Most UK shops to reopen in June says PM

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday announced that the vast majority of shops in England will be allowed to reopen next month as the government gradually eases coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

He also said he regretted the "confusion and the anger and the pain" felt by the public about the political storm engulfing his chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

Cummings faces allegations he broke coronavirus rules by driving 250 miles (400 km) from London to northeast England with his wife and child when a stay-at-home order was in place.

Earlier in the day in a televised news conference in the garden of 10 Downing St. - all but unheard of for an unelected adviser - Cummings tried to quash the controversy with a detailed but unrepentant account of his movements.

While Cummings is being accused of flouting the rules he helped impose on the rest of the country, Johnson insisted "no one in Nr. 10" had done nothing to undermine the government's public health messaging.