Reuters World News Summary

China says UK has poisoned relations, some want new Cold War China blamed the United Kingdom on Thursday for deteriorating ties after Prime Minister Boris Johnson slapped a 5G ban on Huawei, accusing London of poisoning the relationship by meddling in Hong Kong's affairs.

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. China says UK has poisoned relations, some want new Cold War

China blamed the United Kingdom on Thursday for deteriorating ties after Prime Minister Boris Johnson slapped a 5G ban on Huawei, accusing London of poisoning the relationship by meddling in Hong Kong's affairs. "These actions have seriously poisoned the atmosphere of China-UK relationship," China's ambassador to London Liu Xiaoming told reporters. Trump’s military shuffle in Europe will take time and be costly

The United States will take years to move its main military command in Europe from Germany to NATO headquarters in Belgium and updating facilities will be costly, three former senior officials said. Despite concerns that the move announced on Wednesday is politically motivated, they told Reuters that "streamlining and rationalising" the U.S. military presence in Europe made some strategic sense. China says U.S. fuelling new Cold War due to presidential election

China on Thursday accused the United States of stoking a new Cold War because certain politicians were searching for a scapegoat to bolster support ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November. U.S. President Donald Trump identifies China as the West's main rival, and has accused President Xi Jinping of taking advantage over trade and not telling the truth over the novel coronavirus outbreak, which Trump calls the "China plague". Russia demands explanation after Belarus alleges mercenary plot

Russia demanded an explanation from Belarus on Thursday, after Minsk arrested a group of alleged Russian mercenaries and said they were suspected of plotting "acts of terrorism" before a presidential election. Belarusian state television broadcast footage on Wednesday of more than 30 suspected Russian private military contractors being detained near the capital Minsk. Authorities said they had received information that over 200 fighters had entered the country to destabilise it before the Aug. 9 election. Hong Kong bars 12 from election, but denies impinging on civil rights

Hong Kong's government said on Thursday 12 pro-democracy candidates had been disqualified from running for election to the legislature, citing opposition to a new national security law imposed by Beijing, but denied infringing civil rights. Disqualified candidates included pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, some members of the Civic Party, a moderate, old-guard opposition group, and others who won an unofficial "primary" vote held by the opposition camp this month. China, India can't live without each other, says Chinese envoy

China warned on Thursday that a "forced decoupling" of its economy with India, following a Himalayan border clash last month that killed 20 Indian soldiers, would hurt both countries. The Chinese ambassador said China was not a strategic threat to India and that the "general structure that we can't live without each other remains unchanged". A tour of crumbling Malta villa where the Queen lived in her 20s

It is the only property outside of Britain that Queen Elizabeth called home. A crumbling villa near Malta's capital, Valletta, where the heir to the English throne lived between 1949 and 1951, is about to get a new lease of life as a museum of the Mediterranean island's links with the United Kingdom and the royal family. UK PM Johnson: We cannot delude ourselves that pandemic is over

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said COVID-19 was now under some measure of control in the UK, but a resurgence of the coronavirus in some European countries made clear that the pandemic was not over. "This country has had a massive success now in reducing the numbers of those tragic deaths, and we've got it at the moment under some measure of control," he said on Thursday. Russia sentences former U.S. marine to nine years on police assault charge

A Russian court sentenced a former U.S. marine to nine years in jail on Thursday after finding him guilty of endangering the lives of two police officers who detained him after a party in Moscow. Trevor Reed, a student at the University of North Texas, said he could not remember the events of last summer because he was drunk when he was detained. Taiwan's 'Mr Democracy' Lee Teng-hui dies aged 97 in Taipei

Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, dubbed "Mr. Democracy" for burying autocratic rule in favour of freewheeling pluralism, died at the age of 97, the official Central News Agency reported on Thursday. Lee became Taiwan's first democratically elected president in 1996, in a landslide victory that followed eight months of intimidating war games and missile tests by China in waters around Taiwan in an attempt to scare voters.