Roundup: UK announces levy on energy companies to ease cost-of-living crisis

LONDON, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Britain announced Thursday it will impose a 25-percent levy on the profits of oil and gas companies, to ease the financial burden on millions of households amid raging inflation.

As a temporary policy, the tax would be phased out "when oil and gas prices return to historically more normal levels," with a sunset clause written into the legislation, the country's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons.