International

• Tuesday, January 2nd 2018 - 10:53 UTC

  Japan prepared to lift its ban on beef imports from Uruguay

  

  Japan is planning to lift a ban on beef imports from Uruguay next year, ending a more than 17-year embargo following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the South American nation in 2000, according to government sources in Tokyo.

• Tuesday, January 2nd 2018 - 10:44 UTC

  Royal Mint coins to celebrate Frankenstein, the Armistice, Women's vote and RAF

  

  The United Kingdom will make new coins this year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein’’ as well as commemorate a century since women started gaining the right to vote. Designs on special two-pound coins will also honor the end of the First World War and the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, the U.K.’s Royal Mint said in a statement.

• Tuesday, January 2nd 2018 - 06:33 UTC

  UK's foreign aid will go to projects that promote government aims and interests

  

  The UK's aid budget will be shifted to projects that promote its interests, the foreign secretary Boris Johnson said underlining the money will be “more sensibly distributed” to support foreign policy aims such as denying safe havens to Islamist militants.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 10:18 UTC

  Margaret Thatcher's panda-phobia: “the history of pandas...is unlucky”

  

  Ex prime minister Margaret Thatcher spurned the photo opportunity of sharing a transatlantic, Concorde flight to Washington with a giant panda, newly released files from the National Archives have revealed, according to an article from The Guardian..

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 06:09 UTC

  PM May New Year message: more Brexit, and promises of focus on schools, police and the NHS

  

  Britons will feel “renewed confidence and pride” in 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May has said in her New Year message. The prime minister said that while Brexit will be “crucial” in the coming year, it is “not the limit” of the government's ambitions, and it will focus on schools, the police and NHS to change people's daily lives.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 06:00 UTC

  Corbyn said the “new Britain was closer than ever”, and Labour “is a government in waiting”

  

  Labour is “staking out the centre ground in British politics”, British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has said in a New Year message. Mr. Corbyn said the prospect of a “new Britain” was “closer than ever” and he was leading a “government in waiting”.

• Friday, December 29th 2017 - 14:32 UTC

  Falkland Islands debates the landing fee for cruise visitors

  

  The Falkland Islands Environment Committee, held a lively debate on the cost of the landing fee for cruise visitors which is scheduled to be increased to £25 per passenger, and which was described as “the highest in the region” by the head of the Islands Tourist Board.

• Friday, December 29th 2017 - 10:30 UTC

  Gibraltarian woman has been appointed deputy mayor of Jerusalem

  

  The daughter of Sir Joshua Hassan, a very outstanding political figure from Gibraltar, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, has been appointed deputy mayor of Jerusalem. Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo congratulated Fleur on Twitter, highlighting that her appointment was “a living demonstration of the strong links between Gibraltar and Israel”.

• Friday, December 29th 2017 - 10:14 UTC

  UN human rights experts condemn pardon of ex president Alberto Fujimori

  

  Condemning the pardoning of former President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, a group of United Nations independent human rights experts have said that the move undermines the work of the judiciary and the international community to achieve justice.

• Thursday, December 28th 2017 - 10:07 UTC

  Thousands of government papers “vanished” from UK's National Archives

  

  Thousands of government papers detailing some of the most controversial episodes in 20th-century British history have vanished after civil servants removed them from the country’s National Archives and then reported them as lost. Documents concerning the Falklands war, Northern Ireland’s Troubles and the infamous Zinoviev letter – in which MI6 officers plotted to bring about the downfall of the first Labour government - are all said to have been misplaced.