President Joe Biden will greet the Prince and Princess of Wales while in Boston for a fundraiser Friday, the White House said Wednesday.
The Royal couple is visiting Boston for the second annual Earthshot Prize Awards Ceremony, an ambitious initiative founded by Prince William to help tackle some of the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges, which is scheduled for Friday.
“The President intends to greet the Prince and Princess of Wales when he is in Boston – we are still finalizing and working through the details,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “I don’t have any anything more to share, any more specifics to share on that.”
Earlier this week, CNN reported that Biden was headed to Massachusetts on Friday to headline a fundraiser for the Georiga Senate runoff race. The president is set to appear at the event with Democratic Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.
Line to see queen’s coffin stretches to 16.5 hours
World leaders start arriving in London for funeral
LONDON, Sept 17 (Reuters) – King Charles and his son William shook hands and greeted well-wishers who had queued for hours in central London on Saturday to file past the coffin of Queen Elizabeth, asking people how long they had been there and whether they were warm enough.
To cheers of “hip, hip, hurrah” and shouts of “God save the King”, Charles and William spoke to mourners near Lambeth Bridge, as they neared the end of the mammoth line to see the lying-in-state in the historic Westminster Hall.
On Friday night, Charles had joined his three siblings — Princess Anne and Princes Andrew and Edward — in a silent vigil at the coffin while their eight children, including William and Harry, will form their own ceremonial guard later on Saturday.
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“She wouldn’t believe all this, she really wouldn’t,” William was heard telling one man of the late monarch who died on Sept. 8 at the age of 96. “It’s amazing.”
One woman told Charles it had been “worth the wait” and others wished him well when he asked how long they had been standing there.
People continued to flock to central London, adding to the hundreds of thousands who have filed past the coffin in a solemn stream to honour Britain’s longest-reigning monarch – a testimony to the affection in which she was held.
Ahead of the state funeral on Monday, world leaders also starting arriving in the British capital.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were among the dignitaries to pay their respects on Saturday while New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was seen curtsying to the coffin on Friday.
U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to go on Sunday to see Elizabeth lying in state in an oak coffin on a purple-clad catafalque, draped in the Royal Standard and with the bejewelled Imperial State Crown on top.
London’s police force has described the funeral as the biggest security operation it has ever undertaken as prime ministers, presidents and royals come together, and the king visited police headquarters to thank emergency services workers involved in the planning on Saturday.
Underscoring the risks, police said one man had been detained and arrested after a witness told Sky News he “ran up to the queen’s coffin”. Footage showed a man being pinned to the ground by police officers and taken away.
Charles was also due to greet leaders of the 14 countries where he is head of state such as Canada, Australia, and Jamaica after meeting the governors-general – the people who represent the monarch in overseas realms – at Buckingham Palace.
VETERANS SALUTE
By 2 p.m. (1300 GMT), Britain’s culture ministry said the waiting time to reach Westminster Hall was up to 16.5 hours.
Britain’s King Charles greets people queueing to pay their respects to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth following her death, in London, Britain, September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Tom Nicholson
Inside the silent hall, some mourners wept, many were tearful while current soldiers and veterans saluted their former commander-in-chief. Others fell to their knees.
At one point the government had warned it would pause entry to the queue if demand became too high, adding at 1 a.m. (0000 GMT): “Please do not travel.”
New friendships, acts of kindness and the struggles of standing in line for hours, sometimes overnight, have come to define what has become known as just “the queue”.
Film-maker Matthew West described how a military man was offered the chance to get to the front but declined. “That was the highlight. The lowlight was when we stood still for two hours and I lost the will to live.”
The death of the queen at her summer estate in the Scottish highlands has sparked an outpouring of emotion across the country and 10 days of choreographed events.
Having laid at rest in the Scottish capital the coffin was flown south to London, where tens of thousands of people crowded onto a normally busy road in driving rain to observe the flag-draped casket being driven to Buckingham Palace.
FUNERAL PLANS
The queen’s children have described being overwhelmed by the reaction to their mother’s death.
The state funeral, to be attended by nearly 100 presidents and heads of government is likely to be one of the biggest ceremonial events ever held in Britain.
Soldiers took part in early morning rehearsals in Windsor, where the queen’s coffin will be taken after the funeral at Westminster Abbey. Marching bands playing music and Grenadier Guards, who wear a tall bearskin hat on ceremonial duties, were seen marching down the High Street in preparation.
Later on Saturday, the focus will switch to the younger royals and their vigil.
William and his brother Harry, who have grown apart in recent years after Harry moved to the United States, will both stand guard at the coffin in military uniform.
Harry served two tours of duty with the British Army in Afghanistan but so far has appeared in processions in morning suits after he lost his honorary military titles when he stepped back from public royal duties.
The two brothers will be joined by their cousins – Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, the children of Princess Anne, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the children of Prince Andrew, and Louise and James, the children of Prince Edward.
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Additional reporting by Sachin Ravikumar and Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Alison Williams
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Princes William and Harry — together with their wives — made a rare joint appearance on Saturday, greeting well-wishers gathered outside of Windsor Castle, near London, to mourn Queen Elizabeth II.
The brothers have reportedly been estranged since Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, made their highly publicized split from royal life and moved to North America. Harry and William were last pictured together following the death of Prince Philip in April 2021, and the two couples haven’t been seen together in public for several years.
When the Sussexes lived in Britain, Meghan had a bitter relationship with much of the U.K. tabloid press that lingers today. They charged that the tabloids had incited racism against the duchess; they also alleged that there was institutional racism within the monarchy and that Buckingham Palace had failed to protect Meghan. In recent days, as the spotlight again intensified over the two couples, Meghan has also been the target of abuse on social media.
Additionally, Harry’s arrival at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, alone, before the death of his grandmother on Thursday had become a talking point. British media reported that King Charles III had told Harry it was not appropriate for Meghan to travel with him to Balmoral ahead of the queen’s death, as they had apparently intended.
But Saturday’s public appearance was the latest sign the royals may be repairing ties as they come together to mourn the death of their family matriarch. In his first televised speech from Buckingham Palace on Friday, Charles expressed his love for Harry and Meghan “as they continue to build their lives overseas.”
Harry is fifth in line to the throne, despite a controversial decision to step back from royal duties and move to the United States with Meghan and their two children, Archie and Lilibet.
Following the queen’s death and the accession of Charles as monarch, the two Sussex children are entitled to the titles “prince” and “princess.” That right stems from protocols dating back to King George V in 1917, which state that the children and grandchildren of the sovereign are granted the royal titles automatically. (The official palace succession list still refers to them as Master Archie and Miss Lilibet.)
Among the many jaw-dropping claims the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made in an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year was the allegation that Buckingham Palace planned to refuse Archie the title of prince — a decision that Meghan called hurtful and suggested was driven by institutional racism within the monarchy.
In another interview, Harry said he considered the term “Megxit” — which was coined after he and his wife announced in January 2020 they would be stepping back from their roles as senior members of the royal family and dividing their time between Britain and North America — “misogynistic.”
The prince and his wife have frequently highlighted the toll online hatred and misinformation can take on one’s emotional health and mental well-being.
A spokesperson for William said he invited his brother and sister-in-law to join him and Catherine in meeting mourners and looking at tributes in Windsor.
The couples spent just over 30 minutes talking with members of the public before leaving in a car driven by William, who became Prince of Wales after his father’s accession to the throne.
“The Waleses had always been scheduled to greet well-wishers at Windsor Castle, but royal sources say the decision to invite the Sussexes was made in the eleventh hour,” royal watcher Omid Scobie wrote on Twitter. “It is, without a doubt, a significant moment in the history of the relationship between the two brothers.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s line of succession, visualized
Royal watcher Camilla Tominey said that in reaching out to Harry to join him on Saturday and “set the rift aside,” William — the next in line to the throne — has shown he is living by his grandmother’s example.
She described it as “one of the most remarkable walkabouts in modern royal history” and an episode that would make the late queen proud.
“Queen Elizabeth II famously said that it was “often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change,” Tominey wrote in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
Pannett reported from Sydney. Jennifer Hassan in London contributed to this report.
The organization recently ran a vaccine clinic in the heavily Polish and Latino communities, where some have hesitated to get their children vaccinated. MariCarmen Zavala brought her 8-year-old son, Louis Perez.
“It’s really important for me to get the vaccine for him so that my son is able to do the activities that he likes to do,” she said. “My two sisters-in-law don’t want to vaccinate their children based on the misinformation they hear. So he will help protect the ones who are not.”
In Ely, Minn., two of Michelle Greener’s children, Sophie, 10 and Liv, 11, share a rare disease — Ehlers-Danlos syndrome — with her husband, and she has a 16-year-old she adopted when the girl’s mother, the family babysitter, died in 2019. That child, Emma, is severely disabled and at very high risk for complications from Covid.
Ms. Greener, 38, takes care of all three while her husband goes to his manufacturing job. First she was vaccinated, and the outside world belonged largely to her alone. Then, a shot for her husband: another worry down. Next came Emma, who had emergency surgery during the pandemic. Ms. Greener stayed with her in the Twin Cities, and limited contact with her younger children, who at the time were too young to be vaccinated.
“The day they approved the vaccine for 12 and up is the very day I drove two hours down to Duluth,” said Ms. Greener, whose house is so distant that she spends nights staring at the northern lights. “I cried all the way in and cried all the way out.” One child had reacted poorly to another vaccine in the past.
“That was very emotional, a little stressful not knowing how my younger daughter would handle it,” Ms. Greener said of Liv. “I eat and breathe medical, that’s all I’ve done — all I think about is how I am going to keep these kids alive. Now we have done everything we can do to keep Emma alive. At this point, I am just dependent on the rest of the world.”