England

LONDON (AP) — The World Bank says Ukraine’s economy will shrink by 45.1% this year because of Russia’s invasion, which has shut down half of the country’s businesses, choked off imports and exports, and damaged a vast amount of critical infrastructure.

Unprecedented financial and export sanctions imposed by Western allies in response to the war, meanwhile, are plunging Russia into a deep recession, lopping off more than a tenth of its economic growth, the World Bank said in a report Sunday.

LONDON (AP) — For many in the U.K., the pandemic may as well be over.

Mask requirements have been dropped. Free mass testing is a thing of the past. And for the first time since spring 2020, people can go abroad for holidays without ordering tests or filling out lengthy forms.

That sense of freedom is widespread even as infections soared in Britain in March, driven by the milder but more transmissible omicron BA.2 variant that’s rapidly spreading around Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere.

LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi Sunak considered whether he should resign this week after a storm of criticism over his wealthy wife's tax status, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

"He was considering whether he could withstand his family taking this any more," the newspaper quoted an unidentified source as saying.

A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that Sunak did not consider resigning.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Saturday joined the stream of European leaders showing their support for Ukraine by traveling to the nation’s capital for face-to-face meetings with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

LONDON, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Several countries are now abandoning their goal of reducing the coronavirus's spread as much as possible, but evidence shows this was the best route to be taken, New Scientist has reported.

It has been two years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. One of the biggest shifts has been the abandonment of the "zero-COVID" strategy by countries like New Zealand and Vietnam, which are opening up and allowing the virus to spread.

LONDON (AP) — A major British airport warned passengers on Friday to expect the delays plaguing travel to continue for months, as the U.K. aviation regulator told the country’s air industry to shape up after weeks of canceled flights and long airport queues.

The head of Manchester Airport in northwest England said passengers could face waits of up to 90 minutes to get through security “over the next few months.”

LONDON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A new report has concluded that while the novel coronavirus did not discriminate between rich and poor, the U.S. society and government did, The Guardian reported on Monday.

Based on an analysis of data from more than 3,000 counties across the United States, the Poor People's Pandemic Report found that people in poorer counties have died overall at almost twice the rate of those in richer counties, The Guardian said.

LONDON (AP) — Shell says its decision to pull out of Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine has already cost the international energy giant as much as $5 billion.

The reduced value of Russian assets, credit losses and “onerous” contract terms will cut earnings for the first three months of the year by between $4 billion and $5 billion, London-based Shell said Thursday. The estimate was part of an update released before publication of complete first-quarter earnings on May 5.

LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - When a little known far-right politician called Vladimir Zhirinovsky claimed third place behind Boris Yeltsin in Russia's 1991 presidential election, it looked like a flash in the pan.

In fact it marked the start of a career spanning more than three decades in which he specialised at picking the scabs of Russian resentment and insecurity resulting from the break-up of the Soviet Union.

LONDON, April 6 (Reuters) - A British man who worked in the British embassy in Berlin has been charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act related to passing on information useful to Russia, London police said.

David Ballantyne Smith, 57, who was living in Potsdam, Germany and was employed as a security guard at the embassy, was extradited to Britain from Germany on Wednesday following his arrest by German police in August 2021, the police said.