Babak Belurs

Jumat, 10 Januari 2020

Duchess Meghan Returns to Canada While Prince Harry Stays in U.K. Amid Royal Drama - Us Weekly

Going long-distance. Duchess Meghan is back in Canada while Prince Harry remains in the United Kingdom amid the news they’re stepping back as senior members of the British royal family, according to CNN.

Harry, 35, and Meghan, 38, had left son Archie, 8 months, in the care of a nanny and Meghan’s close friend Jessica Mulroney in Canada after spending an intimate Christmas there — in lieu of the British royal family’s annual holiday celebration at Sandringham Estate in England.

Harper’s Bazaar reported on Thursday, January 9, that both the Duke and Duchess of Sussex planned to return to Canada that evening, but Meghan ended up traveling solo, as a spokesperson for the couple told CNN.

Harry and Meghan announced their “transition” in an Instagram statement on Wednesday, January 8, specifying that they had decided to step back after “many months of reflection and internal discussions.”

“We have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,” their joint statement read. “We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen. It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment.”

Duchess-Meghan-Returns-to-Canada,-Prince-Harry-Stays-in-U.K.-Amid-Drama — Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry James Whatling / MEGA

The couple also revealed they plan to “balance” their time between the United Kingdom and North America. “This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity,” they explained.

In its own statement on Wednesday, Buckingham Palace asserted that it was having “early stage” discussions with Harry and Meghan. “We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through,” the statement read.

A palace source later told Us Weekly that Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and Prince William “have directed their teams to work at pace with governments and the Sussexes’ office to find workable solutions, and this is expected to take days, not weeks.”

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams, meanwhile, claimed that the other royals “didn’t know of the statement,” and a source said the royal couple “made their statement without the official blessing of the queen,” because of “a miscommunication.”

The announcement hit Prince William, Harry’s brother, especially hard, according to an insider. “William was blindsided by Harry and Meghan’s decision and statement,” the insider exclusively told Us on Wednesday. “There’s still a rift between the two brothers. It’s sad because when they were younger, William would be the first person Harry would go to with big news like this. William is incredibly hurt, but at the same time he has his own family to focus on and is trying to move forward with his life.”

The transition “is a blow to the royal family because they were the modernizing face of it globally from a charitable intent,” Fitzwilliams concluded. “It’s completely unprecedented. There’s no question, however, that it marks a combination of months whereby it’s been clear that … pressures, especially from the media, have made [Harry and Meghan] deeply unhappy in the roles of senior royals. And what we have seen is something that ensures, as they see it, that they will be doing things their way.”

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2020-01-10 14:38:56Z
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Iran urges US, Canadian investigators for information on Ukraine plane crash, ambassador denies site unsecure - USA TODAY

Kim Hjelmgaard USA TODAY

Published 9:37 AM EST Jan 10, 2020

LONDON – Iran on Friday urged American and Canadian investigators to share any information they have on the crash of a Ukrainian passenger jet, which killed all 176 people on board, while again rejecting any suggestion it was brought down by one of its own missiles.

"What is obvious for us, and what we can say with certainty, is that no missile hit the plane," Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s national aviation department, told a press conference in Tehran. "If they are really sure, they should come and show their findings to the world" in accordance with international standards, he added.

Abedzadeh's comments came as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko tweeted that he and President Volodymyr Zelensky met with U.S. Embassy officials and obtained "important data" about the crash. Prystaiko didn' t specify what kind of data it was.

One of Iran's most senior diplomats in Europe meanwhile disputed a suggestion from a journalist that the Ukraine International Airlines crash site outside Tehran had "no security," "was not cordoned off" and that there was "no sign of any investigators."

Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's ambassador to the United Kingdom, told USA TODAY after a briefing with reporters here that it wasn't true, as CBS News' senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer tweeted that the crash site was not being protected for investigators and that local "scavengers (were) now picking the site clean."

The allegation is a worrying one in light of the fact U.S intelligence officials believe Iran may have mistakenly shot down the commercial airliner with a missile, killing all 176 passengers and crew members.

Iran vehemently disputes shooting the plane down and said its initial findings indicated the plane crashed as a result of a technical fault. Palmer, who is in Iran, was able to briefly visit the crash site Friday before being chased away by Iranian officials.

Persian Gulf: Iran got its revenge for Qasem Soleimani's killing but the US Navy is still a target

Ukraine's airlines crashed just hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. military based in Iraq. That assault came in retaliation for the Pentagon's killing in a drone strike of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran's most senior and revered military commanders.

Baeidinejad said in the briefing that Iran was "fully committed to participating in an international investigation that meets the highest international standards." He also cautioned that the issue "should avoid being politicized" because it was harmful to the friends and family members of those who died in the crash near Tehran's airport.

Baeidinejad also appeared to indicate that American officials from the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB), a U.S. government agency, would travel to Iran to participate in the crash investigation. However, there has been no independent confirmation from the NTSB, the U.S. State Department or the White House that such a move would take place.

Trump and Iran: House votes to limit President Trump's war powers following Soleimani killing

Late Thursday, NTSB published a statement saying it had received "formal notification" about the crash from Iran's Civil Aviation Organization and would be sending "an accredited representative to the investigation of the crash."

The NTSB followed that up Friday, saying the "designation of an accredited representative is the first step toward that end. No decision has been made about travel and decisions are still being made about how the NTSB’s involvement may unfold."

There has been no indication that this representative would be an American government employee. It would be a major step forward for U.S-Iran government-to-government contact if a U.S. official traveled to Iran. There are very few, if any, known instances of American government employees traveling to Iran since the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution that coincided with protesters in Tehran storming the U.S. Embassy there and holding 52 American diplomats and officials hostage for 444 days.

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2020-01-10 14:37:30Z
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Meghan leaves U.K. days after she and Prince Harry drop royal bombshell - NBC News

LONDON — NBC News confirmed Friday that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had left the U.K. for Canada less than two days after she and husband Prince Harry made the shock announcement that they would “step back” from their roles as senior members of the royal family.

The two had been in Canada — where Meghan lived for seven years while she starred in the TV legal drama “Suits” — over Christmas. According to multiple reports, the couple's son Archie is still there.

NBC News has also confirmed that Harry has stayed in the U.K. to host the draw for the Rugby League World Cup 2021 next Thursday from Buckingham Palace, in what will likely be his first major public appearance since the furor began.

On Wednesday in a bombshell announcement, Meghan and Harry said that they planned to split their time between the U.K. and North America, while "continuing to honor our duty to the queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages," according to a post on their new website.

Jan. 10, 202001:40

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They say they would like to keep their recently refurbished home in Windsor, and their royal protection and security, but plan to take a new approach to the British press after scathing coverage of the couple — in particular Meghan.

The couple’s decision to have a more independent life has been dubbed #Megxit, provoking vitriol from British tabloids, royalists and pundits.

Commentary in The Daily Mail — which traditionally supports the monarchy — and other mass market tabloids has been scathing.

"It's almost as if nothing matters to this couple apart from their own immediate happiness and gratification, as though they are incapable of seeing beyond their own little bubble of privilege," one columnist wrote.

In The Sun, Hugo Vickers wrote that it was "impossible not to think" that Harry "has been influenced by his wife with her Californian ideas."

In October, the couple filed suit against the Daily Mail's parent company after the tabloid published a private letter written by Meghan earlier this year.

During the legal battle with the Mail, Harry released a scathing statement accusing the tabloid press of a "ruthless campaign" against his wife.

He wrote on the couple’s website: “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

Harry's mother, Princess Diana, died in a car accident while trying to escape the paparazzi in Paris in 1997.

In a 2019 documentary, “Harry and Meghan: An African Journey,” Meghan said on the difficult media attention, “"I never thought this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair."

On Wednesday, the couple said they would take control of the relationship with the media by releasing information from their own social media channels, as well as “engage with grassroots media organizations.”

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2020-01-10 13:46:00Z
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Boris Johnson Might Break Up the U.K. That’s a Good Thing. - The New York Times

The United Kingdom may be finally coming to an end.

On Thursday, Parliament passed the withdrawal agreement on which Prime Minister Boris Johnson successfully campaigned in last month’s general election. By the end of the month, it will be signed into law. The United Kingdom will leave the European Union on Jan. 31.

For decades, membership in the European Union helped glue together a fragmenting United Kingdom; now Brexit is tearing it apart. The short-lived fantasy of the “British nation,” too, may finally meet its end.

Mr. Johnson’s plan is likely to lead to a border between Northern Ireland and Britain for the first time in modern history. The policy — designed to allow Britain to radically break with Europe while Northern Ireland remains aligned with the rest of the bloc, including the Republic of Ireland — is an astonishing betrayal of the Ulster unionists, whose politics is predicated on the sanctity of the United Kingdom. And drawing Northern Ireland into the same regulatory system as its southern neighbor poses a remarkable opportunity for the nationalists. A once-more united Ireland is firmly in view.

That certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed in Scotland. The pro-independence Scottish National Party, which took 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats in December’s election, reads the writing on the wall. A large majority of Scots voted to remain in the European Union during the 2016 referendum; to allow Northern Ireland but not Scotland to remain aligned with the European Union’s market will only add to the sting. Nicola Sturgeon, the S.N.P.’s leader, has already formally requested that the Scottish parliament be given powers to hold an independence referendum. Mr. Johnson, for his part, has made clear that he intends to stand in the way of such a vote, but he may not be able to block it forever.

So maybe this is the end. Not this week, but perhaps by the end of the decade. First Scotland, then Northern Ireland, leaving just England and Wales, a mini-union, which itself could break up under pressure from Welsh nationalists.

Would that really be so bad? Actually, it wouldn’t be. The breakup of the union certainly won’t be easy but it may be one of the few good things to come out of Brexit — not just for Scotland and Ireland but also, and perhaps especially, for England.

After being released from the unionist grip, Northern Ireland could join a flourishing Irish economy and a more socially liberal — how things have changed! — society. For the nationalists it will represent a long-desired reunion. Although Irish unity is what unionists most fear, they might now be able to reconcile themselves to their Irishness after being betrayed by London.

Scotland could take its own future in hand. It has a higher mortality rate than England, and while it is less unequal than its southern neighbor, the gap between them has narrowed over the past two decades. Scots have put off dealing with these issues by putting the blame on London. Independence will deprive them of that excuse and force them to face divisions in their own society. An independent Scotland will come into its own political identity, rather than one premised just on contrasts.

And even England would benefit. Despite its being the dominant nation in the United Kingdom, the arrangement hasn’t been good for it. It doesn’t have a sense of itself as a nation to be transformed and is divided between the vibrant, youthful and pro-European big cities — especially London — and the aging, stagnating and anti-European rest of the country.

Freed from the grip of the decayed British nation and British state, England could finally be done with its delusions of grandeur. Fanciful beliefs about British importance in the world would crumble. England would be only around the eighth-largest economy in the world. And it would probably have to give up its nuclear weapons — the United Kingdom’s nuclear submarine base is in Scotland.

England need not be, as many fear, a rump United Kingdom, parochial, perhaps even irredentist. Less cocksure and more understanding of its real place in the world, it may soon rethink its hostility to the Europe Union. Scotland suffered a process of deindustrialization similar to northern England’s and Wales’s — but it voted to remain. As the writer Anthony Barnett and others suggest, a progressive English nation, on the model of the Scottish one, could emerge. This England might have an ordinary democratic nationalism that understands its own aspirations and those of others.

The idea of breaking up the union isn’t quite as outrageous as it might seem. The “United Kingdom” is neither ancient nor stable. Before 1945, “national” Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English identities were for many not local varieties of national Britishness but part of something much bigger: an imperial identity.

British World War II propaganda explained that the United Kingdom was just one equal element of a British Commonwealth of Nations that, along with India and the colonies, made up “the British Empire.” It was the empire that fought the war, not the United Kingdom. Soldiers died for “king and country” — but that country had no name. No one died for “the United Kingdom.”

After 1945, “Britain” — a national United Kingdom — was one of many post-imperial constructions that emerged from the ashes of the British Empire. From then into the 1970s, the United Kingdom existed as a coherent economic, political and ideological unit, distinct from the rest of the world. There was a national British economy, a national British Army and a national British politics dominated by two national, unionist parties. It was a brief period of British nationhood. In fact, it was the only one. This national United Kingdom was broken up economically starting in the 1970s by the closely related processes of globalization and deepening economic integration with Europe.

It is this decaying British nationalism, a leftover from the 1970s, that is now disrupting the union, not the self-conscious Scottish, Irish and Welsh versions. Strong in England but weak elsewhere, with the exception of a handful of hard-core unionists in Northern Ireland, this British nationalism manifested itself in the calls for Brexit, from before the 2016 referendum and up to today. The Brexiteers wrongly believe that independence from the European Union will make the United Kingdom great again.

But Brexit and the delusions of the United Kingdom’s grandeur that go with it are the politics of the aged, of those who remember that brief experience of a united, national United Kingdom. The young people of England, like those in the rest of Britain, overwhelmingly supported remaining in the European Union. They also understand we need liberation from the practices of Westminster and Whitehall, not Brussels, and from the self-defeating rage of the old.

Only a few decades ago, a new United Kingdom emerged from the empire. Now, by forcing the breakup of the union, the old — drinking deep the delusions of British nationalism — may make it possible for a new England to emerge from the United Kingdom.

David Edgerton (@DEHEdgerton) is a professor of history at Kings College London and the author, most recently, of “The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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2020-01-10 06:00:00Z
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Kamis, 09 Januari 2020

Harry and Meghan's shock announcement dominates UK media - CNN

The couple said Wednesday they will leave their "senior" roles in the British royal family, aiming "to become financially independent" and "carve out a progressive new role within this institution," according to a statement posted on Instagram.

The UK press splashed the story across their front pages Thursday, with the shock announcement garnering blanket coverage.

Aside from UK general election coverage, it is incredibly rare for one story to get front page headlines across the media spectrum.

It's even more remarkable during a week of high profile international news, such as the ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran and a plane crash that killed 176 people near Tehran on Wednesday.

The Sun dubbed the announcement "Megxit," plastering the portmanteau across the front page and calling the announcement a "palace bombshell" that had started a "civil war."

The Daily Express went with "Queen's dismay as Harry and Meghan step back from royal life," hinting at a brewing conflict in the family.

This was also evoked by The Times, whose headline read: "Harry and Meghan quit roles amid palace split."

And the monarch's reaction was stronger according to The Daily Mail, which wrote: "Queen's fury as Harry and Meghan say: We quit."

Free daily paper Metro had a simple "Harry and Meghan: we quit" headline in the same vein as the i paper, which went with "Prince quits."

Even The Guardian, less likely to focus on royal stories, had "Harry and Meghan to 'step back as senior royals.'"

Harry and Meghan say they're 'stepping back' from the royal family. The palace says it's 'complicated'

The Duke and Duchess have a fraught relationship with sections of the British media.

In October last year, the couple announced that Meghan was suing the Mail on Sunday newspaper, alleging it had illegally published a private letter to her father — a claim the newspaper denies.

At the same time, Harry launched an emotional attack on the UK tabloid press for what he called a "ruthless campaign" against his wife.

He likened their treatment of her to that faced by his mother. Princess Diana died in 1997 when her car crashed as it was being pursued by members of the paparazzi.

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2020-01-09 12:33:00Z
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