United Kingdom

    If you were born before 1992, you will probably have a clear memory of the old 50p piece before it was deemed too large and withdrawn from currency that year. Even then, the coin had only been in our pockets and purses for under 30 years. Prior to that, and oblivious to the decimalisation of Britain’s currency still to come, the pound split in two was formerlyrecognised as the brown “10 bob note”. It was a similar size to the newest £5 notes we have today, but not of the same abysmal quality. During the 1960s, 10 bob was probably worth at least the same as our fivers. Formally known as the 10 shilling note, 10 bob held the value of 120 old pennies. It was the lowest denomination of note ever issued by the Bank of England, surviving from 1928 to 1969. Both at its bir...

    Meghan wears Princess Diana's ring Meghan Markle wore one of Princess Diana's rings to her wedding reception on Saturday evening. Following her death, a letter of wishes from Diana revealed she had left her jewellery collection to her sons, Harry and William who gave his spouse, Duchess Catherine, a pair of her earrings for their own wedding in 2011 to pass on to their future wives. I leave the exact division of the jewellery to your discretion. The stones were either side of a larger diamond from Botswana,which is where the couple enjoyed a safari holiday in September. The ring was made by Cleave and Company, Court Jewellers and Medallists to Her Majesty The Queen.

    Evidently breaking wasn’t hard to do and neither is saying friends. Both of Prince Harry’s ex-loves, Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas, showed up to St. George’s Chapel to watch their former boyfriend marry Meghan Markle. Chelsy Davy was first to arrive and was spotted in St. George’s Chapel looking somewhat rueful and quiet, staying her seat while guests mingled around her. She was accompanied by her brother. Davy had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with Harry over their seven year relationship. The South African native struggled being in media spotlight 24/7, and the couple broke up in 2011. The Zimbabwean national was widely believed to be “the one.” She  studied at the University of Cape Town, before moving to Leeds University to study law to be closer to Harr...

    Theresa May has been accused of hypocrisy after appointing nine new Conservative peers to the House of Lords, including several ex-ministers, despite vowing to end the practice. The prime minister sent six former MPs three of whom sat in the cabinet  to the upper chamber, which flies in the face of her claims that senior politicians should not expect automatic ennoblement. Announcing the appointments on the eve of the Royal Wedding was branded frankly pathetic by critics, who called the prime minister cynical for seeking to sneak out the news when it would receive little attention. Controversial appointments on the Labour side include Martha Osamor, who has been embroiled in the party’s antisemitism scandal, and also the DUP’s William McCrea, a Presbyterian ministe...

    As long as Brexit is a synonym for keeping out foreigners, there can be no hope for meaningful compromise with the rest of the EU. The Lords can inflict endless defeats on Theresa May. An entire dinosaur gallery of has-been politicians can clamber on rice sacks to issue grave warnings. All will be drowned out by this one guttural roar. Yet the anti-migrant arguments are a toxic alloy of barefaced lies and naked bigotry. None are new. But they were feverishly circulated in the days before the 2016 referendum. This time, crucially, migrants were made scapegoats for the misery caused by the government’s own drastic spending cuts – for a buckling NHS, a cash-starved school system and falling wages. The definitive guide to how that happened is a study from King’s Coll...

    Theresa May has branded alleged comments made by John Bercow about Commons leader Andrea Leadsom unacceptable. The Speaker reportedly referred to the senior cabinet minister as a stupid woman who was “f***ing useless” in an angry outburst in the chamber on Wednesday. A Downing Street spokesperson said if an official complaint is made by Leadsom then it should be properly investigated by the House. The prime minister has seen the alleged language used and clearly she thinks it is unacceptable, they added. independent investigation currently being carried out by Dame Laura Cox and the cross-party working group chaired by Leadsom herself. A spokesperson for Bercow - who has also been accused of bullying former staff members did not deny the remarks had been made. W...

    People travelling around London for the FA Cup final and royal wedding celebrations may find their journeys scuppered by multiple rail closures. There will be no Southern Rail services between Clapham Junction and Milton Keynes Central, which goes through Wembley Central on 19 May, after Network Rail designated the weekend for planned engineering works. These have since been cancelled, but not in enough time for Southern to staff the services which would normally run. A tweet from one of the Southern Rail team said: "I have been informed that due to the lateness of the decision to cancel the works it is not possible for us to adjust the crew plans and run services on this route at the weekend. It does appear the info on the website is incorrect and we will update....

    The royal bakers have revealed they are abandoning the tradition of a tiered wedding cake - and teased of a surprise unveiling on the day. Claire Ptak, who is making the culinary centrepiece, said the layered lemon and elderflower cake will be in three parts of varying sizes. The final design will be unveiled on the big day, with the couple in on the plans, but it will be unveiled in a non-traditional way, she said. "You'll have to wait and see on the day. It's an installation of the way that we're putting it out. It's the last thing that we'll reveal. It's a non-traditional layout," Ms Ptak said. It's a slight shift from tradition. She said: "They loved it. They tried quite a collection. What they said to me is that they really loved the idea of the seasonality ...

    The cost of the big event has been estimated at as much as £32m by wedding planning service Bridebook, with security costs predicted at more than £30m. Other estimates have put the security bill at closer to £24m. The policing for Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton in 2011 cost £6.35m, according to figures obtained by the Press Association. This included £2.8m in police overtime and covered approximately 5,000 extra police on duty on the day. An earlier freedom of information request revealed the total cost of the security operation undertaken by the Metropolitan Police was closer to £7.2m. However, the actual cost of all the security that was necessitated by the wedding is estimated to be somewhere between £10m and £20m, which would cover a heightening of ...

    British Prime Minister Theresa May The European Commission has launched legal proceedings against the governments of Britain and five other countries for repeatedly breaching legally binding EU air pollution rules. Environmental campaigners accused UK ministers of apathy after Britain failed to convince EU officials it was moving quickly enough to make its air safe to breathe while the EU said Britain had blown several last chances to put things right. Air pollution causes around 40,000 early deaths every year in Britain, according to the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The EU summoned Michael Gove, the environment secretary, to Brussels earlier this year to account for the UK's persistently high levels of toxic ni...