England

LONDON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Future pandemics could be even more lethal than COVID-19 so the lessons learned from the outbreak must not be squandered and the world should ensure it is prepared for the next viral onslaught, one of the creators of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine said.

The novel coronavirus has killed 5.26 million people across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, wiped out trillions of dollars in economic output and turned life upside down for billions of people.

LONDON, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The United States could rebrand itself by helping overcome the global COVID-19 vaccine shortage, the Financial Times said recently in an opinion article.

"The U.S. could show itself capable of giving the world's poor what they need, as opposed to lecturing from a distance," it said.

According to the World Bank's Multilateral Data Dashboard, though the U.S. has promised 1 billion doses of vaccines to the world's poorer countries, "just 111 million have been shipped, which is enough to give 5 percent of Africa one dose," the article said.

LONDON (AP) — A British court on Thursday dismissed an appeal by a newspaper publisher seeking to overturn an earlier ruling that it breached the privacy of the Duchess of Sussex by publishing portions of a letter she wrote to her estranged father.

The Court of Appeal in London upheld a High Court ruling in February that publication of the letter that the former Meghan Markle wrote to her father Thomas Markle after she married Prince Harry in 2018 was “manifestly excessive and hence unlawful.

LONDON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday that everyone over the age of 18 will be offered a booster vaccine by the end of January and another lockdown "extremely unlikely".

Speaking at a Downing Street news briefing on Tuesday, the prime minister said the rollout of booster programme will go in age order, and that there will be more than 1,500 community pharmacy sites in England offering the jabs.

LONDON (AP) — A U.K. parliamentary committee on Wednesday criticized government plans to deter migrants from trying to reach Britain in small boats, saying the measures will endanger lives without stopping dangerous journeys like the one that killed 27 people last week.

LONDON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- While there is marked difference between U.S. red states and blue states in COVID-19 vaccination rate, the United States as a whole trails every other advanced country in vaccine uptake as its people selfishly put themselves first, The Guardian said in an opinion article Sunday.

LONDON, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Israel urged world leaders to keep up pressure on Iran and not lift sanctions as part of nuclear negotiations that were set to resume in Vienna on Monday, saying that tighter supervision of Tehran was needed.

Negotiators were to convene in a last-ditch effort to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal abandoned three years later by the United States under then-President Donald Trump, who then reimposed sweeping U.S. sanctions on Iran. That led to breaches of the deal by Tehran, and dismayed the other powers involved.

SUNDERLAND, England, Nov 29 (Reuters) - When Britain left the European Union on Jan. 31 last year, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his top ministers travelled to Sunderland for a special cabinet meeting and hailed "a new chapter in the United Kingdom's story."

The post-industrial city, in northeast England, holds a special significance for Johnson and his fellow Brexit campaigners. It became known as "Brexit city" when it was the first region to fall to the "Leave" side in a 2016 referendum, with support of nearly two thirds of Sunderland voters.

LONDON (AP) — The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries on Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.

The U.K. on Saturday tightened its rules on mask-wearing and on testing of international arrivals after finding two cases. New cases were confirmed Saturday in Germany and Italy, with Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong also reporting that the variant has been found in travelers.

LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, who was among 27 migrants who died trying to cross the Channel between France and Britain this week, has become the first victim to be named by British media.

The migrants died when their dinghy deflated as they made a perilous crossing of the English Channel on Wednesday, the worst tragedy on record in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, 24, made the journey in order to see her fiance, the BBC reported, citing family members and a close friend.