The British government is moving forward with a proposal to allow its intelligence agency, GCHQ, to monitor calls, emails, texts and online searches of everyone inside the U.K.'s borders. Robert Schifreen is an IT consultant in England, and argues that the GCHQ has been monitoring citizen's activities for quite some time, but passing a law such as the one proposed will make intercepted information admissible in court.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has responded to last week's riots by bringing in outside counsel. On Saturday, Cameron announced that he’ll be seeking advisement from Bill Bratton, an American policeman with a history of combating street crime. Bratton served as New York City police commissioner under Rudy Guiliani, and as chief of police in Los Angeles he overhauled the police department after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The British media are calling Bratton a "supercop," but the British Police have not taken kindly to the announcement.
On today's show, John Hockenberry interviewed one of our own, Managing Editor Rupert Allman, about his impressions of the unrest roiling Britain. Allman, of the BBC, says the line between those who feel lucky to be a British resident and those who do not is an invisible one. He spoke about unrest in his country in the 1980s, how some people feel lucky to be born in Britain, and are invested in their community, while others do not. It's a distinction that is difficult to see, but incredibly important, when the chips are down.
President Obama made a subtle, rhetorical shift in his Libya policy on Wednesday in London. After nearly three months of stating that U.S. priorities were to protect civilians from massacres, The President now says the goal is to make sure that the Libyan people will be "finally free of 40 years of tyranny,” at the hands of Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The President spoke to British Parliament at Westminster Hall, and in a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron. For more on what this means for transatlantic relations, we turn to David Sanger, Chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
The countdown is over: this morning, after months of anticipation, Britain’s Prince William is marrying Kate Middleton. The wedding is in progress right now. And all this morning, we'll be bringing you live updates from both sides of the pond. We go first to Buckingham Palace where we're joined by the BBC's Laura Lynch and Paddy O'Connell. And for reaction from U.S.-based Brits we'll hear from The Takeaway's Kristen Meinzer, live from Greenwich Village, New York.
U.S. and European allies attacked Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces by air and sea throughout the weekend. The allies also instituted a no-fly zone over Libya, allowing rebel forces to strengthen their hold on the eastern city of Benghazi. But the long-term implications of American military intervention are unclear. Although the Obama administration has called for Gadhafi’s ouster, the U.N. Resolution that authorized intervention did not. And the U.S. is already fighting two wars. How long will the conflict in Libya last?
Prince William has popped the question to longtime partner and university flat-mate Kate Middleton. Miss Middleton, of Berkshire is not royal or aristocratic, and the engagement is a signal of changing times, even in the stuffy upper-echelon of U.K. royal life. As the tabloids prepare for the next several months of wedding coverage, questions abound: how will this engagement be different?
Can your home country be sued for letting you be taken and harshly detained in another? In the case of the U.K. and former Guantanamo Bay detainees, maybe so. 16 former prisoners from the facility are suing Britain for alleged complicity in their treatment during imprisonment, and in turn the U.K. has agreed to pay nearly $80 million to settle with them out of court.
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Yesterday, Britain’s government announced a plan to more closely monitor its financial services firms, including large investment banking companies. Their financial watchdog arm, called the Financial Services Authority, is going to start recording the cell phone conversations of investment bankers to try and cut down on fraud and insider trading.
Famous painter JMW Turner's work, "Modern Rome — Campo Vaccino," is considered part of the British identity. So when budget cuts in the U.K. threatened to send Turner's masterpiece to highest bidder — the J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles — the Brits began an effort to try and raise $50 Million to keep the "national treasure" in its native land.
BP continues damage control on its wounded brand, just as it begins to look like the oil has stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. At the upcoming Kabul Conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and delegates from all over the world will meet to try and figure out ways to hand more responsibility for Afghanistan back to the Afghan government.
We look ahead at the news driving the next seven days.
The day that became known in Northern Ireland’s history as Bloody Sunday – when thirteen civilians were shot dead by British soldiers at a civil rights march in Londonderry on January 30, 1972 – remains a controversial flashpoint in Northern Ireland’s history. It triggered three decades of bitter and sectarian violence known as the Troubles, which claimed more than 3,600 lives.
But on Tuesday, the longest and most expensive legal inquiry in British history found all thirteen civilians innocent. British Prime Minister David Cameron said the deaths were “both unjustified and unjustifiable.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his resignation yesterday, opening the door of 10 Downing Street for Conservative leader David Cameron to step in.
Travellers caught up in the air transport chaos in Europe caused by a cloud of volcanic ash from an Icelandic volcano are going to extraordinary measures to get home. British travelers trying to get to the U.K. will soon get help from an unlikely source: The British Government has announced that two major war ships will come to the rescue for stranded British nationals in Spain.
Music producer and talent show host Simon Cowell is used to dominating the pop charts at Christmastime. His hit British television show, the X Factor, (roughly speaking, the U.K. version of American Idol), churns out chart-topper after chart-topper annually as the winners are chosen at the end of each year. But music fan Tracy Mortar has started a grassroots campaign to take a few potshots at the Cowell's dominance of manufactured pop music. She's formed the Facebook group Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No. 1, and nearly 60,000 fans of that group are pushing to push RAtM's 1992 song, "Killing in the Name," to the top of the charts. Chris Hawkins, DJ for the BBC's 6Music, joins us to play some tracks and handicap the outcome.
In London, an official inquiry is beginning this morning into Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will be called to give evidence in public at this inquiry, which will examine how the decision to go to war was made, how Britain dealt with the Iraq conflict, and the six years of occupation that followed. We speak to BBC political correspondent Rob Watson as the inquiry gets underway.
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