United Kingdom

LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Britain must have a military capable of fighting in Europe and defeating Russia, the new head of the British army was quoted as telling troops by local media.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a vocal supporter of Ukraine since Russia's invasion in February, has ruled out sending British troops to help Kyiv, but warned this weekend that London would have to show support for "the long haul". 

LONDON (AP) — The price of bitcoin fell below $20,000 for the first time since late 2020 on Saturday, in a fresh sign that the selloff in cryptocurrencies is deepening.

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, fell below the psychologically important threshold, dropping as much as 9% to less than $19,000, according to CoinDesk.

The last time bitcoin was at this level was November 2020, when it was on its way up to its all-time high of nearly $69,000.

Bitcoin has now lost more than 70 percent of its value since reaching that peak.

17 June 2022; MEMO: British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, signed an order to extradite WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, to the US on Friday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Assange's extradition order was passed to the Secretary by the UK courts last month, confirming that the US assurances on how Assange would be treated were sufficient for extradition.

LONDON, June 17 (Xinhua) -- British Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face espionage charges, the Home Office confirmed on Friday.

Britain's Westminster Magistrates' Court issued a formal order in April to extradite Assange, leaving the final decision to Patel. Assange and lawyers for the United States have gone through several rounds of legal battle over the past months that reached up to the British Supreme Court.

LONDON (AP) — The British government has ordered the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges. WikiLeaks said it would appeal.

Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the extradition order on Friday, her department said. It follows a British court ruling in April that Assange could be sent to the U.S. over WikiLeaks’ publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

LONDON (AP) — The ethics adviser to Britain’s scandal-hit Prime Minister Boris Johnson has quit and accused the Conservative government of planning to flout conduct rules, weeks after a separate investigation criticized the U.K. leader for overseeing a culture of government rule-breaking.

Christopher Geidt stepped down late Wednesday with a terse statement saying “with regret, I feel that it is right that I am resigning from my post as Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests.” Johnson’s office said it was surprised by the decision.

LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday that the West had "shot itself in the head" by trying to limit energy imports from the oil and gas fields of Siberia due to the Ukraine conflict, in sharp contrast to China which has increased deliveries of energy.

The war in Ukraine - and the West's attempt to isolate Russia as punishment for the invasion - have sent the price of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soaring while Europe has vowed to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas.

LONDON (AP) — Britain canceled a flight that was scheduled to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda late Tuesday after the European Court of Human Rights intervened, saying the plan carried “a real risk of irreversible harm.”

The decision to scrap the flight capped three days of frantic court challenges from immigrant rights lawyers who launched a flurry of case-by-case appeals seeking to block the deportation of everyone on the government’s list.

LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been abruptly transferred from the prison where he is serving an 11-1/2 year sentence to an undisclosed location, nearly two years since he was poisoned with what the West said was a nerve agent.

Navalny, by far Russia's most prominent opposition leader, casts President Vladimir Putin's Russia as a dystopian state run by thieves and criminals where wrong is cast as right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed elite.

LONDON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The United Kingdom (UK) on Monday introduced a bill to change parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit trade deal, while the European Union (EU) said unilateral action is damaging to mutual trust and threatened legal action.

"PRACTICAL PROBLEMS"