Beckham son Brooklyn is engaged to actress Nicola Peltz
LONDON » Brooklyn Beckham, son of retired soccer superstar David Beckham and fashion designer Victoria Beckham, and American actress Nicola Peltz have announced they’re engaged.
Beckham and Peltz both posted the news on their Instagram accounts Saturday.
“Two week ago I asked my soulmate to marry me and she said yes,” Beckham, 21, wrote. “I am the luckiest man in the world. I promise to be the best husband and the best daddy one day.”
They posted the same picture of themselves standing in a field and embracing — he wearing a blue suit and she in a yellow dress.
Peltz, 25, said in her post, “You’ve made me the luckiest girl in the world. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life by your side.”
Victoria Beckham, a former member of the Spice Girls pop band, sent her congratulations via Instagram, saying “we could not be happier” that the couple is getting married.
Brooklyn Beckham is the eldest of David and Victoria Beckham’s four children. Peltz’s film credits include “The Last Airbender” and “Transformers: Age of Extinction.”
World Council of Churches “dismayed” at Hagia Sophia shift
FRANKFURT, GERMANY » The head of the World Council of Churches has written to Turkey’s president expressing his “grief and dismay” over Turkey’s decision to change the status of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.
As a World Heritage museum, “Hagia Sophia has been a place of openness, encounter and inspiration for people from all nations,” interim secretary general Ioan Sauca said in the letter released Saturday by the Genevabased group.
The colossal Hagia Sophia was built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral and was converted into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 1453. The secular Turkish government decided in 1934 to make it a museum, and millions of tourists now visit the landmark annually.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally converted the building back into a mosque Friday and declared it open for Muslim worship hours after a high court annulled the 1934 government decision.
Sauca said the museum status had been “a powerful expression” of Turkey’s commitment to inclusion and secularism. He urged Erdogan to reconsider the decision “in the interests of promoting mutual understanding, respect, dialogue and cooperation, and avoiding cultivating old animosities and divisions.”
The WCC says its membership comprises 350 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches with some 500 million believers.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Actor Patrick Stewart is
80. Actor Harrison Ford is 78. Actor-comedian Cheech Marin is 74. Actordirector Cameron Crowe is
63. Actor Ken Jeong is 51. Actress Ashley Scott is 43. Actress Aya Cash is 38. St. Actor Colton Haynes is 32. Actor Steven R. McQueen is 32.