UK

Friday, January 25, 2008 -- There is an inevitable air of mystery about royalty, but what really goes on behind palace walls? In the documentary "The Royal Family," anchored by Barbara Walters, ABC News offers a never-before-seen glimpse at the most famous royalty in the world - the royal family of Great Britain. From Queen Elizabeth II to Prince William and Prince Harry, the documentary crew from RDF USA filmed the British monarchy for more than a year, with unparalleled access to the working monarchy and their private spaces and lives.    » read more »

19 December 2007 -- Three British-linked terrorism suspects have been released from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and sent back to Britain. At the same time a French court has convicted five former Guantanamo inmates of terrorist links.

Jordanian-born Jamil el-Banna, Algerian-born Abdenour Sameur, and Omar Deghayes from Libya were all long-time legal residents in Britain before they were detained at Guantanamo.

The three men were among more than a dozen British citizens or residents sent to the prison camp. The British citizens were all released by January 2005.    » read more »

Abbey Road Studios tops a bumper year for film soundtracks with its fifth box office No.1

LONDON, 18 December 2007: The Golden Compass, one of the year’s most eagerly awaited films, with a sweeping soundtrack recorded and mixed at Abbey Road Studios and scored by Alexandre Desplat, has launched at No.1 in the UK and US box offices to great critical acclaim.    » read more »

18 December 2007 -- British Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly has admitted that a government contractor has lost personal data belonging to three million student drivers.

Kelly told parliament Monday that a private contractor reported in May that a hard drive containing the names, addresses and other details of the would-be drivers were lost in the midwestern U.S. state of Iowa. She said the disc went missing from a storage facility but did not contain bank account or credit card information.    » read more »

16 December 2007 -- Britain has transferred security responsibilities for Iraq's Basra Province to Iraqi forces. This marks a major step in the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq. Meanwhile, Al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, says the United States is failing in its efforts to subdue militants in Iraq.

Basra Governor Mohammed Mosbah al-Waeli and the commander of British forces in Basra, Major General Graham Binns, signed documents at a transfer ceremony to formally give Iraq control of the province. The oil-rich region has been plagued by militia infighting.    » read more »

12 December 2007 -- The British government is being accused of reneging on a promise to help former Iraqi employees move to the United Kingdom.

The accusation appeared in a story Wednesday in the Times of London newspaper. The report says 125 of 200 interpreters who took up the offer to relocate to Britain were, in the end, turned down. The Times cites three cases where former employees were told they were ineligible, because of absenteeism on the job.    » read more »

04 December 2007 -- Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s pardon of a jailed British school teacher accused of insulting Islam has dampened a potential crisis over threats to impose harsh sharia legal penalties against a westerner. The private school teacher, Gillian Gibbons, whose 7-year-old Khartoum pupils named their classroom project teddy bear after Muhammad, the founding prophet of Islam, left Khartoum yesterday on a flight to London following a stopover in Dubai.    » read more »

November 28, 2007 -- Planning a successful Olympics in London in 2012 will require organizers to learn from the successes and problems of past games in the areas of transportation, infrastructure and security, according to a report issued today by the RAND Corporation.

Researchers from RAND Europe analyzed 13 policy areas that will be critical to the London games and outlined a research agenda for transport and infrastructure, as well as a method for evaluating complex security needs.    » read more »

27 November 2007 -- Britain is among a number of European countries cracking down on human trafficking, a virulent form of modern-day slavery. The UK is a main destination in the international human trafficking market and, in the latest drive to stop the crime, police say they are targeting gang leaders and their trade routes.

Joanne is not her real name. She wants to remain anonymous. She says that when she left her war-ravaged home in Rwanda, she thought life would get better.

"It felt like a new chapter, a new life, a new beginning and I was desperate for that," she said.    » read more »

21 November 2007 -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized and ordered a review after the personal financial details of about 25 million people were lost in the mail. The loss of the huge amount of sensitive information from the Revenue Department has sparked widespread fears of identity fraud and theft throughout the country.    » read more »

19 November 2007 -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is urging all nations to rise to the challenges of combatting global warming, which he compared to the challenge of recovery after World War II. Mr. Brown wants his country to set an example and cut carbon emissions by at least 60 percent by the year 2050.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown says there will be hard choices and tough decisions ahead, and the world must rise to the challenge of combating the effects of global warming.    » read more »

17 November 2007 -- Reacting quickly to the latest UN climate change report, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pledging that Britain will lead the world in reducing carbon emissions.

In what is being described as a landmark report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes the impact of global warming in stark terms, saying it will affect both rich and poor in the coming decades.    » read more »

14 November 2007 -- British authorities battling the spread of bird flu virus say they are destroying poultry at four more sites in eastern England as a precautionary effort to deal with the outbreak.

Authorities say poultry has been identified as having close contact with people who visited a free-range turkey farm northeast of London, where the virus was discovered earlier this week.

Authorities emphasized Wednesday that the new slaughter measures are precautionary.    » read more »

London, 12 November 2007: EMI , one of the world’s leading music groups, is delighted to announce the appointment of Pat O’Driscoll, Chief Executive of Northern Foods until February this year, to its Investor Board.

Pat, who prior to Northern Foods held a number of senior roles within Shell’s retail businesses, will work with the EMI in assessing the talent within the EMI Group and assisting with the Group’s culture change.    » read more »

November 08, 2007 -- Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire TT Games, which encompasses Traveller's Tales, one of the world's largest independent game developers, and TT Games Publishing, the UK-based game publisher behind the highly successful LEGO Star Wars videogames, BIONICLE Heroes and many others.    » read more »