UK

LONDON—Brexit could “re-ignite” the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, two decades after the end of The Troubles that left more than 3,000 people dead, according to a new report. The report by legal experts, published Sept. 14, echoes concerns voiced by former UK Prime Minister John Major, who oversaw the creation of a power-sharing agreement […]

LONDON — Britain’s property market would crash and mortgage rates spiral up in the event of a chaotic no-deal Brexit, with house prices falling 35 percent over three years, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told ministers, The Times newspaper reported. The United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on March 29, and […]

Two men accused by the British government of being Russian spies who used a military-grade poison to try to kill a turncoat ex-KGB colonel and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury have gone on Russian television to say they were merely tourists. The suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, believed by Scotland Yard […]

Britain’s hate speech laws are already controversial, with critics saying they are stifling free speech and pulling resources from investigating real crimes. So when one police force went a step further and asked people to start reporting “non-crime hate incidents”—it didn’t go well. South Yorkshire Police were plugging a new campaign “Hate Hurts” on Sept. […]

LONDON—Britain will publish advice to businesses and the public on Thursday about how to cope with the disruption that exiting the European Union without a divorce deal would cause to everything from mobile phone roaming charges to vehicle standards. Recent signals from Brussels have buoyed hopes that the United Kingdom and the EU can agree […]

UK authorities have confirmed the second case of monkeypox ever recorded, just three days after the rare disease surfaced for the first time in the country. Authorities said that the two cases were not linked, other than by the fact that the victims had travelled to Nigeria. “All necessary precautions are being taken by specialist […]

New York has overtaken London as the world’s most attractive financial center, a survey said on Wednesday, as Britain’s decision to leave the European Union prompts banks to shift jobs out of the city to preserve access to Europe’s single market. Brexit poses the biggest challenge to the City of London’s finance industry since the […]

LONDON—A group of about 50 lawmakers in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government who oppose her proposals for a post-Brexit deal with the European Union have met to discuss how and when they could force her out of her job, the BBC reported on Sept. 12. The lawmakers, part of the European Research Group (ERG), […]

MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin says that Russia has identified the two men that Britain is seeking as suspects in the poisoning of a former Russian spy, and he insists that they are civilians. Britain last week charged the two Russians they allege are military intelligence agents in absentia with the Novichok poisoning of former Russian spy […]

A British baby who was born with her heart outside her body has been allowed to make visits home after months in hospital, the BBC reported on Sept. 10. Vanellope Wilkins was born last November with medics giving her less than a 10 percent chance of survival. However, after nine months and three operations for […]

LONDON—Otherwise innocent-looking beverage bottles, filled with acid or other dangerous liquids by criminals, have become increasingly devastating as weapons on UK streets. But now, police will have the power to search people carrying plastic bottles and test them on the spot under new government proposals that will strengthen so-called stop-and-search powers to include “corrosive substances.” The […]

LONDON—A man who mowed down pedestrians with a car near Britain’s parliament before stabbing a policeman ruined many lives in a matter of seconds, an inquest heard on Sept. 10, as it began with tributes to the victims and details of their last moments. On March 22, 2017, Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old British-born convert to […]

LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party faces a “catastrophic split” if she persists with her proposals on Brexit, which 80 or more of her lawmakers are prepared to vote against, a former junior minister said. Such public criticism, a day after former foreign minister Boris Johnson cast her Brexit plans as “a suicide vest” […]

A mother and child survived a train passing over them after they fell onto the tracks on the London underground. The woman’s husband had jumped down to help after their pram wheels tipped over the edge at Baker Street station, taking the woman with it, at around 10 p.m. on Sept. 7. As a train […]

LONDON—The Russian state has unleashed an online campaign of false information after the UK published proof that the novichok nerve-agent attacks in Salisbury were carried out by Russian assassins. The British government has identified dozens of false narratives created by Russia and its proxies that push back against allegations that agents of the Russian GRU military […]

LONDON— British Airways was forced to apologize on Sept. 7, after the credit card details of hundreds of thousands of its customers were stolen over a two-week period in the worst ever attack on its website and app. The airline discovered on Sept. 5, that bookings made between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5 had been […]

British police have published a series of surveillance images tracking the movements of two alleged Russian agents who authorities say traveled to England to execute a nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter. Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who exposed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy […]

An academic who criticized the airline Qantas for one of its flight attendants calling her Miss instead of Doctor has ignited a heated online debate about whether the airline should be blamed. Dr. Siobhan O’Dwyer, an Australian psychology researcher based in Exeter, UK, tweeted on Friday, Aug. 31, about the way she was addressed when […]

LONDON—British fruit and vegetable farmers will be able to recruit non-European Union migrants on temporary visas after Brexit to help ease labor shortages during busy periods, the British government said on Thursday. Agriculture relies on EU workers and farmers have warned that a shortage of labor since Britain’s 2016 vote to quit the bloc will […]

LONDON—More than a fifth of meat sold in the UK contains DNA from animals not listed on the packaging, new data from the UK’s food watchdog suggests. Of 665 items sampled in 2017 by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), 145 partly or wholly consisted of meat other than the one specified. Some contained DNA from […]