United Kingdom

LONDON (AP) — Staffers at the World Health Organization’s Syrian office have alleged that their boss mismanaged millions of dollars, plied government officials with gifts -- including computers, gold coins and cars -- and acted frivolously as COVID-19 swept the country.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Liz Truss quit Thursday after a tumultuous and historically brief term marred by economic policies that roiled financial markets and a rebellion in her political party that obliterated her authority.

Truss became the third Conservative prime minister to be toppled in as many years, extending the instability that has shaken Britain since it broke off from the European Union and leaving its leadership in limbo as the country faces a cost-of-living crisis and looming recession.

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - New steps from Group of Seven countries to cap Russian oil sales at an enforced low price will not be replicated against OPEC producers, whose plans to cut output have irked consumer countries, a United States Treasury official told Reuters.

Washington has communicated to representatives of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reassure them of those limits to its plans and has maintained from the beginning that the cap would not target other oil producers, the official added.

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The British government on Wednesday won a vote in parliament on fracking it had earlier told Conservative lawmakers it was treating as a confidence vote.

Members of parliament voted by 326 to 230 against introducing a ban on fracking for shale gas.

LONDON (AP) — British food prices rose at the fastest pace since 1980 last month, driving inflation back to a 40-year high and heaping pressure on the embattled government to balance the books without gutting help for the nation’s poorest residents.

Food prices jumped 14.6% in the year through September, led by the soaring cost of staples such as meat, bread, milk and eggs, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. That pushed consumer price inflation back to 10.1%, the highest since early 1982 and equal to the level last reached in July.

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Liz Truss described herself as “a fighter and not a quitter” Wednesday as she faced down a hostile opposition and fury from her own Conservative Party over her botched economic plan.

Yet the grim faces of Conservative lawmakers behind her in the House of Commons suggested that Truss faces an uphill struggle to save her job. Within hours of Truss’ appearance at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session, a senior member of her government left her post with a fusillade of criticism.

18 October 2022; MEMO: Sanaa Seif, the sister of the detained Egyptian political activist, Alaa Abdelfattah, confirmed that she witnessed detainees being tortured during her detention in Egypt.

LONDON (AP) — Powerless, humiliated, labeled a “ghost” prime minister and compared unfavorably to a head of lettuce — this is not a good week for Liz Truss.

Britain’s prime minister was scrambling to recover her grasp on power Tuesday after her economic plans were ripped up and repudiated by a Treasury chief whom she was forced to appoint to avoid meltdown on the financial markets.

Truss remains in office, for now, largely because her Conservative Party is divided over how to replace her.

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has set Russia on a path towards turmoil that could unseat the Kremlin chief, trigger civil war or even ultimately break the country apart, said a Russian diplomat who resigned over the war.

Boris Bondarev, a counsellor at Russia's permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva, resigned in May because he felt the war had shown how repressive and warped his homeland had become.

LONDON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Liz Truss did not appear in parliament on Monday to answer a question about why the former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked last week, drawing accusations from the opposition Labour Party that she was "scared of her own shadow".

Such was the taunting from opposition parties that at one point Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons standing in for Truss, insisted that: "The prime minister is not under a desk."

Mordaunt said the reason for the PM's absence was "very genuine" but she did not elaborate.