LONDON (Reuters) - Senior Conservative lawmaker Tobias Ellwood said he submitted a letter of no confidence in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday, saying so-called ‘partygate’ was distracting the government at a time of international crisis. Johnson is facing calls to resign after weeks of a steady drip of reports alleging his aides, and he himself, had staged and attended parties in his Downing Street office and residence at a time when millions of Britons were under COVID-19 lockdowns. Ellwood, chair of parliament’s defense select committee and a former junior minister, was the latest Conservative lawmaker to say he would submit a letter of no confidence in Johnson.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China will discuss closer gas and financial ties during President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Beijing for the Winter Olympics, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, and a long-held idea for a new gas pipeline to China is being examined. Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will have lunch together on Friday, and could sign more than 15 agreements, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, with lots of new deals being prepared in relation to natural gas. Competition got underway in the Beijing Winter Olympics on Wednesday as the shadow of war in Ukraine and the impending arrival of Putin, who will attend Friday’s opening ceremony, loomed over an event already transformed by the coronavirus pandemic. Ushakov said the possibility of Russia building a new gas pipeline to China through Mongolia was being looked at, a project that has been discussed for a long time and would take years to be fully realised.

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PARIS (AFP) - France has said it would decide with EU partners on a future military presence in Mali by mid-February, admitting there would have to be changes after the ruling junta expelled its envoy. French ambassador Joel Meyer was told on Monday to leave Mali within 72 hours in the latest souring of ties between the West African country, which has been racked by an Islamist insurgency, and its former colonial ruler. The Bamako authorities said they were ordering Meyer out after “hostile” comments by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who has described the new Malian regime as “illegitimate”.

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RICHFIELD, Minn. (AP) — One student was killed and another critically injured in a shooting Tuesday afternoon near the front entrance to a suburban Minneapolis school, police said. Police Chief Jay Henthorne said the students were shot outside South Education Center in Richfield, a suburb just south of Minneapolis. The surviving student was in critical condition at a local hospital. Henthorne said suspects fled and police searched the area. “This is a tragic day in the city of Richfield,” he said. He gave no other details on the students.

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BERLIN (Al-Jazeera) - The German broadcasting regulator has banned the transmission of the German-language channel of Russian state broadcaster RT, amid rising tensions between Moscow and the West. The transmission of the channel “RT DE” was “prohibited because it does not have the necessary broadcasting license”, the regulator’s authorization and oversight commission said in a statement on Wednesday.