UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
from Photographers Blog:
NFL touchdown in London
By Suzanne Plunkett
British sports fans are a serious bunch. When it comes to football (they never call it soccer), many would rather lose their home than miss their team score a winning goal. Club allegiance is often demonstrated with tribal passion - influencing tattoos, clothing and even choice of marital partners.
When American football makes a rare appearance in London, it's somewhat of a surprise to see the seriousness of the sport replaced with a more frivolous obsession: cheerleaders.
That's not to say British fans have no interest in the sport. When the Chicago Bears took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a showcase game at Wembley Stadium in October, I spoke to plenty of Brits among the American expats paying homage to their national sport. Many professed as much fanaticism as the American supporters who had traveled from the States specifically to see their team.
But as a photographer who had covered both kinds of football matches on either side of the Atlantic and grown to love both sports, it's hard to ignore a few major differences in the fan experience.
from Newsmaker:
Send your questions for Seb Coe and Hugh Robertson
To mark the one year countdown to the London Olympics, Thomson Reuters will hold a Newsmaker on July 21 at 18:30 BST with four-time Olympic medalist and chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe and Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson MP.
The event will begin with a speech by Coe, who won gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, followed by a Q&A session with both guests, moderated by me, Global Sports Editor Paul Radford. The Newsmaker will be streamed live to the Reuters website and we'll provide rolling coverage of the event as it happens.
from Photographers Blog:
The view from inside the Abbey
There were probably more than a billion people who would’ve loved to have been inside Westminster Abbey to see Prince William marry Kate Middleton and to soak up the glamor of what was, for a day, the world’s biggest news story.
I was lucky enough to be assigned a position inside the abbey, but though I got to witness the spectacle through a camera lens, my experience was less about pomp and pageantry and more about perils and pratfalls.
from Photographers Blog:
Final preparations for the big day
The guest list was finalized weeks ago and the invitations sent out. For the lucky ones their presence was requested, nobody refused.
There was no fancily decorated envelope from the lord chancellors office landing on our doormat, but an email from the UK chief photographer asking you to be part of the Reuters team to shoot William and Kate's wedding is an invitation you don't turn down.
from FaithWorld:
Archbishop of Canterbury praises “unpretentious” Kate and William
(Britain's Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton in Darwen, northern England April 11, 2011/Adrian Dennis)
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who will marry Prince William and Kate Middleton next week, said on Thursday he had been struck by their wedding preparations, describing the couple as courageous and unpretentious. Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the Church of England, praised the couple's "simplicity" and the way they had dealt with the build-up to next Friday's wedding, which is set to be watched by an estimated two billion people worldwide.
from Royal Wedding Diary:
Can cops stop royal wedding trouble?
Will Prince William and Kate Middleton's big day be overshadowed by a minority of protesters smashing up central London and attacking police?
That's the fear of ministers and senior officers after a few hundred anarchists broke off from a mass march by unions through central London at the weekend and smashed the front of shops, banks, and the exclusive Ritz hotel among others.
from FaithWorld:
British Christian couple loses foster ruling over gays stance
(The Royal Courts of Justice, 18 April 2003/Michael Reeve)
A British Christian couple opposed to homosexuality because of their faith lost a court battle in London on Monday over the right to become foster carers. The couple, who are Pentecostal Christians, had gone to court after a social worker expressed concerns about them becoming respite carers after they said they could not tell a child that a "homosexual lifestyle" was acceptable.
Eunice and Owen Johns, both in their 60s and from Derbyshire in the English midlands, asked judges to rule that their faith should not be a bar to them becoming carers, and that the law should protect their Christian values.
from FaithWorld:
Anti-Muslim bias now the social norm, UK cabinet minister says
Prejudice against Muslims has "passed the dinner-table test" and become socially acceptable in Britain, says the Conservative Party's chairwoman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.
Warsi, a Pakistan-born minister without portfolio in Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, will say in a speech at the University of Leicester on Thursday evening that dividing Muslims into "moderate" and "extremist" fuels intolerance, according to prepared remarks published in the Daily Telegraph.
from FaithWorld:
New Catholic subdivision for ex-Anglicans will not be a ghetto
(Photo: Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, (C REAR) follows former Anglican bishops (L-R) John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton after their ordination as Roman Catholic priests at Westminster Cathedral in central London, January 15, 2011/Andrew Winning)
The new Roman Catholic Church body set up to house disaffected Anglicans would not become a ghetto within the Church, the priest appointed to lead the group said on Monday. The ordinariate, a special subdivision in the Church created by the Vatican to allow the converts to retain some of their Anglican customs, would also seek to evangelise while maintaining good relations with Anglicans, the former Church of England bishop Keith Newton told reporters.
The ordinariate, announced by Pope Benedict in 2009, allows those Anglicans opposed to women bishops, gay clergy and same-sex blessings to convert to Rome while keeping many of their traditions. Newton said there was a danger that people would think of it as an ex-Anglican ghetto within the Catholic Church, but "we want to make clear it is not."
from Reuters Investigates:
This is going to hurt
In Britain, the coalition government is readying its “comprehensive
spending review” later this month. Rather than get caught up in chasing which government departments or bodies will be cut, two of our reporters focused on a single council – in this case, the City of Birmingham, which happens to be the biggest local authority in Europe – and explored what it’s doing to prepare for the change ahead.
For a lot of people, the most visible sign of cuts in Britain will be at a local level, as services are pulled back and jobs are lost. In the leadup to the spending review details, lobbyists in London have been doing great business. Check out their tactics for survival – although if you’re worried about your government contract but haven’t done anything about it, you’re probably already too late.
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The Wall
