500 foreign VIPs expected at queen's funeral

The sandwiches are a reference to a comedy sketch featuring the queen and an animated Paddington Bear filmed for the late monarchs Platinum Jubilee earlier this year.In the video, the queen said that like Paddington Bear she also favours marmalade sandwiches and hides them in her purse for later.The Royal Parks organisation said Monday people should not leave the snacks but could leave teddy bears and other items if they wished.

British officials say some 500 foreign dignitaries will attend Queen Elizabeth II's state funeral, but invitations have not been sent to the leaders of Russia, Belarus or Myanmar.

Officials said the funeral next Monday, to be held at London's Westminster Abbey, will be the biggest international event Britain has hosted in decades.

US President Joe Biden was among the first to announce that he would be flying in with his wife, Jill Biden. The leaders of most Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, are also expected to attend.

France's Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Italy's Sergio Mattarella, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro are among the presidents attending.

Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Spain's King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, as well as former Spanish monarch Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia, are also due to travel to London for the occasion.

___ London: Britain's Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, has penned a poem in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.

The poem published Tuesday, “Floral Tribute,” is in the form of a double acrostic, which means that the first letter of each line spells out Elizabeth when taken together. It describes the coming of a September evening and references one of the queen's favourite flowers, the lily of the valley.

“The country loaded its whole self into your slender hands / Hands that can rest, now, relieved of a century's weight,” he wrote.

Armitage told the BBC Tuesday that he featured the queen's first name because he wanted to take a personal approach.

He said the queen's name was something “she probably rarely got to hear very much because everybody had to preface that with ceremonial nominal”.

___ Belfast: King Charles' visit to Northern Ireland is a politically delicate trip for the new sovereign.

There are mixed feelings about the British monarchy in Northern Ireland, where there are two main communities: mostly Protestant unionists who consider themselves British and largely Roman Catholic nationalists who see themselves as Irish.

That divide fuelled three decades of violence known as “the Troubles” involving paramilitary groups on both sides and UK security forces, in which 3,600 people died.

The royal family was touched personally by the violence: Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of the queen and a much-loved mentor to Charles, was killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb in 1979.

A deep sectarian divide remains, a quarter century after Northern Ireland's 1998 peace agreement.

But in a sign of how far Northern Ireland has come on the road to peace, representatives of Sinn Fein — the main Irish nationalist party, linked during the Troubles to the IRA — are attending commemorative events for the queen and meeting the king on Tuesday.

___ London: Officials in charge of the park outside Buckingham Palace have told people to stop leaving marmalade sandwiches as a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II because of the “negative impact on the park's wildlife.” Some mourners have left the snacks alongside floral tributes at Buckingham Palace and neighbouring Green Park. The sandwiches are a reference to a comedy sketch featuring the queen and an animated Paddington Bear filmed for the late monarch's Platinum Jubilee earlier this year.

In the video, the queen said that like Paddington Bear she also favours marmalade sandwiches and hides them in her purse “for later”.

The Royal Parks organisation said Monday people should not leave the snacks but could leave teddy bears and other items if they wished.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)