Bloomberg Nigerian police said 84 people held hostage by gunmen were freed in the northern state of Katsina. Police responding to a distress call engaged the assailants in a gunfight and they fled, Katsina Police spokesman Gambo Isah said in an emailed statement. It comes days after more than 300 schoolboys seized from a boarding school in the same state ...

Bloomberg More than 16 million Britons are now required to stay at home as a lockdown came into force Sunday in London and southeast England, part of Boris Johnson’s attempt to control a fast-spreading new strain of the coronavirus. The measures ban household mixing in the capital and the southeast, and restrict socialising to just Christmas Day across the rest ...

Bloomberg The UK will spend as much as 11.7 billion pounds ($15.7 billion) on purchasing, manufacturing and roll-out of coronavirus vaccines, according to estimates from the public spending watchdog. The National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report the cost includes UK investment in global efforts to find a vaccine — but not the potential future expense of any multiyear ...