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UK Marks First Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's Death

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 last year at her Balmoral estate in northeast Scotland. Jane Barlow / POOL/AFP
Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 last year at her Balmoral estate in northeast Scotland. Jane Barlow / POOL/AFP
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UK Marks First Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's Death

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 last year at her Balmoral estate in northeast Scotland. Jane Barlow / POOL/AFP
Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 last year at her Balmoral estate in northeast Scotland. Jane Barlow / POOL/AFP

Britain's King Charles III on Friday thanked the public for their support in his first year as monarch, as he marked the one-year anniversary of the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

In a short statement, the 74-year-old British head of state recalled the "great affection" for his mother, her life and public service, AFP said.

"I am deeply grateful, too, for the love and support that has been shown to my wife and myself during this year as we do our utmost to be of service to you all," he added.

Commemorations will be low key on Friday, with the king -- who is at his sprawling Scottish Highland estate of Balmoral -- not expected at any official engagement.

He and wife Camilla will attend nearby Crathie Kirk, the late queen's place of worship, for private prayers and a moment of reflection.

His mother, who was on the throne for a record-breaking 70 years, died at Balmoral aged 96 after a period of declining health.

Throughout her reign she did not publicly mark her accession, as it was also the anniversary of her own father King George VI's death in 1952.

Last year, when she began her Platinum Jubilee year on February 6, she spent the day in private at her Sandringham estate in Norfolk, eastern England.

- Gun salutes -

In London, the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery will mark Charles's accession by firing a 41-gun ceremonial salute in Hyde Park from 12:00 pm (1100 GMT).

Members of the Honorable Artillery Company -- the oldest regiment in the British Army -- will fire a 62-gun salute from the Tower of London from 1:00 pm.

Both regiments were involved in firing the Death Gun salutes to mark the queen's death, and the Proclamation salutes to mark Charles's new reign.

The king's eldest son and heir, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, will commemorate the anniversary with a small private service at St Davids Cathedral in west Wales.

William's estranged younger brother, Prince Harry, was in the UK for a charity event on Thursday but was not expected to meet members of his family.

"As you know, I was unable to attend the awards last year as my grandmother passed away," Harry told the charity event.

"She would have been the first person to insist that I still come to be with you all instead of going to her, and that's precisely why I know exactly one year on that she is looking down on all of us tonight, happy we're together."

Relations between Harry and his father and brother have been strained since he and his wife, Meghan, quit royal life and moved to North America in 2020.

Ties have been frayed further by their criticisms of the family in television interviews, a docuseries and Harry's autobiography.

Memorial
Elizabeth II's death was a seismic event in British life. For most Britons alive, the queen was the only monarch and head of state they had ever known.

During the 10-day official mourning period, tens of thousands of people queued for up to 25 hours to file past her flag-shrouded coffin as it lay in state in Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament.

Even more packed the streets of London and the route west to Windsor Castle for the state funeral, which was beamed around the world to a television audience of millions.

The queen was interred in the King George VI Memorial Chapel, Windsor, alongside her late husband, Prince Philip, who died in 2021, her father and mother and the ashes of her younger sister, Princess Margaret.

Earlier this week, the government announced that a national memorial to the late monarch will be commissioned "in due course".

In London on Thursday, there were mixed views about Charles's first year.

Some felt he had been right not to introduce sweeping reform too early. "He's got a hard act to follow but he will, I think change things," Joanne Hughes, 61, told AFP outside Buckingham Palace.

But despite 161 official engagements and tours of all four nations of the United Kingdom, others were indifferent about the new king -- and the monarchy in general.

"The monarchy is dying," said nursing student Mimi Jaffer-Clarke.

"If he wants it to not die, then he needs to try to get the younger generation to like him -- and we just don't."

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Varieties

Air Pollution to Rise over Europe in Coming Days

This picture taken on December 9, 2025, shows buildings engulfed in dense smog due to severe air pollution in Islamabad. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)
This picture taken on December 9, 2025, shows buildings engulfed in dense smog due to severe air pollution in Islamabad. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)
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Air Pollution to Rise over Europe in Coming Days

This picture taken on December 9, 2025, shows buildings engulfed in dense smog due to severe air pollution in Islamabad. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)
This picture taken on December 9, 2025, shows buildings engulfed in dense smog due to severe air pollution in Islamabad. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)

Air quality is expected to deteriorate across parts of Europe in the coming days, driven by an increase in microscopic polluting particles, the EU's earth observation program said on Thursday.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) forecast a spike in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and Ireland, among other countries in the region.

Spring is when farmers spread fertilizer, releasing ammonia emissions that react with nitrogen oxides from sources like traffic to form tiny floating aerosols.

This degrades air quality, a situation made worse by colder weather, warmer afternoons and little wind, conditions that mean that instead of dispersing, these fine particles stay close to the ground.

Expected rises in airborne pollen from birch and alder trees is tipped to make matters worse, CAMS said in a briefing note on the developing situation.

"Whilst this situation is not unusual in spring, it is notable and can be intensified by stable and mild meteorological conditions and atmospheric inversions," said CAMS director Laurence Rouil in a statement.

Other contributors to background pollution include the burning of fossil fuels, CAMS said, particularly across parts of eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Long-term exposure to fine airborne particulate matter causes cardiovascular and respiratory disease, cancers and other major health problems.

Air pollution is estimated to cause millions of deaths worldwide every year and a burden of disease on par with smoking and unhealthy diets, the World Health Organization says.

Varieties

AlUla Ready for Eid Al-Fitr with Three Days of Cultural and Festive Events

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA
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AlUla Ready for Eid Al-Fitr with Three Days of Cultural and Festive Events

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA

The Royal Commission for AlUla has finalized preparations for a three-day Eid Al-Fitr celebration, featuring a comprehensive range of services and events across the governorate’s key heritage and leisure sites, SPA reported.

Dedicated areas for Eid prayers are also fully prepared to welcome residents and visitors, ensuring a festive environment that reflects the region's cultural traditions and enhances the quality of life during the holiday.

Varieties

More Than 150,000 Uncounted COVID-19 Deaths Occurred Early in the Pandemic, Study Finds

People wait in long lines outside a center in San Diego, California, USA, for coronavirus testing during the outbreak, January 10, 2022. (Reuters)
People wait in long lines outside a center in San Diego, California, USA, for coronavirus testing during the outbreak, January 10, 2022. (Reuters)
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More Than 150,000 Uncounted COVID-19 Deaths Occurred Early in the Pandemic, Study Finds

People wait in long lines outside a center in San Diego, California, USA, for coronavirus testing during the outbreak, January 10, 2022. (Reuters)
People wait in long lines outside a center in San Diego, California, USA, for coronavirus testing during the outbreak, January 10, 2022. (Reuters)

The COVID-19 pandemic's early death toll was much higher than the official US count, according to a new study that spotlights dramatic disparities in the uncounted deaths.

About 840,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported on death certificates in 2020 and 2021. But a group of researchers — using a form of artificial intelligence — estimate that as many as 155,000 unrecognized additional deaths likely occurred in that time outside of hospitals. That would mean about 16% of COVID-19 deaths went uncounted in those years.

The overall findings, published Wednesday by the journal Science Advances, were close to estimates from other studies of pandemic deaths during that time. But the authors of the new study tried to determine exactly which deaths were more likely to be missing from the official tallies.

The answer: The undiagnosed dead were more likely to be Hispanic people and other people of color, who had died in the first few months of the pandemic, and who had been in certain states in the South and Southwest — including Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Six years after the coronavirus swept through the US, barriers remain for many of the same people, said Steven Woolf, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher not involved in the study.

“People on the margins continue to die at disproportionate rates because they can’t access care,” he said in an email.

Access to care wasn't the only challenge

While hospital patients were routinely tested for COVID-19, many who grew sick and died outside of hospitals were not tested — often because at-home testing was not readily available early in the pandemic, said one of the study's authors, the University of Minnesota's Elizabeth Wrigley-Field.

In some parts of the country, death investigations are handled by elected coroners who don't necessarily have the specialized training that medical examiners do. Some research has suggested partisan opinions could affect whether a sick person or their family members sought COVID-19 testing, and whether coroners pursued postmortem coronavirus testing. Indeed, some coroners said families had pressed them not to list COVID-19 as a cause of death.

“Our antiquated death investigation system is one key reason why we fell short of accurate counts, particularly outside of big metropolitan areas,” said Andrew Stokes of Boston University, the senior author on the paper.

Death counts were swept up in COVID politics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data count more than 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic erupted in early 2020. More than two-thirds of those reported deaths occurred in 2020 and 2021.

The count has long been debated, as false claims on social media said the number of COVID-19 deaths was inflated. Adding to the rancor was President Donald Trump, who in August 2020 retweeted a post claiming only 6% of reported deaths were actually from COVID-19 — a post Twitter later removed.

To be sure, there were other kinds of pandemic deaths. For example, uninfected people died from other medical conditions because they could not get care at hospitals overloaded with COVID-19 patients. People with drug addictions died of overdoses as a result of social isolation and losing access to treatment. Other studies that have estimated the actual number of pandemic deaths have taken those deaths into account.

But Stokes and his collaborators wanted to focus on the deaths of people infected by the coronavirus. They used machine learning to sift through the death certificates of infected patients who died in hospitals and then used patterns observed in those records to evaluate death certificates of people who died outside hospitals and whose deaths were attributed to things like pneumonia or diabetes.

Scientists' understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of machine learning-reliant research is still evolving, but Woolf called this team's use of it “intriguing.”