh Grant's claims that journalists at the Sun used private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house can proceed to trial, but his allegations about voicemail interception were made too late, London’s High Court ruled on Friday.

Grant, alongside King Charles' son Prince Harry, is suing Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) for widespread alleged unlawful information gathering that he says was committed on behalf of its tabloid, the Sun.

LONDON (AP) — British Airways canceled dozens of flights on Friday due to computer problems, disrupting the plans of thousands of travelers at the start of a busy holiday weekend.

Most of the 42 affected flights were on short-haul routes to and from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport. Computer issues on Thursday caused planes and crew to be out of position Friday, which was expected to be the busiest day for U.K. air travel since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Other flights were delayed, as some passengers were unable to check in online.

LONDON, May 25 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has become a key trade hub for Russian gold since Western sanctions over Ukraine cut Russia's more traditional export routes, Russian customs records show.

The records, which contain details of nearly a thousand gold shipments between Feb. 24, 2022 and March 3 this year, reveal the names of over 100 non-Russian companies that have handled Russian gold since Western markets banned imports from Moscow.

The shipments in the records, supplied to Reuters by a commercial provider, may not cover all exports in the period.

LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) - The director of a top Russian science institute, arrested on suspicion of treason along with two other hypersonic missile technology experts, stands accused of betraying secrets to China, two people familiar with the case told Reuters.

Alexander Shiplyuk, head of Siberia's Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ITAM), is suspected of handing over classified material at a scientific conference in China in 2017, the sources said.

LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) - Prince Harry on Tuesday lost his legal bid to challenge the British government's refusal to let him pay for his own police protection when he is in the United Kingdom.

Harry, King Charles' younger son, was stripped of the police security usually afforded to royal figures in the United Kingdom after he and his American wife Meghan stepped down from their official roles in 2020 to move to the United States.

LONDON (AP) — Several dozen youths pelted police with objects and set cars and trash bins ablaze in Cardiff in local unrest that erupted after two teenagers died in a road crash, officials said Tuesday.

Police said they were supporting the bereaved families and arresting the rioters — but faced questions about whether officers’ actions contributed to the fatal crash. Two teenage boys, ages 15 and 16, died in a crash involving an electronic bicycle in the Ely district of the Welsh capital on Monday evening, police said.

LONDON (AP) — The European Union slapped Meta with a record $1.3 billion privacy fine Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. cybersnooping fears.

The penalty of 1.2 billion euros is the biggest since the EU’s strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon’s 746 million euro fine in 2021 for data protection violations.

22 May 2023; AA: Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein achieved a significant victory in Northern Ireland's local elections, becoming the largest party for the first time, according to local media reports.

Following the completion of vote counting late Saturday, Sinn Fein, which advocates for the unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, secured 144 out of 462 local government seats.

This marked an increase of 39 seats compared to the previous local government elections in 2019.