Prince Harry and Meghan did not inform the Queen or any other royal before their announcement on Wednesday, said BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond.

Buckingham Palace was “blindsided”, he said, as talks about their future had begun but were in very early stages.

The Palace said there were “complicated issues” to work through.

Former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt told BBC Newsnight: “I’m always very wary of using the word ‘unprecedented’ but I cannot think of a previous example where they [the Royal Family] have washed their dirty linen in public.”

• Harry and Meghan to step back as senior royals
• What do we know so far?
• In pictures: Harry and Meghan’s life together

In their statement, Harry and Meghan said they made the decision “after many months of reflection and internal discussions”.

They plan to split their time between the UK and North America, while “continuing to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages”.

“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,” the couple said.

Prince Harry and Meghan

Former press secretary to the Queen Dickie Arbiter said exactly how they will execute their plan “remains to be seen”.

“It’s is a logistical nightmare,” he told Newsnight. “There’s a question of security: who provides the security?

“Is it Scotland Yard, as it does provide royalty protection. Is it the Canadians that’s going to be asked to provide it? Who is going to pay for it?”

A staging post to leaving the Royal Family?

Analysis

This is clearly a major rift between Harry and Meghan on one part, and the rest of the Royal Family on the other.

There are far more questions than answers; what will their new role be? Where will they live, and who will pay for it? What relationship will they have with the rest of the Royal Family?

And there’s the institutional question. What does this mean for the Royal Family?

It comes just months after Prince Andrew stepped back from his duties after a BBC interview about his ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Some might see this as the slimmed-down monarchy that the 21st Century needs.

But Harry and Meghan reached people that other royals didn’t. They were part of the reinvention and refreshing of the institution.

We’re now in wait-and-see mode as to whether this new model of being a royal can work – or if this is really a staging post for them to leave the Royal Family.

Signs the couple were unhappy with their royal life have been apparent for some months, said BBC royal editor Nicholas Witchell.

In October last year, the Duchess of Sussex began legal action against the Mail on Sunday over a claim that it unlawfully published one of her private letters. The paper stands by its story.

At the time, Prince Harry said his wife had “become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press” after a “ruthless campaign” of “relentless propaganda”.

“Though we have continued to put on a brave face… I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been,” he said.

In an ITV documentary last year, Meghan described motherhood as a “struggle” due to intense interest from newspapers. “Not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she said.

On Wednesday the royal couple announced they would be adopting a “revised media approach” from the spring.

As part of the new strategy, published on their website, they will “engage with grassroots media organisations and young, up-and-coming journalists”.

They will also pull out of the so-called royal rota system, where journalists and media representatives are given exclusive access to cover royal engagements on the understanding they share the material they gather.

“The current system predates the dramatic transformation of news reporting in the digital age,” the couple said.

Harry is sixth in line to the throne – behind Prince Charles, Prince William and his three children.

Source: BBC

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Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 to Kyiv has today 8th January 2020 crashed after taking off from Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran at 06:12 local time (02:42 GMT) according to BBC sources.

The majority of passengers were from Iran and Canada.

Ukraine’s Tehran embassy initially blamed engine failure but later removed the statement.

It said any comment regarding the cause of the accident prior to a commission’s inquiry was not official. Iranian media blamed technical problems and quoted an aviation official who said no emergency had been declared.

Ukrainian Plane that crashed in Iran killing 176 passengers and crew members

Debris and engine parts from the Boeing 737-800 NG plane were found some 10km (6 miles) from the airport and rescue workers with face masks searched the wreckage for victims.

Throughout the morning, Red Crescent workers laid out a long line of body bags.

Hours before the plane came down Iran carried out a ballistic missile attack on two air bases housing US forces in Iraq. There is no evidence that the two incidents were linked.

A team from Iran’s Red Crescent searched the debris for victims

A series of airlines announced on Wednesday that they were avoiding both Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

Air France and KLM said they would use alternative routes while Lufthansa said it was also cancelling its daily flight to Tehran. Qantas, Air India, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines were among other airlines taking action.

Who was on board?

Among the victims were 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians including all nine crew, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Britons and three Germans, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said.
Ukrainian officials said that 169 people had bought tickets for the flight but two had not boarded the plane.
It was unclear why such a large number of Canadians were on board, however the airline provides relatively inexpensive flights via Kyiv to Toronto.
Sweden’s foreign ministry said its embassy in Tehran was seeking further information about the crash. Foreign Minister Ann Linde said she had spoken to Mr Prystaiko.
Iran’s head of emergency operations said 147 of the victims were Iranian. That would suggest that 65 of the foreign nationals had dual nationalities.

• Three British nationals among dead in plane crash

President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was cutting short a trip to Oman and flying back to Kyiv. He warned against “speculation or unchecked theories regarding the catastrophe” until official reports were ready.

“My sincere condolences to the relatives and friends of all passengers and crew,” he said in a statement.

Ukraine International Airlines has suspended flights to Tehran indefinitely. The airline said that the Boeing 737-800 was built in 2016 and had its last scheduled maintenance on Monday.

There was no sign of any problems with the plane before take-off and the airline’s president said it had an “excellent, reliable crew”. UIA has never had a fatal crash before.

Mr Zelensky said Ukraine’s entire civil aviation fleet would be checked for airworthiness and criminal proceedings would be opened into the disaster.

Crash scene

Rescue teams have been sent to the crash site but the head of Iran’s Red Crescent told state media that it was “impossible” for anyone to have survived the crash.

Rescue workers had found one of the airliner’s black boxes, Iranian media reported.

Ukraine has organised special planes to fly to Iran to take back the bodies of those killed, pending Iran’s agreement, Mr Zelensky said.

This type of Boeing is one of the most widely-used commercial airliners in the world. Aviation safety analyst Todd Curtis told the BBC: “The airplane was heavily fragmented which means either there was an intense impact on the ground or something happened in the sky,” he said.

What went wrong?

Flight data from the Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737-800 is openly available online. It shows that the plane climbed normally after taking-off from Tehran.

It reached nearly 8,000ft (2,400m) before the aircraft’s data suddenly disappears.

This is unusual and would suggest some type of catastrophic incident on board the plane. We have no evidence at this stage to tell us what caused the incident.

According to a former air crash investigator, any suggestion of engine failure feels premature. This possibility can’t be ruled out at this early stage but an airliner such as the Boeing 737-800 is designed to keep flying if there is an engine failure.

Plus, if there was a failure then we would normally expect the flight data to show the plane’s climb becoming less steep.

What do we know about the airline?

By Vitaliy Shevchenko, BBC Monitoring

Ukraine International is a well-established private airline with a very good safety record. The Tehran crash is its first such accident since it was founded in 1992.

Although it is not strictly speaking a budget airline, many of its worldwide flights are keenly priced and therefore popular with travellers.

There is no Iranian community of any size in Ukraine and few Ukrainians in Iran, so the Tehran-Kyiv flight is above all a connecting service to destinations beyond Ukraine.

The 63 Canadians killed in the crash had most likely intended to board a later flight from Kyiv to Toronto. Canada’s biggest city is home to a large Iranian community and is even referred to by some Iranians as “Tehran-to”.

After the crash, Ukraine International suspended its services to and from Tehran until further notice.

There are several thousand Boeing 737-800s in operation around the world which have completed tens of millions of flights. They have been involved in 10 incidents, including this crash, where at least one passenger was killed, Mr Curtis said.

Mr Curtis said Iranian, Ukrainian, US and French authorities would all be involved in the investigation, but it was unclear how they would work together. Iran is currently under US sanctions and there are severe tensions between the two countries.

Normally the US National Transportation Safety Board would have a role to play in the investigation.

“From all appearances this was an airplane that had been properly cared for and there were no outstanding issues with respect to European authorities or American authorities so at this point there is nothing that points to a particular cause,” Mr Curtis said.

“And also one cannot discount the possibility that something outside the aircraft, a mid-air collision or some other issue, may have been involved.”

Source: BBC 

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Flames blown by strong winds distressed the seaside village of Mati, devouring homes and cars.

The coastguard said it and other ships rescued almost 700 people who had fled to the coast, and pulled 19 survivors and four bodies from the sea.

The fire fighters trying to fight fire

A local mayor told the BBC there are fears the death toll could rise to 100.

Mati is located in the Rafina region which is popular with local tourists, especially pensioners and children attending holiday camps.

Rescuers there found the bodies of 26 adults and children, who had apparently hugged each other as they died, trapped just metres from the sea.

A state of emergency was declared in the Athens metropolitan area

Rafina’s Mayor Evangalos Bournos told the BBC the village had “disappeared”.

He said more than 1,000 buildings had been destroyed or damaged – his own home among them. Hundreds of firefighters have been battling the blazes and the authorities are seeking international assistance.

A fire brigade official confirmed the latest death toll. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has declared three days of national mourning.

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Donald Trump sits down for an interview with Piers Morgan

The interview was filmed in Davos Switzerland at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. Speaking on a range of topics, he reaffirmed his strong relationship with Britain and also pointed out how he would have negotiated an EU exit deal different from Britain’s stand.  He further apologized for retweeting inflammatory videos posted by the far-right group Britain that caused a storm and a lot of condemnation from the UK and Muslim countries.

Don’t miss all the reaction from Twitter about this exclusive interview.
#TrumpMorgan Tweets

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The Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) has finally bowed down to public requests and criticism and switched on most of the radio stations it had switched off on January 8^th this year over non payment of transmission bills amounting to three billion Uganda shillings.

The radios UBC switched off included BBC radio, Radio France International, Suubi FM, Buddu Radio, Voice of Africa, Greater Africa Radio, Bilal FM, and Italian Embassy Security Communication system.

Other communication houses UBC switched off also included Itel, Tangerine, Citizen TV, and infocom. Sources in UBC have told our reporters that most of the affected stations like TOP radio, radio Buddu among others were allowed to operate because they paid their electricity bills and others have entered into agreements with UBC.

Acting managing director of UBC, Paul Kihika says that UBC doesn’t have any problem with radio stations that meet all necessary requirements.

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