Britain

The new BlackBerry Z10 won't come to the U.S. until March, but it's already out in other countries and sales are hot, according to the maker. BlackBerry's new Z10 touch screen smartphone has gotten off to a better start in Britain than any of the company's previous models, it said. To be precise, the Z10 is "selling almost three times better" than previous BlackBerry models have in their first week, according to a Bloomberg report that cites company Chief Executive Thorsten Heins as the source.

LONDON - In 2011, the London riots created chaos across the capital as disgruntled youth burned down buildings, looted shops and rampaged in the streets. A recent exhibition in Tottenham, the epicenter of the riots, looked at the reasons why. However, it was not the government that raised funds to set up the exhibit but a couple of dozen ordinary people whose lives had been caught up in the mayhem. "After the Riots - Happiness in Tottenham" is one of more than a hundred projects hosted on an innovative crowd-funding website that is starting to make waves across the United Kingdom.

LONDON --Two Australian disc jockeys who called a London hospital impersonating members of the royal family as a hoax three days before a nurse's suicide will not face any charges, British prosecutors said Friday. Prosecutors said there were no grounds for charges of manslaughter against Mel Greig and Michael Christian in the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who was found hanged Dec. 7. The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement “that there is no evidence to support a charge of manslaughter and that although there is some evidence to warrant further investigation under the Data Protection Act and the Malicious Communications Act ... any potential prosecution would not be in the public interest.” The CPS said there was no possibility of extradition from Australia for the potential offenses and that the original intent of the call was “a harmless prank” even though “the consequences were very sad.” Greig and Christian phoned the King Edward VII hospital Dec. 4 asking about the pregnant Catherine, the duchess of Cambridge.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The images almost shimmer with beauty: a lush green landscape in South Sudan, a Kenyan market abundant with ripe vegetables, a luminous lake sunset in Mali, a misty forest in Liberia. The pictures could grace a travel brochure. But the advertising campaign, launched in Britain in late December, is aimed at raising funds for an Oxfam anti-hunger drive titled "Food for All. " "Let's make Africa famous for its epic landscapes, not hunger," says the ad's slogan, found on billboards and in print and digital formats.

The Atlantic Ocean Reports from Britain and America Andrew O'Hagan Mariner: 354 pp., $15.95 paper The British writer Andrew O'Hagan is probably best known in the United States for his fiction; his novels include "Our Fathers," "Personality" and "Be Near Me," which was long-listed for the Man Booker and won a 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. And yet his first book, "The Missing" (1996), is one of those great, unheralded works of nonfiction, blending reportage with a point of view so personal, so idiosyncratic, that it blurs the lines of genre in an unanticipated way. A meditation on what it means it be "missing," it is less about the criminal, or legal, ramifications of its subject than an inquiry into disappearance in both the physical and philosophical sense.

LONDON - Britain, Germany and the Netherlands urged their citizens Thursday to leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi immediately, citing an imminent threat to Westerners months after an assault on the U.S. mission there killed four Americans. None of the countries would elaborate on the intelligence that prompted the advisory, but Britain's Foreign Office said it was "aware of a specific and imminent threat. " The stark warning came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before Congress about the Sept.

LONDON -- In a long-awaited speech, Prime Minister David Cameron pledged Wednesday to hold a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether Britain should stay in the European Union, saying it was time to renegotiate a relationship that has become too strained to continue as is. In Britain today, "public disillusionment with the EU is at an all-time high," Cameron said, citing regulations and directives out of Brussels that many Britons consider onerous...

LONDON - Laying out a vision that could lead his country out of the European Union, Prime Minister David Cameron vowed Wednesday to negotiate a new relationship with the 27-nation trading bloc and put Britain's continued membership to a national vote. In possibly the most important speech of his premiership so far, Cameron said many of his compatriots were fed up with growing centralization of power in Brussels and that a new deal was necessary. He pledged to try to win concessions for Britain and then let voters pass judgment, by the end of 2017, in a referendum on whether they wanted to remain in the EU. A withdrawal could jeopardize Britain's access to European markets and diminish its influence on the world stage, particularly its role as a bridge to Europe for the United States.

"Downton Abbey," which begain its third season Sunday for U.S. viewers, is shot at Highclere Castle , the Victorian Gothic estate owned by the Earl and Countess of Carnavon. The castle has provided the lavish backdrop for the PBS drama -- and now the inspiration for a new river cruise excursion. Viking River Cruises , a sponsor of the "Masterpiece" series, has created a three-night Oxford and Highclere Castle tour that may be added before or after two European cruises.

LONDON -- Abid Naseer, a terror suspect alleged to be part of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up targets in the United States, Norway and Britain, was put on a plane Thursday afternoon to face trial in New York next week. In a terse statement, Britain's Home Office confirmed that “Abid Naseer was extradited to America, where he is accused of terrorism offenses. His case is now a matter for the U.S. authorities.” Naseer, a 26-year-old Pakistani who arrived in Britain on a student visa, was first arrested in Manchester in 2009, along with 11 other Pakistanis, in police raids on suspected terrorism cells in northern England.