Wanderlust

Tag: London

  • Windsor gears up for royal wedding, embraces Harry, Meghan

    Meghan Markle will have an heir to the British throne walk her down the aisle – and have her mother and friends on hand for support – when she marries Prince Harry at Windsor Castle.

    WINDSOR, England (AP) — Meghan Markle will have an heir to the British throne walk her down the aisle – and have her mother and friends on hand for support – when she marries Prince Harry at Windsor Castle.

    Friday’s announcement that Markle has asked her future father-in-law Prince Charles to offer a supporting elbow, stepping in for Markle’s father after he became ill, meant arrangements were almost complete for Saturday’s royal wedding.

    The event’s mix of royalty, celebrity, pomp and ceremony has drawn stratospheric levels of interest around the world and will be broadcast live to tens of millions.

    Kensington Palace said Prince Charles “is pleased to be able to welcome Ms. Markle to the royal family in this way” after Markle’s father Thomas was unable to attend due to illness.

    Thousands of well-wishers descended Friday on Windsor amid final preparations for the wedding, which has drawn royal fans and an international media throng to the castle town and royal residence 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of London.

    Union Jacks have been unfurled, security barriers and police patrols put into place and fans were already camping out to capture the prime viewing positions for Saturday’s royal carriage ride through the town.

    Harry and Prince William, his brother and best-man, delighted royal fans when they emerged from Windsor Castle late Friday afternoon to greet well-wishers.

    If Harry was feeling nervous, he didn’t show it. The smiling prince gave a thumb’s up and answered “Great, thank you” when asked how he was feeling on the eve of his wedding. The 33-year-old prince accepted a teddy bear from one well-wisher as he chatted to people from Britain, the United States, Canada and elsewhere.

    Tens of thousands of spectators, including many Americans who have come in support of the California-born Markle, are expected in Windsor to soak up the royal atmosphere. British police say they will be subject to airport-style security scanners and bag searches. Metal barriers have also been erected to stop vehicle attacks like the ones that killed several people on London and Westminster bridges last year.

    Sniffer dogs and mounted patrols are also out and about, and well-wishers have been asked not to throw confetti when the newlyweds ride through town in a horse-drawn carriage Saturday.

    “It poses a potential security risk and it’s a bit of a pain to clean up!” said Thames Valley Police.

    Buckingham Palace also announced that Queen Elizabeth II’s husband the Duke of Edinburgh will attend the royal wedding, just a few weeks after undergoing a hip replacement operation. Harry’s 96-year-old grandfather has largely retired from public duties and it had not been clear earlier whether he would be well enough to attend.

    Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, flew to England from her California home earlier in the week and had tea Friday with the queen at Windsor Castle. It was her first meeting with a head of state within whom she’s about to share a family bond.

    On Thursday, Ragland dined with William’s family and a day earlier she met Charles and his wife Camilla.

    Ragland had been was the bookies’ favorite to escort the bride down the aisle, but Charles has a lifetime of experience in appearing at large-scale public events amid intense scrutiny.

    “I think some people will be disappointed – people who were looking forward to the historic moment of a woman walking her daughter down the aisle, and a woman of mixed race heritage from America. It would have made an historic shot,” said royal historian Robert Lacey.

    But, he added, “for Prince Charles, the future king, to walk a bride down the aisle, what more could Meghan dream of?”

    Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who will conduct the wedding ceremony, said Charles is “a very warm person and that he’s doing this is a sign of his love and concern and support. And I think it’s wonderful. It’s beautiful.”

    The archbishop also said Harry and Markle are “a very self-possessed couple” and the atmosphere in rehearsals has been “relaxed, laughing and enjoyable.”

    It’s not the first time a royal bride hasn’t been walked down the aisle by her father. The monarch’s sister, the late Princess Margaret, was walked down the aisle by Prince Philip because her father was dead. Queen Victoria walked two daughters down the aisle.

    Roseline Morris, 35-year-old fan from Basildon, England, noted that Charles hasn’t got a daughter himself.

    “He’s never going to get the chance to walk a daughter down the aisle, so this will be nice for him as well,” she said.

    Having the father of the groom escort the bride is yet another twist in a royal wedding that is proving to be different from many others.

    Master baker Claire Ptak said Friday that the royal wedding cake – a three-part layered lemon and elderflower cake – will have an “ethereal” taste and be presented in a non-traditional way.

    Markle will not have a maid of honor but there will be 10 young bridesmaids and page boys, including 4-year-old Prince George and 3-year-old Princess Charlotte, the elder children of William and his wife Kate.

    The 600 invited guests include members of the royal family and celebrity friends of Harry and Meghan’s including, it’s rumored, Elton John. Also invited are several of Markle’s co-stars from the legal TV drama “Suits.”

    The couple will be married by Welby in a Church of England ceremony, but the Most Rev. Michael Curry, the first black presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, will also deliver a sermon.

    Curry – the son of an American civil rights activist and the descendant of African slaves – has spoken out for gay rights and plans to join a march on the White House next week to reject U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America first” stance.

    On Friday, Curry said seeing the couple up close, he saw “two real people who are obviously in love.”

    “When I see them, something in my heart leaps,” he said. “That’s why 2 billion people are watching them.”

    __

    Lawless reported from London. Danica Kirka contributed from London.

    ___

    For complete AP royal wedding coverage, visit https://apnews.com/tag/Royalweddings

  • Mystery surrounds how ex-Russian spy was poisoned in U.K.

    As British authorities investigate the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in England, there is much mystery about how exactly the brazen attack was carried out. Here are some of the un

    LONDON (AP) — As British authorities investigate the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in England, there is much mystery about how exactly the brazen attack was carried out. Here are some of the unanswered questions that British officials are chasing:

    WHERE DID THE NERVE AGENT ORIGINATE?

    British Prime Minister Theresa May has declared that former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned March 4 in Salisbury with Novichok, a class of military-grade nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. They are both in critical condition.

    Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an ex-commander of the British Army’s chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear regiment, said Novichok was only ever manufactured at one site, a military laboratory at Shikhany in central Russia.

    De Bretton-Gordon said there were rumors of a Novichok test in Uzbekistan in the 1980s but that any of the remaining nerve agent from that experiment would have lost its toxicity – and that the agent used to poison the Skripals was extremely toxic. He said it was “very unlikely” the Novichok used in Salisbury could have been lost or stolen in the years after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

    Russia’s envoy at the international chemical weapons watchdog said Britain and the U.S. both had access to Novichok and that the nerve agent used to attack the Skripals could have come from either of their stockpiles.

    De Bretton-Gordon dismissed that claim as “complete hogwash.”

    According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, there is no record of Novichok nerve agents having been declared by any nation that signed the Chemical Weapons convention.

    ___

    HOW DID NOVICHOK ARRIVE IN BRITAIN?

    It’s unclear. Some British media, citing unnamed police sources, are reporting that Yulia Skripal unknowingly brought the Novichok nerve agent to Salisbury in her suitcase on a plane trip from Moscow, arriving in Britain the day before the attack.

    Some scientists say it’s feasible that the nerve agent could be made stable enough to travel and that various compounds could have been added to Novichok to make it a clear, colorless liquid resembling water, perfume or alcohol. The ingredients to make Novichok are relatively cheap and accessible, but mixing them together is extremely dangerous, which suggests the nerve agent was brought to the U.K. as a finished product.

    “The moment you mix this stuff up, it presents a high risk to you – and if you were to spill it, you’d be in terrible danger,” said Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London.

    He said nerve agents like Novichok are usually highly unstable and degrade quickly in the presence of moisture, but that if the agent was sealed in a tight container “it ought to be able to hang around.”

    De Bretton-Gordon said it was possible that the Novichok arrived in Salisbury in Yulia Skripal’s suitcase, but said much could go wrong in such a scenario.

    “I think there must be somebody behind it who has delivered it,” he said.

    ___

    HOW WERE THE SKRIPALS EXPOSED TO THE NERVE AGENT?

    It’s thought the Skripals were exposed to Novichok at the elder Skripal’s home in Salisbury. But officials are struggling to explain why there appears to have been a significant delay between when they were exposed to the deadly agent and when they got sick.

    Yulia Skripal arrived in the U.K. on March 3 but it was not until the following day – after she and her father had eaten lunch and stopped at a pub – that they were found slumped over unconscious on a public bench. A police officer who then visited the Skripal residence was also later hospitalized for chemical poisoning. As of Friday he was still in serious condition.

    “The fact that both the father and daughter came down with very similar symptoms at a similar time suggests that the contact with Novichok was fairly close for both of them,” said Alastair Hay, a professor emeritus of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds.

    Sella said it seemed unusual that neither of the Skripals appeared to have noticed their exposure to Novichok since they did not seek medical attention.

    “It seems like (the Novichok) was disguised incredibly cunningly, because if you suddenly realized there was this horrendous substance in something that you thought was innocuous, you would immediately raise the alarm,” he said. “But to all appearances, they had no real concerns: they went to lunch and they went to a pub.”

    ___

    Jill Lawless in London and Michael Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.