I felt curious grief, gut-wrenching sadness at the passing of a woman I did not know and had never me
The opening day of Heathrow airport’s new Terminal Five descended into chaos on Thursday, with flights cancelled, baggage delayed and long queues, while protesters rallied against further expansion. British Airways, the only airline using Terminal Five, was forced to cancel 34 flights and apologise for "teething problems".
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/ 20 November 2007
Uganda will be seeking to impress the world when it hosts the Commonwealth summit this week and convey a new image of a country best known for its history of brutal regimes and civil strife. Potholes — which had become a byword for Kampala — have been hastily filled, street lighting upgraded and roads lined with trees for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
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/ 19 November 2007
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on Monday with a moving thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey, the church where they married 60 years ago. The pomp and splendour of the traditional ceremony came a day before the anniversary itself.
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/ 6 November 2007
Queen Elizabeth II’s speech in the British Parliament on Tuesday may have been routine, but at least nobody was bored to death. That would have been against the law. Dying in Parliament is an offence — and by far the most absurd law in Britain, according to a survey of nearly 4Â 000 people.
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/ 15 October 2007
The car carrying Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, may have bumped into another large, dark-coloured car shortly before crashing, the inquest into their deaths heard on Monday. Witness accounts previously have talked about a white Fiat Uno or a similar small vehicle, but Jean-Claude Catheline and his wife, Annick, said they saw two dark cars travelling at speed.
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/ 10 October 2007
English cricketing legend Ian Botham was formally made a knight of the realm by Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday in a ceremony at her official Buckingham Palace residence in central London. Botham, whose career has combined a rare talent on the cricket field with a flamboyant lifestyle off it, was rewarded for his services to sport and to charity in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
A British jury on Tuesday visited the Ritz hotel in Paris where Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, spent their last hours together before their deaths in a fatal road crash 10 years ago. On the second and last day of a familiarisation trip to the French capital, the 11 jurors in the inquest into their deaths walked through the corridors of the luxury hotel.
Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies of the United States and Martin Evans of Britain won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for their work in creating ”knockout mice”, the 21st-century testbed for biomedical research. The trio were honoured for discovering how to manipulate genetically mouse embryonic stem cells.
Jurors in the British coroner’s inquest into the death of Princess Diana on Monday started retracing her final, ill-fated journey from the Paris Ritz to the underpass where her chauffeur-driven Mercedes crashed. Travelling under heavy police escort, the 11 jurors set off from the Ritz Hotel on Paris’s Place Vendome.
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/ 24 September 2007
Herdsmen who had been encroaching on a Ugandan game reserve that the queen of England is due to visit in November have started relocating after an ultimatum, wildlife officials said on Monday. The chief warden of Uganda’s second-largest natural park said that some of the Basongora tribesmen started moving out on Sunday.
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/ 16 September 2007
Colin McRae, who died in a tragic helicopter crash alongside his five-year-old son Johnny on September 15, was born with his foot firmly on the accelerator. Rallying, and indeed daredevil pursuits, was in the blood for McRae, who was born in Lanark in southern Scotland on August 5 1968. His father Jimmy was a five-time British rally champion. His brother Alister is also former champion.
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/ 16 September 2007
Colin McRae, the British former world rallying champion, was expected to be confirmed on Sunday as having been among those killed in a helicopter crash at his home. The 39-year-old, whose name also adorns a successful range of rallying computer games, was believed to have been among the four people killed in the crash, police said.
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/ 14 September 2007
The British government said on Friday that cattle slaughtered on a farm south-west of London have tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease, confirming the second case in the country since August. The disease was detected on Wednesday in cattle grazing near Egham in the county of Surrey.
Princess Diana’s family solemnly marked the 10th anniversary of her death on Friday, with her younger son eulogising her as ”the best mother in the world”. The bishop of London used his sermon to call for an end to the sniping between Diana’s fans and detractors, and a priest who has led an annual memorial said it may now be time to let go.
Princes William and Harry were to lead tributes on Friday to their late mother, Princess Diana, on the 10th anniversary of her death at a service attended by senior royals and Diana’s friends and family. William and Harry, who were just 15 and 12 when their mother died following a high-speed car crash in Paris, have spent months arranging the service.