According to Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, a police officer's "best weapon is their mouth.”

Fahy, who is also the spokesman on workforce development for the Association of Chief Police Officers, currently commands 6,700 officers, just 209 of which are armed. Talking through a situation and remaining calm are some of the tactics Fahy puts before employing weaponry.

Handguns and assault rifles are completely banned in Britain, and a very small percentage of British police officers carry guns, something that has led to a lower number of fatal police shootings. Over the last three years, just three people died at the hands of law enforcement in Britain—in 2012 alone, 409 Americans were killed by police shootings, according to data compiled by the FBI.

Sir Peter Fahy joins The Takeaway to discuss the differences in policing across the pond, and how Americans can avoid some of the high-stakes policing we see more and more often in the media and in cities across the nation.

Chief Constable Peter Fahy taking part in the Manchester Pride Parade on August 27, 2011 in Manchester, England.

(Nathan Cox/Getty)

Click on the audio player above to hear this segment.

In the summer of 1952, Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in Great Britain. Today she becomes the country's longest-serving monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria, whose record had been of 63 years, seven months, and two days.

John Hockenberry reflects on the many changes Queen Elizabeth has seen in her long reign, and how her decades in power are similar to and different from those of Queen Victoria.

Click on the audio player above to hear this interview.

This edition of The Takeaway Weekender Podcast features a special extended interview with American humorist and writer Bill Bryson.

More than 20 years ago, Bryson published the popular travelogue, “Notes from a Small Island.” The Iowa native used the book to share his quirky observations and insights about his adopted country of Britain.

Back then, Bryson was planning to return to the United States, and he wanted to take one last trip around the U.K. before leaving. “Notes from a Small Island” was based on his tour of the country and became a best-seller.

Bryson eventually returned to England and settled right back into British life, but after decades of living in the land of green hedges, he says he still finds the place quite a mystery.

Now the author has published a sequel to his much beloved book about Britain. With the English psyche as his compass, Bryson has once again tracked from one end of the U.K. to the other.

The Takeaway talks with Bryson about his latest volume, "The Road to Little Dribbling," which is a guidebook to all the odd places that appear on maps of the U.K. and constitute what he describes as a grand geography of weirdness. 

Add Caption Here

(Bill Bryson)

British police continue to combat ISIS' successful recruitment of teens. Humza Arshad, a British-Pakistani and Muslim comedian, has joined their efforts, creating YouTube videos and making school appearances in which he pokes fun at jihadists. Brooke talks with Arshad about using humor to resist extremism.

This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out of the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known, offering a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten.

Just down the road from a pub in rural Hanslope Park, England is a massive building — the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known. This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out and offered a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten.

When professor Caroline Elkins came across a stray document left by the British colonial government in Nairobi, Kenya, she opened the door to a new reckoning with the history of one of Britain's colonial crown jewels, and the fearsome group of rebels known as the Mau Mau. We talk to historians, archivists, journalists and send our producer Jamie York to visit the Mau Mau. As the new history of Kenya is concealed and revealed, document by document, we wonder what else lies in wait among the miles of records hidden away in Hanslope Park.

Produced by Matt Kielty with reporting from Jamie York

Special thanks to:

Mattathias Schwartz for first bringing us this story. Martin Mavenjina and Faith Alubbe of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission. 

Nyakinyua Kenda for the use of their music, Rose Mutiso and Anne Moko for translation help, and Sruthi Pinnamaneni for production support.

Seasoned economic policy reporter for The New York Times Jonathan Weisman discusses his debut novel, No. 4 Imperial Lane, about a young man from Atlanta thrust into a fallen aristocracy when studying abroad at the University of Sussex. 

EVENTS: On August 15th at 4:00pm, Jonathan will be at Book Court joint event with Jeff Bartsch (Two Across).
Address: 163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

On August 16th at 6:00pm, Jonathan will be at Book/Plate Event at Peck’s Homemade (in conjunction with Greenlight).
Address: 455A Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn NY, 1120

Charles Dickens was a great supporter of the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London.

Yet such effective fundraising practices are hardly new. They predate the Internet, television, radio and even the movies.

This Feb. 6, we celebrate Charles Dickens, the novelist and literary superstar of his day. He may well have been the first celebrity spokesman for a medical charity. The cause was London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and it first opened its doors 164 years ago today in 1852. As an added bonus, we have the opportunity to celebrate Charles Dickens’s 204th birthday, which falls the on following day, Feb. 7. (He was born in 1812 and died in 1870).

Dickens’s interest in helping to establish a children’s hospital should not be surprising to those who have read his wonderful novels. His works teem with the stories of children and especially those youngsters who were rejected, orphaned, or stricken by physical and social calamities. Charles, too, suffered a traumatic childhood when his father was declared insolvent and the Dickens family was sentenced to the Marshalsea Debtor’s Prison. It was then that the 12-year-old Charles was removed from school and forced to work at Warren’s Blacking (shoeshine) Warehouse for five months. He recreated this trauma, of course, in his favorite novel, “David Copperfield,” but it continued to fester in his psyche as one of the most harrowing events of his life.

Moreover, Dickens often portrayed real diseases (both physical and psychological), which many of his various characters developed in the course of his story telling. The illnesses he describes are accurate and based on real disorders rather than invented maladies with inconsistent symptoms, as was the more common practice among many Victorian novelists.

But his careful attention to detail went far deeper than leafing through the pages of a medical textbook or pestering the many physicians he knew. In fact, Dickens was a regular reader of medical journals and followed the latest advances in public health and medicine. He was also a frequent visitor to several London hospitals where he observed sick people to incorporate into his fiction.

Part of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, seen today.

Thanks to the tireless activism of a physician named Charles West, a 32-bed hospital for children did open, in a house on Great Ormond Street, on Feb. 6, 1852, just one day before Dickens’ 40th birthday.

Dickens’s involvement with this great cause began at the request of several friends of his who just happened to be trustees of the nascent Great Ormond Street Hospital. At their invitation, Dickens visited the hospital during its first weeks of operation. The writer was so moved by what he saw that he and an assistant named Henry Morley composed an essay about the sick children recuperating there, entitled “Drooping Buds.” It appeared in the April 3, 1852 issue of Household Words, the magazine Dickens edited from 1850 to 1858. In the essay, Dickens describes the alarming infant and childhood mortality rates in Victorian England, the need to develop a better understanding of children’s health and the then revolutionary point that children are, indeed, different in the diseases they develop and how their bodies confront such illnesses. A line or two of this essay merits repeating:

“Our children perish out of our homes: not because there is in them an inherent dangerous sickness (except in the few cases where they are born of parents who communicate to children heritable maladies), but because there is, in respect to their tender lives, a want of sanitary discipline and a want of knowledge…It does not at all follow that the intelligent physician who has learnt how to treat successfully the illnesses of adults, has only to modify his plans a little, to diminish the proportions of his doses, for the application of his knowledge to our little sons and daughters. Some of their diseases are peculiar to themselves; other diseases, common to us all, take a form in children varying as much from their familiar form with us as a child varies from a man…”

The essay was widely read by 40,000 readers of the magazine but its influence hardly stopped there. Dickens gave the hospital trustees permission to reprint the essay and distribute it to potential donors as a publicity tool.

A few years later, on Feb. 9, 1858, the Great Ormond Street trustees asked Charles Dickens to chair a “festival benefit” at the Freemason’s Tavern. The event was so important that Queen Victoria herself consented to be its royal patron but it was Dickens’s sterling celebrity who really attracted a crowd of potential donors.

He did not disappoint. Always a brilliant speaker and actor (he gave public readings of many of his works across England and the United States to great acclaim), Dickens delivered a rousing speech on the plight of ill children and the need to support the children’s hospital. As an extra bonus, the author threw in a reading of his beloved “A Christmas Carol.” The journalist T.A. Reed, said of Dickens’ performance that night, “I never heard him, or reported him, with so much pleasure … his speech was magnificent.”

Magnificent, indeed. The speech raised more than £3,000 (nearly £270,000 or almost $400,000 in 2016) for the hospital, which was desperately needed to increase both bed space and the medical staff.

Dickens made many more trips to the hospital and participated in several fundraising events. He also wrote about the Great Ormond Street Hospital in his collection of essays “The Uncommercial Traveler” (1860), in an essay entitled “From Cradle to Grave,” which ran in Feb. 1, 1862 issue of another magazine he edited, All the Year Round, and in his last complete novel “Our Mutual Friend” (1865).

So vital was his advocacy for the Great Ormond Street Hospital that in 1867, its founder, Dr. Charles West wrote, “Dickens, the children’s friend, first set [the hospital] on her legs and helped her to run alone.”

Upon his death in 1870, at age 58, the British Medical Journal eulogized Dickens with the statement, “what a gain it would have been to physic [medicine] if one so keen to observe and facile to describe had devoted his powers to the medical art.”

To this, we say “Bah Humbug.” We have plenty of doctors but we have only one Charles Dickens.

Dr. Howard Markel writes a monthly column for the PBS NewsHour, highlighting the anniversary of a momentous event that continues to shape modern medicine. He is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine and the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

He is the author or editor of 10 books, including “Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892,” “When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed” and “An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine.”

The post Was Charles Dickens the first celebrity medical spokesman? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A Banksy artwork is pictured opposite the French embassy on Jan. 25, 2016, in London, England. The graffiti, which depicts a young girl from the musical Les Misérables with tears in her eyes as tear gas moves towards her, criticizes the use of teargas in the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais. Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images

A team led by Steven Le Comber at the Queen Mary University of London analyzed 140 pieces by the infamous street artist in London and Bristol using geographic profiling. The resulting “geoprofile” pinpointed a pub along with an address in Bristol and three others in London, all places where Gunningham has lived or appeared.

Banksy, who is behind pieces including a recreation of Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” and the satirical amusement park “Dismaland,” does not sign his pieces, so the analysis looked at works that he is suspected of creating.

A Palestinian boy walks past a drawing by British graffiti artist Banksy, along part of the controversial Israeli barrier near the Kalandia checkpoint in the West Bank on Aug. 10, 2005. Photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters

The team at Queen Mary University said in the report’s summary that the same process could be used as a model to locate potential terrorism suspects.

But likening Banksy’s work to “minor terrorism-related acts,” as the report puts it, drew criticism from Gizmodo, which also pointed out several flaws in the analysis:

The method itself is incredibly imprecise, and uses only suspected cases of Banksy’s artwork (Banksy performs his art anonymously, so it’s not obvious which pieces belong to him, or if the work is performed by multiple people). What’s more, outliers in the location data were not excluded, and the researchers did not use a timeline to consider when the art appeared.

This is not the first time that a group has claimed to identify Banksy as Gunningham. A Daily Mail investigation in 2008 claimed that Gunningham, who grew up in Bristol, was “the Scarlet Pimpernel of modern art.”

The post Who is Banksy? New mathematical analysis claims to know appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

March Madness unofficially started yesterday with "Selection Sunday." Basketball fans and novices alike began filling out brackets to try to guess which college teams might make it to the final four this year.

March Madness is an effective distraction from the news cycle and the presidential election, and it's a potential way to make a buck—literally billions of dollars are wagered every year.

What if it were legal to bet on the political elections in the United States? Wouldn't that get more people excited about politics?

In the United States, federal law prohibits gambling on local or national elections. But across the pond in the United Kingdom, people don't just bet on their elections, they can also bet on our elections. In fact, millions of British pounds have already been wagered on the race for the White House.

Mike Smithson is one of these British gamblers, and he tells us all about it. Mike is editor at PoliticalBetting.com

The Guardian has called The Year of the Runaways, the second novel by Man Booker Prize nominee Sunjeev Sahota, a "brilliant political novel about migrant workers in Sheffield." It tells the story of three young men and one woman who immigrate from India to England each with their own hopes, plans and ambitions -- and nearly no idea of what awaits them. 

Events: Sunjeev Sahota will be in conversation with Dinaw Mengestu on Saturday, April 30th at 2:00 p.m. at BookCourt (163 Court Street, Brooklyn).

Also on Saturday, April 30th, he'll be in conversation with John Freeman at 7:00 pm at McNally Jackson (52 Prince Street). 

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.

If you follow English soccer, you already know about the big clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal, but this weekend a team unknown to most outside the U.K. is poised to pull off one of the greatest sporting upsets.

Leicester City has been enjoying a remarkable run in the English Premier League. Before this season, an English bookmaker gave Leicester odds of 5,000 to 1 to bag the Premier League trophy. You will get the same odds on Bono becoming the next Pope. This Sunday, the team could win one of soccer's most prized titles for the first time.

The Takeaway talks with Manish Bhasin, a BBC TV soccer presenter and lifelong Leicester City fan, about the team's sensational run.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.

London has a new mayor. Labour Party candidate Sadiq Khan, a 45-year-old son of a bus driver and a Muslim, was elected to lead the city of 8 million Friday.

Khan defeated conservative Zac Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire, in a campaign full of contradictions about the future of the city and the United Kingdom. 

Joe Twyman, head of political and social research at YouGov, reflects on the results. 

Karl Ove Knausgaard joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss V. S. Naipaul's “Jack's Garden,” from a 1986 issue of the magazine.

British Member of Parliament Jo Cox is seen in this 2015 file photo by Yui Mok/Press Association/Handout via Reuters

A British member of parliament, Jo Cox, was killed in northern England on Thursday, days ahead of a referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union, known as “Brexit.”

Cox, 41, was shot twice and stabbed in Birstall, West Yorkshire, after attending a meeting with her constituents. She later died from her wounds.

A 52-year-old man was arrested in the area, police said. A witness told the Guardian that he heard the man shout “Britain first” before launching the attack.

Officials said it was unclear if the incident was related to the June 23 Brexit vote.

Both sides on the referendum said they would suspend campaigning. British Prime Minister David Cameron cancelled a speech he intended to make in Gibraltar.

Cox was described as a rising star in the Labor Party. She previously worked in the aid industry at Oxfam and reportedly often called for Britain to do more for the Syrian refugees.

She was married with two small children. Her husband Brendan Cox posted a tribute to her on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/mPOaytowxN

— Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) June 16, 2016

The post British lawmaker killed ahead of Brexit vote appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview.

A rising British politician was fatally stabbed and shot in the U.K. Thursday — just one week before citizens vote to determine if the United Kingdom remains in the European Union. The campaign for the "Brexit" referendum has become highly contentious and politically volatile.

Labor MP Jo Cox, 41, was elected just last year. Most of her career prior to politics had been spent in humanitarian work, and she was an outspoken supporter of immigration, refugees and civilians in Syria — a subject which is at the heart of the debate over whether the U.K. should stay or exit the European Union.

Her killer allegedly yelled "Britain First", the name of a far right group, before the attack.

Gun violence is rare in the U.K., and the incident has shocked the country.  In response, the campaign over Brexit has been suspended, at least temporarily as politicians, pundits, and citizens ponder if the brutal killing will quell the rhetoric surrounding the debate.

Simon Hix, a professor of political science at The London School of Economics, explains how the U.K. is moving forward, and how this act of violence may change the "Brexit" debate. Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear our full conversation.

Britons vote in a week whether to leave the E.U. ("Brexit") or to stay ("Remain"). John Cassidy, staff writer at the New Yorker, explains what's at stake for the countries involved, and the potential impact of Jo Cox's murder.

@BrianLehrer NYC-based Brit here (19 yrs). Just too depressing to see this isolationism & violence crossing the pond. Sad people & rhetoric.

— Eddie Brannan (@eddiebrannan) June 17, 2016

.@BrianLehrer Between Brexit and English football hooligans, I'm not feeling so bad about the present American political conflicts.

— Isabel (@MlleIsabelH) June 17, 2016

Britain's relationship to the EU is like NYC's to NY State - we put so much into it and don't get enough back, says caller David. #NYexit?

— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) June 17, 2016

Dan in London predicts that the murder of Jo Cox will illuminate the fringe-far right elements of the Brexit

— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) June 17, 2016

What's next for the United Kingdom, now that it has voted to leave the European Union?

Listeners from the UK and other parts of Europe call in to share their thoughts.

And Steven Erlanger, the London bureau chief for The New York Times, discusses what might happen as a result of the vote.

Was Brexit a generational vote? Very much so, said Erlanger. About 75% of those under 24 years old voted to remain in the EU, and 70% of those over 55 voted to leave. There was also a major differential in terms of city dwellers versus country dwellers and between the highly educated and the less educated, he said.

@BrianLehrer young people didn't turn out in the UK and had their futures decided by older generations, I hope younger Americans notice this

— Kat Mohr (@rinjvonscoot) June 24, 2016

Moving piece by @BarbaraSurk, a Slovenian in Brussels, on how nations and empires fall apart, & why Europe matters.https://t.co/A0rIfVQOw6

— Steven Erlanger (@StevenErlanger) June 23, 2016

@BrianLehrer Friends of mine in Bradford all disappointed in result. Felt that people voted for a Trump-esque slogan--"Take Britain Back"

— Daniel Nosonowitz (@nosonowitz_d) June 24, 2016

Caller on Brian Lehrer show said this was "the biggest British foreign policy blunder since Neville Chamberlain in Munich." SICK BURN

— Lara Elena Donnelly (@larazontally) June 24, 2016

@BrianLehrer I went to bed a European and woke up shocked and so totally disappointed to no longer be.

— Eddie Brannan (@eddiebrannan) June 24, 2016

Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed, talks about the latest news about Brexit, Buzzfeed and the Trump campaign and Buzfeed's new voter registration efforts.

Always fun to be on the radio with @brianlehrer, where I'll be talking about #turnuptovotehttps://t.co/QF84t9bWWx

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) June 27, 2016

A bar in Dublin, Ireland has made a special “Brexit” beer called Big Mistake after the results of the British referendum to leave the EU. Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

A divided UK voted to leave the European Union last week, and Brits are coming to the realization of what it all means.

We spoke with Daniela Schwarzer, director of the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, to learn more about what comes next. The following Q&A was edited for clarity and length.

PBS NewsHour: What happens now?

Daniela Schwarzer: First of all, the UK will have to figure out how to move forward. The referendum is nonbinding, so the prime minister will have to decide what to make of it.

There is a possibility that the political meltdown in the UK moves ahead at such a pace that general elections might come up in the fall, and that could potentially delay the invoking of Article 50 even further.

The country generally is deeply divided between generations — the older people voted for Brexit, and a vast majority of the younger generation voted to stay in the EU. Also, several regions of the UK voted to stay in the European Union, like Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and London, and there are already discussions about the breakup of the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom at this moment is in a deep political crisis, which may turn into a constitutional crisis.

Scottish leaders renew their push to exit the UK in order to stay in the EU. Video by PBS NewsHour Weekend

If Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales voted to separate from the UK, would they need to apply for EU membership?

Schwarzer: Currently, that would be the procedure according to the EU treaty, because there’s no legal framework for a country to only partially leave, but we are really entering unchartered territory here.

There is a possibility that if this political situation continues to destabilize, a compromise could be found to keep a few regions within the European Union. But it’s too early to tell.

Could places like Northern Ireland keep using the euro as their currency?

Schwarzer: Yes. There are countries that are not part of the European Union and that de facto use the euro. But of course, every country, or part of the country, will have to decide whether it fares better with the national currency and central bank.

What happens to Americans or other foreigners working in the UK?

Schwarzer: The status of Americans wouldn’t change. What would change is if they live and work in the UK and the UK is no longer in the EU, if they want to move to the European Union it might mean new restrictions on the portability of their pension contributions or other things.

Immigrants feel uncertain about their future in the UK. Video by PBS NewsHour Weekend

Any chance for a do-over vote?

Schwarzer: While the vote was for Brexit, in my view the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU is no done deal.

It is highly likely that public opinion changes over the coming months, because the costs of leaving the European Union are felt so clearly already now over just a few days: the currency collapse, the stock market collapse, but also longer-term developments such as the loss of value of real estate in the United Kingdom.

Some companies have already announced they would no longer invest in the UK. Some financial institutions have said maybe London is no longer the place to be.

Also, the political landscape may change and if there are new general elections this fall, voters may show they favor undoing the referendum decision. If that were so, the new prime minister would be able to consult his parliament and tell the EU that the UK does not want to invoke Article 50.

That would be a complete turnaround, but it’s not the first time in recent EU history that a referendum that had clear results did not lead to the policy that was suggested. That was true for the Greek decision to leave the eurozone — that didn’t happen either.

Is this a wake-up call for the EU to change its ways?

Schwarzer: The Brexit vote is definitely a wake-up call for the European Union and leaders around EU members, because the reasons the British decided to go for Brexit are not just exclusive to Britain. Many of the fears apply to other countries as well, such as immigration concerns, socioeconomic insecurities and the questions of identity.

That’s why the phenomenon of anti-elite parties and far-right movements can be found all around the European Union and the United States. There’s a deeper problem of democracy under the conditions of globalization.

The post Brexit to Nexit: What happens now that the UK voted to leave the EU? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Sebastian Mallaby, senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, joins us as the European Union begins a series of meetings about the impact of Brexit, to discuss what future he sees this decision having.

Iceland’s Ragnar Sigurdsson celebrates scoring the team’s first goal in the 2-1 defeat of England in the Euro 2016 soccer tournament on June 27. Photo by Eric Gaillard Livepic via Reuters

The tiny country of Iceland has made it through to the quarterfinals of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament by beating a giant. The underdog team forced Portugal and Hungary to draws, defeated Austria, and to shocked soccer fans around the world, beat England 2-1 on Monday.

The loss caused England’s soccer manager – the highest paid at the Euro 2016 tournament – to quit, giving up a reported $4.6 million a year contract, while one of Iceland’s managers also works as a dentist.

The island country, with a population of 330,000 – about the size of Corpus Christi, Texas – has gone soccer-crazy. A reported 30,000 fans, a 10th of the population, descended on France to cheer on their team.

The man who may best represent the incredulity of the team’s success is announcer Gudmundur Benediktsson, whose reaction to Iceland’s victory over Austria last week went viral.

His commentary on his country’s stunning victory over England was just as colorful, even poking fun at the recent Brexit vote.

“Iceland is going to play France on Sunday. France Iceland!” he said, according to one translation, “You can go home. You can go out of Europe. You can go wherever the hell you want. … England 1 Iceland 2 is the closing score here in Nice. And the fairy tale continues.”

His reaction to England’s defeat (with subtitles):

Iceland is scheduled to play France on July 3.

The post Watch this soccer announcer’s raucous takedown of England after Iceland victory appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Iceland’s soccer team shocked the world this week by beating England and advancing to the Euro 2016 quarter finals.

George Vecsey, former sports columnist for The New York Times and author of Eight World Cups: My Journey through the Beauty and Dark Side of Soccer talks about what other teams can learn from this upstart football nation.

Iceland announcer loses his damn mind during team's upset of England in Euro Cup pic.twitter.com/YNYIeJ5l5t

— The Fake ESPN (@TheFakeESPN) June 28, 2016

@BrianLehrer was on Iceland Air during England match, the win was announced on intercom to screaming cheers and high-fives with attendants

— NekoAtsumeLARPer (@sillycaitlin) June 29, 2016

I love that @BrianLehrer is talking #Iceland soccer. Here's a photo from last week's celebration in Reykjavik. pic.twitter.com/KNSjcAYdd9

— Craig Nelson (@across106th) June 29, 2016

Vote Leave campaign leader, Boris Johnson, waves as he finishes delivering a speech in London, Britain June 30, 2016. Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters

Boris Johnson, who was expected to be a leading candidate for prime minister of the United Kingdom following the contentious Brexit vote announced Thursday that he will not seek the office.

Johnson said he was not the right person to unite the country as it exits the EU.

“Having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in Parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me,” he told reporters. “My role will be to give every possible support to the next Conservative administration, to make sure that we properly fulfill the mandate of the people that was delivered at the referendum, and to champion the agenda I believe in.”

His decision came shortly after Justice Secretary Michael Gove — an ally of Johnson who had been expected to back him in the race — announced that he would run.

In announcing he would run, Gove politician conceded that he has “repeatedly” said before that he did not want to be prime minister. But he said he decided to seek office over concerns that Johnson would not be able to lead the country in the wake of the Brexit decision.

“I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that Boris [Johnson] cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead,” Gove said. “I have, therefore, decided to put my name forward for the leadership. I want there to be an open and positive debate about the path the country will now take.”

Gove now joins a race with five other candidates, including Home Secretary Theresa May, Minister Andrea Leadsom, MP Liam Fox and Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb.

The post Boris Johnson will not run for UK prime minister appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Hear new music from England, including brand-new off-world music from ”The Red Book,” the second record by the global chamber/world music group Penguin Café, (as led by Arthur Jeffes, the son of the late Simon Jeffes, founder of Penguin Café Orchestra).  These Penguin Café works were written for the International Space Orchestra and NASA Ames in 2012, and were beamed into space as part of NASA’s Kepler project. 

Also, there’s new music by Jocelyn Pook, from a new score for the dance-theatre piece “iTMOi (in the mind of igor)” by Akram Khan written for the centennial celebration of Igor Stravinsky in 2013.  Then, out of Newcastle, hear music from the Unthanks, which is anchored by Rachel and Becky Unthank, rendering a tune by Robert Wyatt, “Sea Song.” Plus, listen to music by the British composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Max de Wardener for percussionist Joby Burgess, working as “Powerplant.”

PROGRAM #3570 New Music from England (First aired on 2/25/2014)  

ARTIST: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset
WORK: Robert Wyatt: Sea Song, excerpt
RECORDING: The Bairns 
SOURCE: Real World #158 
INFO: realworldrecords.com

ARTIST: Penguin Café
WORK: Aurora [5:00]
RECORDING: The Red Book
SOURCE/INFO: penguincafe.com

ARTIST: Penguin Café
WORK: 1420 [5:55]
RECORDING: The Red Book
SOURCE/INFO: penguincafe.com

ARTIST: Jocelyn Pook
WORK: Sacrfice [6:16]
RECORDING: iTMOi (in the mind of igor)
SOURCE: jocelynpook.com
INFO: Try Amazon.com or iTunes

ARTIST: Rachel Unthank & the Winterset
WORK: Sea Song (Robert Wyatt) [6:19]
RECORDING: The Bairns 
SOURCE: Real World #158 
INFO: realworldrecords.com

ARTIST: Powerplant
WORK: Max de Wardener: Until my blood is pure [6:34]
RECORDING: 24 Lies Per Second
SOURCE: Signum SIGCD313
INFO: signumrecords.com

ARTIST: Graham Fitkin /Smith Quartet
WORK: Slow, excerpt [12:16]
RECORDING: Slow/Huoah/Frame
SOURCE: Argo 433-690
INFO: Out of print, but try Amazon.com or auction sites

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first: There are reports that the United Kingdom’s process to begin leaving the European Union may not begin until later next year, delaying the U.K.’s so-called Brexit.

The June vote to leave may have surprised many there, but it came as welcome news to the island nation’s fishermen. They have long complained about European Union rules, and now they’re hoping Brexit will help them revitalize a fishing industry they say was damaged by E.U. policy.

From Southwest England, special correspondent Jennifer Glasse reports.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Fishermen have brought their catches into Brixham Harbor since the Middle Ages, when it was the biggest fishing port in Southwest England.

The harbor and the fleet have changed over the centuries. And skipper Mike Sharp hopes there are more changes to come. That’s why he voted for the U.K. to leave Europe.

MIKE SHARP, Skipper, “Emilia Jane”: We have all the Dutch, and the French, and the Belgian fishermen, and mainly the Spanish as well coming to land to take our fish out of our waters, which we want to — you know, I think we still can let them come in, but we can decide how many comes in.

JENNIFER GLASSE: European Union-mandated quotas stipulate what kind and how many fish the trawlers can bring in. Sharp and other fishermen here claim the quotas favor boats from continental Europe. E.U. rules also limited the size of fishing fleets.

MIKE SHARP: When I started fishing 30 years ago, there was 60 beam trawlers, and now there’s 17. So, I would like to see it built back up.

JENNIFER GLASSE: A larger fleet could mean hundreds more jobs for deck hands, engineers, welders and, onshore, processing, buying and selling fish.

Brixham Fish Market is already the largest on England’s South Coast, handling about $35 million of annual trade. This market itself was modernized in part with E.U. funds.

PAUL MORTIMER, Brixham Trawler Agents: A lot of the fish we sell in England, we sell from this market here actually goes abroad. I think just because we’re out of the E.U., I don’t think they’re going to stop buying our fish. They’re still going to want our fish.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Fish buyer Steve Farrar says his children voted to stay in Europe because they want to be able to study and work there.

STEVE FARRAR, Fish Buyer: Oh, I don’t want them that badly.

JENNIFER GLASSE: He voted to leave because he says it was a question of democracy vs. control from Europe.

STEVE FARRAR: I felt very much that if I couldn’t vote somebody, a politician, in or out, I didn’t want them making decisions over my life or my children’s lives or my grandchildren’s lives. And that was the fundamental issue, really.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Robert Simonetti exports fish and serves it at a local restaurant, including, what else, fish and chips. He doesn’t think his out vote to leave will change much for his businesses.

ROBERT SIMONETTI, Restauranteur: For me, it was all the immigration thing. I think that’s a big issue for everybody.

You know, we want control about who comes into our country, really, the people we don’t want, the criminals. If you’re coming here to work and you’re going to be part of the community, we don’t care what color you are, whether you’re white, black or yellow.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Waitress Wendy Lanyon says any sacrifices made to leave Europe will be worth it.

WENDY LANYON, Waitress: I do believe we’re going to — it’s going to be hard for us as a country, but nothing like what they made out it was going to be. But we have survived before without being in the European Union. And we will survive again. I’m sure we will.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Despite the anti-Europe sentiment here, this harbor town has deep historical ties with the continent.

Dutch Prince William of Orange landed here on the 5th of November, 1688, and he became the king of England, ruling alongside Queen Mary. Napoleon Bonaparte never actually set foot on land, but his ship was just offshore before he was sent into exile.

Over tea, local historian Edgar Lawrence says it’s no surprise Britons voted to leave.

EDGAR LAWRENCE, Historian: I’m old enough to have voted for the common market, but what we got wasn’t anything like what we had been told it was going to be. And it’s just got worse and worse.

JENNIFER GLASSE: And what do you think Brexit will do for Brixham and Devon and Cornwall?

EDGAR LAWRENCE: Depends very much on the politicians. We know what we want it to do. Will they agree to everything we want, which Europe doesn’t seem to want us to have?

JENNIFER GLASSE: The picturesque beaches of Devon and Cornwall counties attract tourists that bring in revenue, but not enough to keep the local economies afloat.

This area once produced tin and copper and china clay, but all you can see of the mines now are now abandoned shells. After the mines closed, there was a steady decline in manufacturing and other industries, leaving this one of the poorest areas in Europe.

Cornwall alone has received hundreds of millions of dollars in European aid, support that’s now at risk.

The E.U. had pledged $650 million through 20 to Cornwall to continue to support new businesses, build infrastructure and complete high-speed Internet access to the region.

The head of the local county commission is trying to ensure the money keeps flowing, whether from Europe or the U.K. government.

JOHN POLLARD, Leader, Cornwall Council: I don’t think the economic argument played a very big part in the decision. It was more on fear and a dislike of Brussels. People like to blame somebody for the ills of the country, and Brussels was getting the blame. So, it wasn’t, in that sense, economically logical. It was very much a reaction vote.

JENNIFER GLASSE: One of Cornwall’s poorest areas is Redruth. This food bank gives out free provisions to the needy.

Vikki Rostron and her partner are both unemployed and have six children between them. She has no interest in politics and didn’t vote.

VIKKI ROSTRON, Redruth, Cornwall Resident: I didn’t know enough about it to think about it, to be honest. It’s not — it wasn’t something I wanted to do, you know?

JENNIFER GLASSE: The food bank’s founder says the Brexit vote won’t hurt Cornwall because European money has not produced the right kind of jobs since the local economy has evolved.

DONOVAN GARDNER, Food Bank Founder: Those jobs are not here anymore. And that — and they’re still not here. Whether it’s European money or British government money, those cyber-jobs are not here in Cornwall. And that’s what we struggle with.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Some in Cornwall want the government to bring back heavy industry, not a viable prospect. And European funds have been spent to create 21st century solutions to Cornwall’s limitations.

JOHN POLLARD: A lot of that money is not visible, so it doesn’t build a school or a sports center. It builds a road, or it builds a business park, or it helps to develop a digital industry. And people, the man in the street doesn’t — they don’t see that.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Back in Brixham, the fishermen head out to sea. They say they have done their part, persuading the country to vote to get out of Europe. Now it’s up to the politicians.

Negotiations are expected to take two years or many more. The fishermen of Brixham hope officials in London and Brussels won’t leave them high and dry.

Reporting for the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jennifer Glasse in Brixham, England.

The post Why Brexit may be the best thing for Britain’s fishing industry appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Director Austin Pendleton, actress Jill Tanner and artistic director Jonathan Bank discuss the Mint Theater revival of N.C. Hunter’s 1955 play, “A Day By the Sea.” The play follows the residents of a seaside resort in Dorset, England as they deal with personal disappointments and overall disillusionment with life at middle age.

"A Day By the Sea" has been extended through October 23rd at The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row 410 West 42nd Street (between 9th and 10th Ave). For tickets and showtimes, click here. 

James Rebanks runs a family-owned farm in the Lake District in Northern England and also serves as an expert advisor to UNESCO on sustainable tourism. He also runs the popular Herdwick Shepherd account on Twitter (@herdyshepherd1). He joins us to discuss his second book, The Shepherd’s View: Modern Photographs From an Ancient Landscape, a collection of photography that chronicles the timeless rhythm of farm life in the Lake District.

Event: On Tuesday, November 1 at 7 p.m. James Rebanks will be appearing at House of Speakeasy's "Seriously Entertaining Razor's Edge" at Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette Street) alongside Phil Klay, Elizabeth Alexander and Madeline Thien. 

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of Michael’s important legacies over time was how he eventually came out and dealt with his sexuality and identity.

Tim Teeman wrote about that and more on The Daily Beast. He joins me now from New York.

Tim, before we get into that issue of his sexuality, I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about George Michael as a musician.

TIM TEEMAN, The Daily Beast: Yes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: When you look back at his career, where do you put him in the pantheon of pop stars?

TIM TEEMAN: Oh, I put him — personally, I put him right up there.

I mean, if you grew up in England — and I’m sure he was very famous over here as well with Wham! and later on as a solo singer — but if you grew up in England in the ’70s and ’80s, as I did, he, along with Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet and Culture Club, Boy George, these were big, totemic cultural figures.

And Wham!, as Angus Walker described in his report there, were — they were almost the harbingers, the heralds of Thatcherism himself. The group was very anti-Thatcher, famously anti-Thatcher, but their brand of pop and the kind of aspiration and the brightness of that pop was radical and revolutionary.

And Britain, at that point in the early ’80s, emerging from a period of sort of late ’70s gray industrial decline, this was the kind of pop that heralded the big, brash ’80s.

And look at George’s hair, look at his clothes in that time. And those songs, you either — as I say in my article for The Daily Beast, you either hit the dance floor, and you just flailed like a windmill dancing crazily at them, and then for the slower songs, those slower songs still are the songs that are at weddings, the last song of the night, people weeping on each others’ shoulder.

They are slow dances. And they have remained. And they have transcended. If they were considered cheesy — and they were considered slightly cheesy back in the day — they have stood the test of time.

Look at “Last Christmas.” “Last Christmas” is right up there with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as a Christmas cultural classic.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As we heard in that report, George Michael was rather rudely forced out of the closet by this arrest back in the ’90s.

And up until that point, he had been rather quiet about his sexuality. I wonder if you have a sense of why he wanted to keep that to himself.

TIM TEEMAN: I think, sometimes, especially now, with the acceleration of cultural change and acceptance, as it’s known, I think we sometimes forget what those times were like back in the ’80s and even into the ’90s, before he was forced out of the closet.

These were not times of large numbers of celebrities of any kind out of the closet at all. You might remember, in the very late ’90s, Ellen’s coming out over here was a big, big cultural moment.

And so I sometimes think we forget how, in those days, coming out of the closet, if you were famous, and, in fact, coming out of the closet if you were anybody was a very brave, wonderful act.

Harvey Milk, the wonderful Harvey Milk, had it exactly right when he said the most important and wonderful thing an LGBT person could do was come out. It was the most powerful statement they could make.

So, the interesting thing about George Michael is that, yes, he kept it quiet, though it always — I remember growing up in the era of tabloid bait and insinuation around stars like George Michael and his sexuality. He did play equality concerts. He donated and sang at HIV and AIDS benefits.

While he was in the closet, he fell in love for the first time. And his first lover died in 1993 of an AIDS-related brain hemorrhage. So he had a gay life, and he was coming to terms with something himself in that period.

And he talked later on about the complexity of his own sexuality. Maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe there were commercial concerns. But then, in 1998, as you say, and as Angus Walker said in his report that you just played, came this arrest in Los Angeles.

And George Michael’s completely fantastic, wonderfully defiant, mischievous response to that, which wasn’t the usual contrite, yes, I have been bad, I have a few personal issues — it was to release a pop song which proudly celebrated sexuality and also…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This was “Outside.”

TIM TEEMAN: Sorry. This was “Outside,” absolutely. You’re right, yes.

It was a song that not only proudly celebrated sexuality, but also proudly and defiantly aimed itself squarely at law enforcement, which famously for years and years in your country and in Britain as well would entrap gay men in public lavatories just to arrest them, the use of pretty policemen, we called it in Britain.

And in this video, George skewers it all and also, if you listen to the lyrics, celebrates defiantly his own sexuality, which he spoke about in later years. He liked having public sex. He spoke about it openly. He had lovers. He fell in love. He had commitment issues. He was horny. He talked about all these things in his song, and occasionally in wonderful public interviews, which I talk about in my article.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You said that the culture has changed quite a bit since that notorious arrest.

Do you think, if the next George Michael is coming along and knows his sexuality, that he could be more comfortable today being who he is?

TIM TEEMAN: That’s a very interesting question. And I have been talking about that with colleagues today.

I think we like to think things have moved on. And I think, for a certain level of celebrity, I think things have moved on, and I think careers are continuing. You look at Neil Patrick Harris, you look at Ellen, there are some people who are excelling. And it’s wonderful, and it’s a demonstration of how far we have come and how far we like to think we have come.

And then you look at the top tier maybe of the music industry and you look at the top tier of Hollywood, and there it remains, at that very top tier, fear, prejudice, a self-patrolling closet on the part of celebrities and their representation.

And I think we have yet to really breach that sort of top, top, A-list film star, music star moment. It’s happening. There are more stars out than ever before. And we should be happy about that.

I would hope, in the future, that the example of George Michael and the openness and fierceness and the defiance and the mischief and the big smile and the joy he took in some parts of his life and what he tried to convey to us in music and how he spoke about it all in interviews, I hope that younger stars and even established stars who haven’t felt able to come out will look at that and think, he did it, and he did it with such style, and such fierceness and with such grace, let’s do it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Tim Teeman of The Daily Beast, thanks for this lovely remembrance.

TIM TEEMAN: Thank you so much.

The post What George Michael’s career meant for music and sexuality appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 91st birthday on Friday. Here, in a 2016 photo in Poundbury, Dorset, she matches perfectly in a turquoise ensemble. Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage via Getty Images

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth II turned 91 years old Friday. The occassion was marked with gun salutes and birthday wishes on Twitter. View photos of the queen as she grew up in the royal family.

Baby princess

The Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) pictured in 1926 with their daughter (later, Queen Elizabeth II) in a christening robe, which has been used in the Royal Family for generations. Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images

Ruffles and lace

The young Princess Elizabeth, seen here in 1928, already demonstrates a fancy for elaborate hats. Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Corgi love

Princess Elizabeth holds a Corgi in this Jan. 1, 1936, photo by Lisa Sheridan/Getty Images

Turning 13

Then-Princess Elizabeth pats her pony in Windsor Great Park, Berkshire, on her 13th birthday on April 21, 1939. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images

Girl Scouts

Princess Elizabeth poses in her girl guide (scouts) uniform in Frogmore, Windsor, England on April 11, 1942. Photo by Studio Lisa/Getty Images

Royal wave

Princess Elizabeth arrives at the Norwegian Embassy in London for a dinner party hosted by King Haakon VII of Norway on June 6, 1951, giving the famous royal wave. Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Young family

This photo taken in 1951 shows Queen Elizabeth II holding Princess Anne and Prince Charles in the arms of his father, Philip Mountbatten. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

In the garden

Queen Elizabeth II, seen here in March 1953, has a particular love of Corgis. UPI color slide via Getty Images

Belle of the ball

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip leave a banquet during their Commonwealth visit to Australia in 1954. Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Inspecting the troops

Queen Elizabeth II inspects men of the newly renamed Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment, Royal West African Frontier Force, at Kaduna Airport, Nigeria, during her Commonwealth Tour on Feb. 2, 1956. Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Sunny at Sandringham

Queen Elizabeth II relaxes at Sandringham Estate with her Corgis in this undated photo by Anwar Hussein/Getty Images

Royal wedding

The Prince and Princess of Wales pose on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on their wedding day, with the Queen and some of the bridesmaids on July 29, 1981. Photo by Terry Fincher/Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

Sporting event

Catherine, duchess of Cambridge (left), and Queen Elizabeth II share a laugh at a children’s sports event in Nottingham, England, on June 13, 2012. Photo by Phil Noble – WPA Pool/Getty Images

The post Queen Elizabeth II turns 91 today. View photos of her as a young royal appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

An explosion struck an Ariana Grande concert in northern England late Monday, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens in what police say they are treating as a terrorist attack.

Greater Manchester Police said 19 people were confirmed dead and roughly 50 were injured by the explosion at Manchester Arena. Emergency vehicles were helping the injured and bomb disposal units were later seen outside the venue.

There was mass panic after the explosion at the end of the concert, which was part of Grande's The Dangerous Woman Tour. The singer was not injured, according to a representative.

Britain's terrorist threat level has been set at "severe" in recent years indicating an attack is highly likely. Police said the explosion is being judged a terrorist attack unless new information proves otherwise.

Witnesses reported hearing two loud bangs coming from near the arena's bars at about 10:35 p.m. but there were few further details.

"A huge bomb-like bang went off that hugely panicked everyone and we were all trying to flee the arena," concertgoer Majid Khan, 22, told Britain's Press Association. "It was one bang and essentially everyone from the other side of the arena where the bang was heard from suddenly came running towards us as they were trying to exit."

Added Oliver Jones, 17: "The bang echoed around the foyer of the arena and people started to run."

Video from inside the arena showed concertgoers screaming as they made their way out amid a sea of pink balloons.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the government is working to establish "the full details of what is being treated by the police as an appalling terrorist attack."

She said her thoughts are with the victims and the families of those who have been affected. The government is expected to call an emergency Cabinet meeting.

If the incident is confirmed as a terrorist attack it would be the most deadly in Britain since the London subway bombings in 2005.

Police advised the public to avoid the area around the Manchester Arena, and the train station near the arena, Victoria Station, was evacuated and all trains canceled.

Joseph Carozza, a representative from Grande's U.S. record label, said the singer is OK and they are investigating what happened.

The Dangerous Woman Tour is the third concert tour by Grande and supports her third studio album, "Dangerous Woman."

Grande's role as Cat Valentine on Nickelodeon's high school sitcom "Victorious" propelled her to teen idol status, starting in 2010.

The 23-year-old Grande, with her signature high ponytail, went on to also star in spinoffs that included "iCarly," as she worked to develop her recording career.

The tour began in Phoenix in February. After Manchester, Grande was to perform at venues in Europe, including Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and France, with concerts in Latin America and Asia to follow.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — President Donald Trump on Tuesday condemned a deadly attack at a pop concert in Manchester, England as the act of “evil losers” and called on nations to band together to fight terrorism.

“The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever,” said Trump, speaking after a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated and innocent life must be protected.”

Trump spoke from Bethlehem in the West Bank, the morning after a blast that killed more than 20 people at an Ariana Grande concert. British officials have said they are treating the blast as an act of terrorism. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Trump stressed his support for the United Kingdom and mourned the loss of “beautiful young people.” Relying on one of his preferred insults, Trump said he would call the perpetrators “losers, because that’s what they are.”

The president has used the stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank to call for the end of such violence. In a speech in Riyadh on Sunday, he urged Muslim leaders to eradicate what he called “Islamic extremism” and cast the effort as a “battle between good and evil.”

On Tuesday, he added: “All civilized nations must join together to protect human life and the sacred right of our citizens to live in safety and in peace.”

Trump also expressed optimism that he can help facilitate peace between Israel and Palestinians. He said he was “truly hopeful that America can help Israel and the Palestinians forge peace and bringing new hope the region and its people.”

Trump heads next to Europe, where planned meetings with world leaders on the economy and trade could be overtaken with discussion of terrorism and security.

Police: 22 dead, 59 injured at Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, UK after explosion

The post President Trump condemns ‘wicked ideology’ behind Manchester attack appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A man photographs a sign in Manchester, Britain. Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The United States’ top intelligence official says the U.S. government has not yet verified that the Islamic State group is responsible for the attack in Manchester, England, but called the deadly incident a reminder of how serious the terror threat remains.

“This threat is real, it’s not going away, and it needs significant attention,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said during testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Coats said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

Authorities are expected to provides updates after 1 p.m. ET today on the Manchester explosion that killed 22 people and injured dozens more at the end of an Ariana Grande concert Monday.

Coats appeared before the panel following a suicide attack at an Ariana Grande show in England that left 22 people dead and dozens more wounded. The Islamic State claimed it was behind the attack. The Islamic State group said one of its members planted bombs in crowds at the concert. The group warned in a statement posted on social media that more attacks are to come.

Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, told the panel that the extremist group frequently claims responsibility for violent attacks. He said he had just returned from a trip to London where he met with his counterparts in the British intelligence community. Coats said their gravest concern that the potential for attacks carried out by “inspired or homegrown” extremists, which are much more difficult to detect and prevent.

His testimony comes amid ongoing investigations into allegations that Russia tried to interfere in last year’s election. Coats refused to comment on a news report that President Donald Trump asked him to publicly deny any collusion between his campaign and Russia.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the committee’s chairman, asked Coats about The Washington Post report Monday that said Trump asked Coats and Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to push back against an FBI investigation that’s been examining potential coordination between Moscow and the presidential campaign.

Coats did not deny the report but said he didn’t want to characterize or comment any private conversations with the president. Coats also said he had no documents about such a call. He was asked by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., if he had such material that could be provided to Robert Mueller, the special counsel named by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

READ MORE: 22 dead, 59 injured at Ariana Grande concert in Manchester after explosion, police say

The post Top official says U.S. hasn’t verified ISIS claim on Manchester attack appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

People take part in a vigil for the victims of an attack on concert goers at Manchester Arena, in central Manchester, Britain. Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters

A 22-year-old British man detonated a homemade bomb at Manchester Arena on Monday after an Ariana Grande concert, an act of terror that killed 22 people and injured dozens of others.

The explosion, which is currently being treated as a terrorist plot, is the deadliest attack in London since July 2005 suicide bombings in London claimed more than 50 lives.

WATCH: Police update on Manchester explosion that killed 22 people

On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Theresa May raised the country’s terrorism threat level to “critical,” suggesting “it is a possibility we cannot ignore that there is a wider group of individuals linked to this attack.”

Here’s what journalists and police have uncovered about the attack since Monday.

WHAT HAPPENED?

• Police confirmed that 22 people were killed in the explosion at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena.
• The bombing occurred around 10:33 p.m. local time, prompting panic among the concertgoers, many young, who were exiting the venue.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

• Twelve of the 59 injured in the attack were children under the age of 16, a UK ambulance official told the Associated Press.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

• In a brief update Tuesday, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins of the Greater Manchester Police confirmed the identity of the suspect as 22-year-old Salman Ramadan Abedi. The constable did not provide many other details, but did caution that a coroner hadn’t officially identified the bomber. Abedi reportedly died in the explosion.
• It’s not clear whether the suspect acted alone or as part of a larger network, the constable added.
• A law enforcement official, speaking anonymously to The New York Times, said Abedi was the son of Libyan immigrants, born in 1994 in Britain. The official also told the Times that Abedi’s ID was found at the scene.
• Authorities said they arrested a 23-year-old in South Manchester as part of its ongoing investigation, but it’s not clear if the individual is connected to the explosion.
• The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, but U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Tuesday that the U.S. government has yet to confirm this detail.

HOW DID LEADERS REACT?

A man photographs a sign in Manchester, Britain. Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

• President Donald Trump, speaking after a meeting with Palestine’s Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the attack Tuesday, saying that “this wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated and innocent life must be protected.”
• On Twitter, the president said “we stand in absolute solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom.”

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

• In a televised speech Tuesday, May addressed the Manchester attack, saying that, “All acts of terrorism are cowardly attacks on innocent people, but this attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”
• The Queen issued a statement that called the attack an “act of barbarity.” She offered her “deepest sympathy” to those affected and thanked the emergency crews for their response.

WHAT’S NEXT?

• British Prime Minister Theresa May said the UK was raising its terror threat level from severe to critical, believing that another attack was imminent, AP reported.
• This meant an increased law enforcement presence at “big events,” such as football matches and concerts, she said.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

• In a statement Monday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said there was no evidence to indicate a specific threat to the U.S. “However, the public may experience increased security in and around public places and events as officials take additional precautions,” it said.

The post Everything we know about the Manchester attack appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

A white van reportedly veered off a roadway and struck pedestrians on the famed London Bridge in England late Saturday, injuring several people, according to the Associated Press.

The van was traveling at approximately 50 mph when the incident took place, according to BBC reporter Holly Jones who was at the scene and witnessed the crash. No deaths were immediately reported as emergency workers rushed to attend to the injured.

“He swerved right round me and then hit about five or six people,” Jones said. “He hit about two people in front of me and then three behind.”

The BBC reported that police arrested a man who “was handcuffed and had his shirt off” after the van traveled from central London toward the south end of the River Thames.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

One witness, Will Heaven, told Sky News he saw people who had been struck and at least one of them was placed inside an ambulance.

“We saw injured people on the road, injured people on the pavement,” he said.

London police also responded at Borough Market near London Bridge, and police asked pedestrians to avoid the area.

President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May have been briefed on the incident.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The post Van strikes pedestrians on London Bridge appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Police officers and ambulance crews stand outside Borough Market after an attack left seven people dead and dozens injured in London, Britain, on June 4, 2017. Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump argued in favor of his controversial travel ban as London authorities responded to reports of a string of attacks Saturday night.

One tweet read: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

At least seven died Saturday night after a van veered off the road and barreled into pedestrians on busy London Bridge. Three men fled the van with large knives and attacked people at bars and restaurants in nearby Borough Market, police and witnesses said. The attack unfolded quickly, and police said officers had shot and killed the three attackers within eight minutes.

Trump began tweeting about the incidents an hour or so after initial news reports. First, he retweeted a Drudge Report item about the attacks, then provided his own message about the travel ban.

A few minutes later Trump tweeted a message of support for Londoners: “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to immediately reinstate its ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries and refugees from anywhere in the world. The administration argues that the U.S. will be safer if the policy is put in place.

READ NEXT: What’s next for Trump’s revised travel ban?

Lower courts have blocked the Trump policy, citing various reasons including statements Trump made during the 2016 campaign. The legal fight pits the president’s authority over immigration against what lower courts have said is a policy that purported to be about national security but was intended to target Muslims.

Trump later called Prime Minister Theresa May to offer condolences. The White House said the president “praised the heroic response of police and other first responders and offered the full support of the United States government in investigating and bringing those responsible for these heinous acts to justice.”

The State Department issued a statement condemning them as “cowardly.”

“The United States stands ready to provide any assistance authorities in the United Kingdom may request,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

“Our hearts are with the families and loved ones of the victims. We wish a full and quick recovery to those injured in the attacks. All Americans stand in solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom,” she said.

This report was written by the Associated Press.

The post Trump points to travel ban after reports of London attacks appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this interview. 

This past weekend presented another harrowing series of days for the United Kingdom.

On Saturday night in London, three men drove a white van into a group of pedestrians on London Bridge. The van then continued on to nearby nightspot Borough Market, where the men exited and began stabbing civilians in pubs and restaurants. Less than 10 minutes after being alerted, police put an end to the violence by shooting roughly 50 bullets at the attackers, killing all three and hitting one civilian, who is said to be in stable condition.

As of Monday morning, reports indicate that at least seven people were killed on Saturday and 48 hospitalized — 21 are said to be in critical condition. On Sunday, more than 24 hours after the attack occurred, the Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Saturday's events came less than two weeks after a terrorist bombing killed 22 people in the city of Manchester, and is the third major terrorist attack to hit England in the last three months.

In its wake, the message sent by many Londoners, including those who survived the attack, was one of solidarity. But while the people of England seem to be united in the wake of the attack, politicians across the world did not put up such a unified front.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan issued a swift condemnation of the attackers, saying he was “appalled and furious” at the “cowardly” attack. He also urged residents to remain calm, even as police presence in the city is heightened over the last several days, telling Londoners there was "no reason to be alarmed" by the increase in security. 

On Twitter, President Donald Trump called out Mayor Khan for telling the public that there was "no reason to be alarmed" after the attack, seemingly taking the mayor's message out of context. 

In her response to the attack, British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is facing a general election this Thursday, outlined four changes that need to take place in order to properly counter terrorism in the United Kingdom. But former U.K. Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage told Fox News on Sunday that he was not reassured by her words, and that "unless people see some really concrete action is going to be taken, then I think the calls for interning thousands of suspects will grow louder and louder.”

For more on the British government’s ongoing response to Saturday’s attack, The Takeaway turns to Usama Hasan, head of Islamic Studies with Quilliam International.

Almost a year ago, Charlie Gard was born in a London hospital with a rare mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome that left him profoundly brain damaged. The hospital, mindful of the infant’s pain, wanted to end life support. The distraught parents fought the decision, and went to court to keep their baby alive — a drama that captured the sympathy of the nation. But the saga did not stay on that side of the Atlantic. Offered false hope by an American doctor promoting his own treatment, the family became tools of right-wing American critics of Britain’s single-payer National Health Service, who portrayed Charlie as a martyr to the tyranny of statism. Bob speaks with conservative British journalist Melanie Phillips about what the American right-wing media has gotten wrong about Charlie Gard's story, and why the conservative media in Britain and the United States approach healthcare so differently. 

Nick Lowe made it big as a pioneer of what the English called “pub rock,” and Americans usually call power-pop. Lowe had his biggest successes in the New Wave era but continues to release records and perform -- in the opinion of one fan, staff writer Nick Paumgarten, Lowe is as great as he ever was. He digitally reissued six of his albums earlier this summer on Yep Roc Records, with physical releases planned. Now the musician is engaged in figuring out how to age gracefully in rock and roll. “Some of my colleagues and associates have to behave like they did when they were young, and I wanted to avoid that rubbish at all costs,” he told Paumgarten on a recent visit. “The thing was for me to accept the fact that I was getting older, and to actually embrace it and use it as an advantage instead of trying to hide it.” But, after the rocker recently lost close friends to illness, accepting old age might be getting a little harder. 

Tessa Hadley reads her story from the October 16, 2017, issue of the magazine. Hadley has published six novels and four short-story collections, including “Sunstroke and Other Stories” and “Married Love.” In 2016, she won the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.

Fiona Mozley discusses her novel Elmet, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of a family living an isolated, self-sufficient life in Elmet, a corner of Yorkshire. But after a catastrophic event occurs, it becomes clear the family’s solitary idyll will not last and their way of life is threatened.

Event: Mozley will be giving a reading and will be in conversation with author Hallgrimur Helgason at McNally Jackson Bookstore on January 18 at 7 p.m. moderated by Arianna Rebolini, the Books Editor at Buzzfeed News.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment

The BBC spent 22 years negotiating with Buckingham Palace for an interview with Queen Elizabeth II. And they finally got it.

As part of the documentary "Coronation Day," which is airing on the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel here in the former colonies, BBC’s royal commenter Alastair Bruce sat down with the 91-year-old monarch to talk about the crown jewels, including the more manageable "Imperial State Crown," that weighs almost three pounds.

"You can't look down to read the speech, you have to take the speech up. Because if you did your neck would break, it would just fall off," the Queen tells Bruce. 

Here to explain this interview is such a big deal is Kristen Meinzer, director of nonfiction programming at Panoply and co-host of “When Meghan Met Harry: A Royal Weddingcast.”

You can find "The Coronation" on the Smithsonian Channel this weekend. 

This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich. 

Last week, former Russian spy Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a park bench in the small southern city of Salisbury in England. They appeared to be victims of a targeted poisoning.

Skripal was once locked up in Russia for secretly working for England's MI6, but was released to the UK as part of a prisoner exchange.

Now, all eyes are on Moscow. The attack appears to be part of a broader pattern of Russian dissidents being targeted in assassination attempts, both at home and abroad. But this incident in the UK is eerily reminiscent of a similar attack, when Alexander Litvinenko was murdered after ingesting polonium in 2006.

How will the UK respond to this incident? Emily Tamkin, a Russia expert, and a staff writer for  Foreign Policy  magazine, joins the show to discuss the potential implications.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go.

Want to comment on this story? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.