International Desk: Charles III on Saturday finally met his date with destiny after a lifetime as heir to his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, as he was officially crowned king in the first coronation in Britain since 1953.<\/p>\n
At 12:02 pm exactly (1102 GMT), the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby placed the solid gold St Edward’s Crown on Charles’s head as a sacred and ancient symbol of the monarch’s authority.<\/p>\n
Cries of “God Save the King” rang out from the 2,300-strong congregation at Westminster Abbey and trumpet fanfares sounded at the climax of the solemn religious confirmation of his accession.<\/p>\n
Outside, ceremonial gun salutes blasted out across land and sea while bells pealed in celebration at churches across the country.<\/p>\n
The build-up to the Christian ceremony of prayer and praise — steeped in 1,000 years of British history and tradition, with sumptuous robes and priceless regalia — has been mostly celebratory.<\/p>\n
But even before Charles, 74, and Queen Camilla, 75, left Buckingham Palace for a rainy procession to the abbey, police arrested dozens of protesters using new powers rushed onto the statute book to crack down on direct action groups.<\/p>\n
The anti-monarchy movement Republic — which wants an elected head of state — said six of its organisers were detained, while climate activists Just Stop Oil said 19 of its number were held.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, dozens of Republic activists held aloft banners on the route of the procession route, declaring: “Not My King.”<\/p>\n
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International voiced concern at the arrests. “This is something you would expect to see in Moscow, not London,” HRW said.<\/p>\n
London’s Metropolitan Police has some 11,500 officers on the streets in one of its biggest ever security operations. It has warned that it has an “extremely low threshold” for protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International Desk: Charles III on Saturday finally met his date with destiny after a lifetime as heir to his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, as he was officially crowned king in the first coronation in Britain since 1953. At 12:02 pm exactly (1102 GMT), the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby placed the solid gold St Edward’s Crown on Charles’s head as a sacred and ancient symbol of the monarch’s authority. Cries of “God Save the King” rang out from the 2,300-strong congregation at Westminster Abbey and trumpet fanfares sounded at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31067,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31065\/revisions\/31067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}