Oscar-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter and golf prodigy Rory McIlroy led the list of recipients of Britain’s New Year’s honors yesterday.
Bonham Carter received a CBE, or Commander of the Order of the British Empire, award — one step below a knighthood — after the most successful year of her career, capped by her performance in The King’s Speech, the hit film about the stammering king George VI.
McIlroy, who last year became the youngest US Open champion in 88 years at the age of 22, became a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
He was joined by fellow Northern Irish golfer Darren Clarke, who was a popular winner of the British Open last year. He was awarded an OBE, the officer rank that comes between the MBE and the upper CBE.
Nigel Mansell, who won the Formula One motor racing world crown in 1992, received a CBE for his charity work helping children and young people.
Veteran cricket umpire Dickie Bird was given an OBE, while there was an MBE for Scottish rugby union player Chris Paterson, who won a record 109 caps for his country.
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the two Russian-born 2010 Nobel Prize-winning professors of physics at the University of Manchester in northwest England, were awarded knighthoods.
From the showbusiness world, veteran comedian Ronnie Corbett, half of The Two Ronnies, received a CBE for services to entertainment and charity.
In the year that Apple founder Steve Jobs died, the company’s British-born designer Jonathan Ive was knighted with a KBE (Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire) for his work in shaping the look of the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
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