England

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Conservative government on Friday defended its decision to hike taxes for millions of working people in the “squeezed middle” class as it tries to shore up an economy battered by double-digit inflation and the reckless tax-cutting of recently ousted Prime Minister Liz Truss.

LONDON, Nov 17 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — The ball Argentine football star Diego Maradona punched through English keeper Peter Shilton’s fists to score the opening goal of the quarterfinal match the eventual champions went past during the Mexico 1986 World Cup sold Wednesday at auction for £2 million (US$2.4 million).

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has pledged help to the most vulnerable weather Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, even as he announced a raft of spending cuts and tax increases designed to mend the country’s battered finances.

LONDON (AP) — The British government was increasing the windfall tax on the profits of oil and natural gas companies in an emergency budget announced Thursday that was aimed at restoring the nation’s economic credibility and patching up its battered finances.

Saying the U.K. faces “unprecedented global headwinds,” Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt is unveiling tax increases and spending cuts in a speech to the House of Commons in a bid to tame double-digit inflation and rein in a growing deficit.

LONDON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Iran's intelligence services have made at least 10 attempts to kidnap or even kill British nationals or individuals based in the United Kingdom regarded by Tehran as a threat, the head of Britain's domestic spy agency said on Wednesday.

Ken McCallum, Director General of the Security Service known as MI5, said while Tehran was using violence to silence critics at home, its "aggressive intelligence services" were also projecting a threat to Britain directly.

LONDON, Nov 11 (Reuters) - The dollar headed for its biggest two-day drop in almost 14 years on Friday, as investors piled into riskier assets after a cooler reading of U.S. inflation helped temper expectations for the Federal Reserve to keep raising rates as quickly.

Data on Thursday showed consumer inflation rose 7.7% year-on-year in October, its slowest rate since January and below forecasts for 8%.

The dollar staged its biggest drop since late 2015 on Thursday as Treasury yields plunged, while other currencies - the yen and the pound in particular - jumped.

LONDON, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- The number of working-age adults in the UK who are currently unemployed has increased by half a million since 2019, the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. This has mainly been caused by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Around 2.5 million people were economically inactive due to long-term sickness in the summer of 2022, compared to around two million people in the spring of 2019, said the ONS on Thursday.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s economy shrank in the three months to September, official statistics said Friday, as forecasters warned of many months of contraction to come.

The Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product fell by 0.2% between July and September, a smaller-than-expected contraction that nevertheless is seen to signal the start of a long recession.

LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - The British government said on Thursday it had frozen assets worth more than 18 billion pounds ($20.5 billion) held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and businesses sanctioned over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has overtaken Libya and Iran to become Britain's most-sanctioned nation, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), part of the finance ministry, said in its annual report.

The frozen Russian assets were 6 billion pounds more than the amount reported across all other British sanctions regimes.

LONDON/BRUSSELS, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Oil-laden tankers risk being left languishing at sea if insurers do not urgently get clarity on an unfinished G7 and European Union plan to cap the price of Russian crude, two senior industry executives told Reuters.

The Group of Seven (G7), which includes the United States, Britain, Germany and France, agreed in September to enforce a low price on sales of Russian oil.