No ‘decision’ yet on EU agencies location

Prince Harry shares struggles

LONDON, April 17, (Agencies): The future location of the two European Union agencies based in London will be a matter for Brexit negotiations, the British government’s Brexit department said on Monday, but EU officials said there was no doubt they would be moved.

London is home to both the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA), and last month the EU’s draft plan for negotiations said arrangements should be made to transfer them to a state staying in the EU.

EU officials said European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs summits of the 27 other EU leaders who will decide where to put the agencies, aimed to set out some procedures for making the choices by the time they meet next on April 29.

A spokeswoman for the British Brexit department said in a statement: “No decisions have been taken about the location of the European Banking Authority or the European Medicines Agency, these will be subject to the exit negotiations.”

“As part of these negotiations the government will discuss with the EU and member states how best to continue cooperation in the fields of banking and medicines regulation in the best interests of both the UK and the EU. It would not be appropriate to prejudge the outcome of the negotiations.”

Yet EU officials say there is no question of Britain keeping the EMA and EBA, whatever ties it may keep with the agencies; Only member states could accommodate them, one said, adding: “The agencies are lost. You cannot have your cake and eat it.”

In draft negotiating guidelines, issued on March 31 and broadly endorsed by the other 27 national governments last week , Tusk made clear Britain has no say: “The future location of the seats of EU agencies and facilities located in the United Kingdom is a matter for the 27 member states.”

He added: “Arrangements should be found to facilitate their transfer.” To that end, an EU official said on Monday, Tusk would propose procedures and criteria for making the decision on location this month. Leaders of the 27 meet in Brussels a week on Saturday to finalise their opening negotiating positions.

Tusk

Prince Harry shares struggles:

Prince Harry has broken with royal tradition of maintaining silence about mental health issues by speaking candidly about his severe emotional problems following the death of his mother Princess Diana.

The 32-year-old prince told The Daily Telegraph in an interview published Monday that he had nearly suffered breakdowns since his mother’s 1997 death in a car crash and had needed counseling in his late 20s.

It was by far the most frank interview of Harry’s life, and gives the public its first glimpse of the inner turmoil he suffered growing up in the public eye after losing his mother when he was only 12.

He told the newspaper he “shut down all his emotions” for nearly 20 years and had been “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions.”

He describes a long, painful process of refusing to face his sense of loss that only came to an end when he was in his late 20s and sought professional counseling to cope with the pressures and unhappiness.

“My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help?” he said of his teens and 20s, a period in which he embarked on a successful military career but also occasionally attracted unwanted headlines, notably for being photographed playing “strip billiards” in Las Vegas.

In the interview, Harry said he had at times felt “on the verge of punching someone” and had taken up boxing as an outlet for the aggression he felt.

He said the long suppression of his grief eventually led to “two years of total chaos.”

He said he was pretending that life was great until he started counseling and faced his problems head on.

“All of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with,” he said.

Along with his brother Prince William and sisterin-law the Duchess of Cambridge, Harry has worked with a charity that promotes mental health. They have argued that mental health problems must be given the same priority as other illnesses and should be spoken about openly and without stigma.

Builders find lost archbishops:

The remains of five archbishops of Canterbury have been accidentally discovered by builders in a hidden tomb beneath a London church, site developers said Sunday.

Some 20 lead coffins were discovered in a crypt underneath St Mary’s-at-Lambeth, which sits outside Lambeth Palace, the central London residence of the archbishop of Canterbury -- the highest cleric in England.

Two have been identified from name plates, while records show that five were buried in the crypt.

Of the two identified archbishops, one is Richard Bancroft, who was in office from 1604 to 1610 and who oversaw the production of the King James Bible, considered a definitive work of the English language.

Several hundred coffins were cleared out of the church for extensive renovation works in 1850s, during which the vaults were filled in with earth.

But builders accidentally discovered one crypt had been left untouched.

“This was the discovery of a recorded vault below the chancel for high status burials, including those of five archbishops of Canterbury,” said the trust which runs the site.

The deconsecrated church is now the Garden Museum. It closed in October 2015 for renovations.

The discovery of the hidden crypt was made by builders during the re-laying of ledger stones.

“We were lifting the slabs and we uncovered an entry to what looked like a tomb,” said site manager Karl Patten. “We got a camera on the end of a stick and discovered numerous coffins and one of them had a gold crown on top of it.” The crown was an archbishop’s mitre. Among the jumbled coffins found, four had name plates, including those of Bancroft and John Moore, who was the archbishop of Canterbury from 1783 to 1805.

Finding the coffin of Bancroft, the man who oversaw the English language’s landmark Bible, is “the most incredible discovery”, said historian Wesley Kerr.