Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Attends Chelsea Flower Show

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a tour of the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London on May 23, 2022. (AFP)
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a tour of the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London on May 23, 2022. (AFP)
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Britain’s Queen Elizabeth Attends Chelsea Flower Show

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a tour of the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London on May 23, 2022. (AFP)
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrives for a tour of the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London on May 23, 2022. (AFP)

Britain's Queen Elizabeth attended the Chelsea Flower Show on Monday, the latest of several appearances that have helped to ease public concerns about her health ahead of a national celebration of her seven decades on the throne.

The 96-year-old monarch was driven around the Royal Horticultural Society's annual festival of garden design in West London in a buggy, saving her from having to walk around the show's attractions.

Early next month Britain will honor the queen's Platinum Jubilee with four days of pageantry and celebration. Buckingham Palace has previously said she intends to attend a number of different events.

Last week she made a surprise appearance at the opening ceremony for a new rail line in London and the week before attended a horse show in the grounds of her Windsor Castle.

Earlier in May she missed her annual address to parliament, with the palace citing episodic mobility issues. Until recently, she had not been seen often in public following a night in hospital last October for an unspecified illness.



2 Elephants Die in Flash Flooding in Northern Thailand

This handout photo taken and released on October 3, 2024 by the Elephant Nature Park shows elephants standing in flood waters at the sanctuary in Thailand's northern Chiang Mai province. (Photo by Handout / ELEPHANT NATURE PARK / AFP)
This handout photo taken and released on October 3, 2024 by the Elephant Nature Park shows elephants standing in flood waters at the sanctuary in Thailand's northern Chiang Mai province. (Photo by Handout / ELEPHANT NATURE PARK / AFP)
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2 Elephants Die in Flash Flooding in Northern Thailand

This handout photo taken and released on October 3, 2024 by the Elephant Nature Park shows elephants standing in flood waters at the sanctuary in Thailand's northern Chiang Mai province. (Photo by Handout / ELEPHANT NATURE PARK / AFP)
This handout photo taken and released on October 3, 2024 by the Elephant Nature Park shows elephants standing in flood waters at the sanctuary in Thailand's northern Chiang Mai province. (Photo by Handout / ELEPHANT NATURE PARK / AFP)

Two elephants drowned during flash flooding in popular Thai tourist hotspot Chiang Mai, their sanctuary said Sunday, as local authorities evacuated visitors from their hotels and shops closed in the city center.

More than 100 elephants at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai province were moved to higher ground to escape rapidly rising flood waters, an employee who gave her name as Dada, told AFP.

But two elephants -- named in local media as 16-year-old Fahsai and 40-year-old Ploython, who was blind -- were found dead on Saturday.

"My worst nightmare came true when I saw my elephants floating in the water," Saengduean Chailert, the director of the Elephant Nature Park in northern Thailand, told local media.

"I will not let this happen again, I will not make them run from such a flood again," she said, vowing to move them to higher ground ahead of next year's monsoon.

In Chiang Mai city center, people waded through muddy water close to knee height in the night bazaar, and water flowed into the central train station, which has now been closed.

Tourists were forced to evacuate hotels and a local TV station showed a monk carrying a coffin through floodwaters to a cremation site.

Major inundations have struck parts of northern Thailand as recent heavy downpours caused the Ping River to reach "critical" levels, according to the district office. The water level peaked on Saturday but had receded slightly by Sunday.

Thailand's northern provinces have been hit by large floods since Typhoon Yagi struck the region in early September, with one district reporting its worst inundations in 80 years.

Twenty provinces are currently flooded, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said Sunday.