Queen spends day at races
Diamond Jubilee festivities kick off in London.
LONDON —
It was a royal day at the races, as Queen Elizabeth II watched a horse with the courtly name of Camelot win the Epsom Derby on Saturday — the kickoff to a four-day celebration of the British monarch’s 60 years on the throne.
Later in the weekend the queen will make a trip down the River Thames, and then take in a concert — all accompanied by tens of thousands of her subjects, coming out to fete a monarch whose longevity has given her the status of the nation’s favorite grandmother.
An armada of vessels — from historic sailboats and barges to kayaks, lifeboats and military launches — was mustering along the Thames ahead of today’s river pageant.
The queen aboard the royal barge will lead the flotilla of 1,000 boats — described by organizers as the biggest gathering on the river for 350 years.
Diamond Jubilee festivities officially began Saturday with a 41-gun salute fired by the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery at Horse Guards Parade in central London.
The 86-year-old monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, visited Epsom racecourse south of the capital for the derby, one of the year’s biggest horse-racing meetings.
The queen waved to the 130,000-strong crowd as she was driven down the racecourse in a Bentley bearing the Royal Standard before settling down to watch the races from the royal box.
The queen was accompanied by members of the royal family including her sons Prince Andrew and Prince Edward and Andrew’s daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
The monarch is a racing fan and horse breeder who has attended the derby for decades and reads the Racing Post each day over breakfast, although unlike many of her subjects, she does not gamble.
The queen presented prizes to some of the race winners and spoke intently to jockeys and trainers
“She’s incredibly knowledgeable. Her knowledge of thoroughbreds and breeding goes way back,” said Anthony Cane, chairman of Epsom Downs Racecourse.
The queen took the throne in 1952 on the death of her father, King George VI, and most Britons have known no other monarch.
Despite cool, damp weather in much of the country, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to participate in celebrations. ISLAMABAD —
A Pakistani antiterrorism court on Saturday acquitted four men who had been charged with helping a Pakistani-American man carry out a failed attempt to detonate a truck bomb in New York’s Times Square, said their lawyer and family members.
The four were arrested in the wake of Faisal Shahzad’s May 2010 attack, which fizzled when the explosives in his vehicle produced smoke, but no blast.
Shahzad has pleaded guilty and admitted to getting training from the Pakistani Taliban in the country’s tribal region along the Afghan border. He was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S.
The attempted attack increased tension between Pakistan and the United States, which has long accused Islamabad of not doing enough to crack down on militants on its soil who pose a threat to the West.
Even though the men acquitted Saturday had been in custody for two years, very few details had emerged about their closed-door trial in an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi, next to the capital, Islamabad.
Such trials rarely produce convictions in Pakistan because police often lack basic investigative skills, prosecutors lack training in terror cases and judges and witnesses are often subject to intimidation.