Europe

BRAEMAR, Scotland (Reuters) - Britain recorded the lowest temperature in 26 years on Thursday after a bitingly cold blast of Siberian weather swirled in from Russia, pushing temperatures down to minus 23 Celsius in the Scottish Highlands.

The temperature in the village of Braemar fell to minus 23C (minus 9.4 Fahrenheit) at 0813 GMT, the lowest temperature recorded since 1995, and the lowest February temperature in Britain since 1955 when Winston Churchill was still prime minister.

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. tariffs could hinder a rebound in French wine and spirits exports, after a 13.9% drop in 2020, if coronavirus restrictions that shut restaurants, bars and airport duty free stores in many countries were to be lifted, industry group FEVS said.

Sales abroad of wines and spirits - France’s second-biggest export after the aerospace industry - fell by 2 billion euros to 12.1 billion euros ($14.7 billion), the Federation of French Wines and Spirit Exporters (FEVS) said on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Thursday, paring recent gains, as renewed lockdowns and the emergence of new coronavirus variants weighed on the prospects for a swift demand recovery.

Brent crude fell 44 cents, or 0.7%, to $61.03 a barrel by 1321 GMT and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude lost 42 cents, or 0.7%, to $58.26.

The Brent benchmark had risen in the previous nine sessions, its longest sustained period of gains since January 2019. Wednesday had marked the eighth daily gain for U.S. crude.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said on Thursday that the UK’s exit from the European Union is the reason for tensions between London and Brussels over Northern Ireland, not the protocol agreed between the two sides over their divorce.

“The difficulties on the island of Ireland are caused by Brexit, not by the protocol,” Michel Barnier told a European Business Summit event. “The protocol is the solution.

LONDON (Reuters) - Scottish support for independence has fallen four percentage points, probably due to divisions among Scottish nationalists, but 47% of Scots still support breaking up the United Kingdom by going it alone, a poll indicated on Thursday.

A Savanta ComRes poll for The Scotsman showed 47% would vote for independence and 42% would vote against, up 4 percentage points, with 10% still undecided.

07 Feb 2021; MEMO: The following is the full text of a letter published and co-signed by over five dozen British academics, rejecting the UK government's adoption of the IHRA's 'working definition of antisemitism'.

HELSINKI, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- An automatic emergency shutdown of the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in southwestern Finland on Dec. 10 was caused by a human operation error, not any technological fault or equipment breakdown, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) reported on Wednesday.

This was the first emergency shutdown of a nuclear plant in Finland, since the start of using nuclear energy in the national power grid in the mid-1970s.

LONDON (AP) — When army generals in Myanmar staged a coup last week, they briefly cut internet access in an apparent attempt to stymie protests. In Uganda, residents couldn’t use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after a recent election. And in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the internet has been down for months amid a wider conflict.

KALININGRAD, February 10. /TASS/: The Yantar Shipyard on the Baltic coast (part of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation) will repair the world’s largest air-cushion small amphibious assault ship Yevgeny Kocheshkov operational in the Baltic Fleet, Shipyard Spokesman Sergei Mikhailov told TASS on Wednesday.

"On February 9, the air-cushion small amphibious assault ship Yevgeny Kocheshkov docked at the Yantar Shipyard. The Shipyard’s specialists will inspect the ship and determine the required amount of repair works," the spokesman said.

MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/: Moscow’s Basmanny Court has arrested head of the network of Alexey Navalny’s regional headquarters Leonid Volkov in absentia for calling on teenagers to take part in unlawful rallies, the court’s spokesperson Irina Sofinskaya told TASS.

She noted that the court had ruled to put Volkov into custody and to place him on an international wanted list. This measure of restraint will be enforced for two months since his detention on Russian territory or since his extradition to Russia, the spokesperson added.