British security services have foiled around seven terror plots since June with fighters returning from Syria posing a growing threat, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.

"Our security and intelligence services have stopped something like seven attacks in the last six months, albeit attacks planned on a smaller scale" than Friday's attacks in Paris, he told BBC Radio 4 from Turkey.

"We have been aware of these cells operating in Syria that are radicalising people in our own countries, potentially sending people back to carry out attacks," he added.

Security services have spent a "long time" working out how to deal with multiple coordinated attacks on the street, but will have to go "right back to the drawing board" after the Paris attacks, which killed at least 129 people.

"It was the sort of thing we were warned about," said the prime minister.

Cameron added there were "hopeful signs" from Saturday's talks in Vienna on Syria that progress was being made on how to deal with the Islamic State (IS) group.

"You can't deal with so-called Islamic State unless you get a political settlement in Syria that enables you then to permanently degrade and destroy that organisation," he said.

However, he repeated that any settlement must include the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a sticking point between the West and Russia.

- 'Generational struggle' -

Britain announced Monday it was to recruit an extra 1,900 security and intelligence staff to counter the threat of terrorist violence following the Paris attacks as part of the government's five year defence and security review to be unveiled next week.

Published: 16 November 2015

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A treasure trove of 17th century letters in the Netherlands is giving researchers a rare glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, many of them French refugees fleeing turmoil and persecution.

Today's wave of migrants escaping conflict to reach European shores are able to keep in touch with loved ones back home by mobile phone.

But in the mid-1600s the only means of long-distance communication was through the written word.

A former postmaster's trunk stuffed with 2,600 undelivered letters is now helping shed light on what was a turbulent period in European history, when the continent was beset by a series of wars.

"You get a sense of loss, of abandonment," said David van der Linden, one of the experts involved in an international project to transcribe, digitise and translate all the letters.

The leather trunk lined with linen belonged to The Hague's postmaster, Simon de Brienne and his wife Maria Germain. And it was where he kept all the letters he was unable to deliver.

Many of the missives are from Protestant French Huguenot families fleeing persecution under the Catholic monarch Louis XIV.

They are mostly in written in French, although some are also in Dutch, Swedish and Danish and a few in English.

Down through the centuries, the trunk and its contents was eventually passed to the Dutch finance ministry, which bequeathed it to the Museum of Communication in The Hague in 1926.

Although it was brought out for occasional exhibitions, until now no team of researchers has been able to devote time to the painstaking work of examining the contents in depth.

- X-ray scans -

Touchingly, many of the missives are badly written, peppered with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, indicating "that these were people who were barely literate" but took up a pen they were so still desperate for news from home, Van der Linden told AFP.

Published: 11 November 2015

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Prime Minister David Cameron warned Tuesday that Britain could leave the EU if it does not get the reforms it wants before a "once-in-a-generation" referendum to settle its troubled relationship with Europe.

In a major speech outlining Britain's demands for change following pressure from EU leaders, Cameron warned he was ready to "think again" about Britain's membership if he could not strike a deal with Brussels and the bloc's 27 other member states.

But in a sign of the British premier's looming tussle, the European Commission immediately responded, saying it deemed parts of Cameron's EU renegotiation objectives "highly problematic".

Cameron's comments came as he sends a long-awaited letter to EU president Donald Tusk laying out Britain's shopping list for change to avert a "Brexit" in a vote due to be held by 2017 at the latest.

"The referendum... will be a once-in-a-generation choice," Cameron said. "This is a huge decision for our country -- perhaps the biggest we'll make in our lifetime."

Published: 10 November 2015

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Iran on Saturday announced dates for a three-day oil and gas conference in London in February designed to attract foreign investors awaiting new contract terms to be unveiled next month.

Oil majors have expressed interest in returning to Iran as soon as international sanctions linked to its nuclear programme are lifted, but they are currently still barred from signing any deals.

A nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, struck in July, is due to be implemented in December or January and a top official said the timing had influenced the London event.

The "Iran Oil and Gas Summit Post Sanctions" event in Britain's capital is scheduled for February 22-24, said Seyed Mehdi Hosseini, head of the country's oil contracts re-negotiation team.

"It is predicted sanctions relief will start from January 2016, so the London conference date is in February," Hosseini told SHANA, the oil ministry's news service.

Published: 14 October 2015

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British police on Monday said they will no longer stand guard outside London's Ecuadorean embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange took refuge in 2012, but will strengthen a "covert plan" to prevent his departure.

Britain's Foreign Office later confirmed that it had summoned the Ecuadorean ambassador to "register once again our deep frustration at the protracted delay" in extraditing Assange to Sweden to face questions over a rape allegation.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said Monday that it had "today... withdrawn the physical presence of officers from outside the embassy.

"The operation to arrest Julian Assange does however continue and should he leave the embassy the MPS will make every effort to arrest him.

"Whilst no tactics guarantee success in the event of Julian Assange leaving the embassy, the MPS will deploy a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him," police said in a statement.

Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange about a rape claim, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations that expires in 2020.

Assange, who faces arrest if he tries to leave the embassy, denies the allegation and insists the sexual encounter was consensual.

The Foreign Office said Monday that the head of the diplomatic service, Simon McDonald, had summoned Ecuadorean Ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz to insist on a resolution to the impasse.

"The UK has been absolutely clear since June 2012 that we have a legal obligation to extradite Assange to Sweden," said the ministry statement.

"That obligation remains today," it added.

Published: 12 October 2015

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A monkey that sneezes when it rains and a "walking" fish are among more than 200 species discovered in the fragile eastern Himalayas in recent years, according to conservation group WWF. WWF has compiled a survey of wildlife discovered by scientists across Bhutan, northeast India, Nepal, north Myanmar and southern Tibet in a bid to raise awareness of the threats facing the ecologically sensitive region. The species include what the WWF

described as a blue-coloured "walking snakehead fish", which can breathe air, survive on land for four days and slither up to 400 metres (a quarter of a mile) on wet ground.

Others include an ornate red, yellow and orange pit viper that could pass for a piece of jewellery, a fresh-water "dracula" fish with fangs and three new types of bananas.

In the forests of northern Myanmar, scientists learned in 2010 of a black and white monkey with an upturned nose that causes it to sneeze when it rains.

On rainy days they often sit with their heads tucked between their knees to avoid getting water in their snub noses.

Published: 06 October 2015

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Dressed in black and carrying black umbrellas, the protesters sang and performed a dramatisation of an oil spill, before sitting down on the floor in the museum's great court in lines forming the word "No".

The demonstrators carried banners reading "end oil" and "no new BP deal".

Protester Yasmin de Silva, who protested at Tate Britain before joining a larger protest at the museum, called BP "one of the dirtiest and most controversial oil companies in the world" and called their cultural sponsorship "incongruous".

"Unfortunately, oil companies like BP are doing all they can to prevent meaningful action on climate change from taking place," de Silva said.

"Tate, the British Museum and other London cultural institutions are explicitly endorsing them in doing it."

Published: 14 September 2015

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Man-made global warming is set to produce exceptionally high average temperatures this year and next, boosted by natural weather phenomena such as El Nino, Britain's top climate and weather body said in a report Monday.

"It looks very likely that globally 2014, 2015 and 2016 will all be amongst the very warmest years ever recorded," Rowan Sutton of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, which contributed to the report, told journalists.

"This is not a fluke," he said. "We are seeing the effects of energy steadily accumulating in the Earth's oceans and atmosphere, caused by greenhouse gas emissions."

The rate at which global temperatures are increasing is also on track to pick up in the coming years, ending a period of more than a decade in which the pace of warming worldwide had appeared to slow down, the report said.

This "pause" has been seized upon by sceptics as evidence that climate change was driven more by natural cycles than human activity.

Some scientists, however, argue that there was no significant slowdown, pointing instead to flawed calculations.

The 20-page report from Britain's Met Office, entitled "Big changes underway in the climate system?", highlights current transitions in major weather patterns that affect rainfall and temperatures at a regional level.

An El Nino weather pattern centered in the tropical Pacific Ocean is "well underway", the report says, and shaping up to be one of the most intense on record. Very strong El Ninos also occurred over the winters of 1997 and 1982.

Set to grow stronger in the coming months, the current El Nino -- a result of shifting winds and ocean circulation -- is likely to result is dry conditions in parts of Asia and Australia, as well as southern and sub-Saharan North Africa, the Met Office said.

By contrast, the southwestern United States -- including parched California, suffering from an historic drought -- has a strong chance of seeing higher-than-average rainfall.

El Ninos also affect tropical storms, making them less likely in the North Atlantic and more intense in the West Pacific, where they are known as typhoons.

Overall, an El Nino is also likely to add a little heat to the general impact of global warming.

Meanwhile, warming sea surface temperatures along the North American west coast point to a reversal of another natural pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Published: 14 September 2015

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Better known for its lavish stately country homes, Britain's National Trust is changing tack this month by offering tours of concrete buildings seen by many as hideous eyesores.

Large-scale, rugged and mostly grey, so-called brutalist architecture flourished around Britain in the post-war years, partly due to the relatively low cost of construction.

Some architects saw the style as modern and progressive, although many brutalist housing estates are now a byword for urban decay.

"Love it or not, brutalism was the dominant post-war architectural movement that sought to offer the best of design to the masses through public housing schemes, new universities and venues for the arts and education that were accessible to all," the Trust said in a statement.

Published: 07 September 2015

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Queen Elizabeth II is planning to keep things low-key on Wednesday when she will overtake Queen Victoria as Britain's longest-serving monarch, despite public interest in the historic date.

The queen will ride on a steam train in Scotland to inaugurate a new railway line and will host a dinner at Balmoral Castle with her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate in attendance.

According to calculations by royal officials, at around 1630 GMT Elizabeth will beat her great-great grandmother Victoria's time on the throne: a total of 63 years, seven months and two days which she served between 1837 and 1901.

The exact hour has been difficult to determine because the exact start of her reign -- the moment when her father George VI passed away -- is difficult to work out as the king died at night in his sleep.

The 89-year-old Elizabeth, also the world's oldest monarch, had originally not planned anything special for the day itself but reportedly agreed to a public appearance due to public pressure.

"You need to remember for the queen this is a date whose calculation rests on the death of her father and great-great grandmother. That naturally colours the way she sees it," a royal source said.

"While she acknowledges it as an historic moment, it's also for her not a moment she would personally celebrate, which is why she has been keen to convey business as usual, and no fuss," the source said.

Buckingham Palace will mark the day with a photo display of her reign and the Royal Mint has designed a new silver £20 coin (27 euros, $30) with the five official portraits since she became queen in 1952.

- New Elizabethan Age? -

Historian David Starkey said the queen's style, inherited from her father King George VI, and grandfather King George V, had helped "established a record of unimpeachable integrity".

He said her refusal to comment on controversial issues had deprived "republicanism of the necessary oxygen of controversy".

However, it also meant she had "done and said nothing that anybody will remember" and she would therefore "not give her name to her age" as Victoria did, the historian wrote in the Radio Times.

By contrast, fellow historian Andrew Gimson argued that Elizabeth's reign "will be seen as an incredible accomplishment," spanning a period "marked by many major social and economic changes".

These changes saw Britain's global influence, which peaked during Victoria's reign, diminish as the empire gave way to independence.

It was a process already under way when Elizabeth came to the throne, as the country was rebuilt after the trauma of World War II.

She then witnessed Europe draw closer together, eventually leading to the formation of the European Union, but also saw turmoil at home as Britain's economy collapsed during the 1970s.

Over the Irish Sea, the Troubles raged in Northern Ireland for decades of her reign, eventually being brought to an end by the 1998 peace agreement, while mass immigration changed the face of the country.

Published: 07 September 2015

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