It’s a Boy! Kate Middleton Gives Birth to a Future King | Exclusive Pictures

All hail the future king of England! Kate Middleton has given birth to a boy. Tom Sykes has all the details.

There are scenes of jubilation today outside Buckingham Palace, where it has just been announced that Kate Middleton has given birth to a baby boy.

A gun salute in Hyde Park is expected shortly, and the bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral are already pealing in delighted celebration.

The sex of the baby, along with his weight (8 pounds, 6 ounces) and the time of his birth (4:24 p.m.), was confirmed via press release, a last-minute departure from the original (and traditional) plan to post it on a sheet of paper outside the palace.

The birth of a male heir to the throne will be a cause for celebration among many traditionalists, who believed it was wrong to alter the law to allow the firstborn to become monarch regardless of gender. It will also take the pressure off the smaller countries, or realms, that still count the queen as head of state and were being urged to change their constitutions to allow a female heir to inherit.

The birth came after an extraordinary three-week wait by news media from around the world outside the private Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, where Kate gave birth. The palace only ever said that the baby was due in mid-July, but after Princess Diana’s firstborn came 10 days early, the media were determined not to be caught off guard again and set up camp outside the hospital as early as July 1. Many news organizations had reporters on revolving shifts, guarding their space on the sidewalk. It was their bad luck that the waiting period coincided with the hottest July on record.

When Kate and William did finally arrive at the hospital this morning, they did it their way, with no fanfare, no sirens, and no police outriders, just a dark Range Rover and a shiny new Audi nosing their way calmly through the traffic-free streets of London shortly after dawn.

Prince William has been by his wife’s side all week as the royal couple has played cat and mouse with the press, successfully staying out of view as they moved from Kate's parents’ home in Berkshire to Kensington Palace, just a mile from the hospital, at the weekend.

In the end, it was the young royals who got the last laugh—the photographers, cameramen, and news were all either asleep in their nearby hotel rooms or too bleary in the early hours to be on top of their game. Just one freelance snapper was alert enough to photograph the royal cars as they rolled up to a back entrance of the hospital.

But no one got a picture of Kate, which is exactly how she would have wanted it.

It was not until an hour and a half later that Kate’s office at Kensington Palace issued the short two-line statement this morning which read, in total:

"Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted this morning to St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London in the early stages of labour. The Duchess travelled by car from Kensington Palace to the Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital with The Duke of Cambridge."

The palace had previously indicated that it would be making no further statements on the progress of the birth. However, it did say this morning that her labor was “progressing normally” and that Kate was feeling “very well.”

The palace also let it be known that Kate went into labor naturally and was not induced, and it also subsequently confirmed that Kate and William had indeed come from Kensington Palace.

It is now hoped that the name of the royal baby might be announced as soon as tomorrow. The bookmakers’ favorite is George. (The surname is a bit more complicated.)

The queen is not expected to visit the hospital, nor is Prince Charles, who is on a two-day tour of York, in northern England, with Camilla.

Google to Launch New Devices, Android 4.2 at Oct. 29 Event [REPORT]

Google will unveil several new devices and a software update at its scheduled Oct. 29 press event, according to a company video leaked from an all-hands meeting.

The Next Web is reporting Google has distributed an internal video that details and confirms speculations about what might be revealed at the upcoming event.

The video reportedly discusses the launch of a 32GB version of the Nexus 7 tablet, as well as one with 3G support. It also indicates Google is working with manufacturer Samsung to release a 10-inch tablet called “Nexus 10″ that will run Android 4.2 (“Key Lime Pie”), and a Nexus smartphone manufactured by LG.

Meanwhile, the new Android 4.2 mobile operating system will include a panoramic camera option and “tablet sharing” capabilities, which would allow more than one user to access the device with his own set of email and apps — similar to how a family or business can switch between user settings on a Windows computer.

Earlier this week, Google sent invitations to the press for an Android event to be held in New York City. Although the invitation didn’t detail what might occur, the tagline — “the playground is open” — suggests it will have to do with Google Play, the company’s newly-rebranded Andriod Market.

The news came as Microsoft prepares for its Windows Phone 8 launch event, which will also be held on Oct. 29 — and Apple gears up to unveil its rumored 7.85-inch iPad on Tuesday, Oct. 23.

Google’s new Samsung tablet is reportedly being filed under the name “Codename Manta.” The device is expected to have a 2560×1600 pixel resolution and 300ppi, which is greater than the iPad’s 264ppi.

Meanwhile, the 4.7-inch Nexus smartphone manufactured by LG is said to tout a quad-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon processor, a 1280×768 display, 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage.

Brave Girl from Pakistan Name Malala Yousafzai

As I write this, Malala Yousafzai is fighting for her life. She is 14. She was on her way home from her school in Mingora in Swat Valley in North-West Pakistan. She was shot, bullets lodged in her head and neck. And the Taliban in Pakistan has now claimed responsibility for attacking her in the vehicle in which she was travelling. This was not a random attack. They knew she was there. They have said that if she survives, they will attack her again.

All she wants is to go to school with her friends. Sometimes she wants to study law and perhaps join politics. Sometimes, to be a doctor. But the Taliban does not want any of that. She has been speaking out eloquently against the Taliban at a time when world leaders are busy appeasing the Taliban. And the Taliban does not like her because she represents the future they want to destroy.

Weeks after Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11 September 2001, the US attacked Afghanistan. Arresting Osama bin Laden and dismantling Al Qaeda were certainly major priorities for Americans, but many American leaders also expressed another objective: to emancipate Afghan women. It was a noble priority, for only the sort of people that British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali has described as “bearded lunatics” would defend what the Taliban did to the women.

 

Many schools did get built in Afghanistan, which the Taliban predictably attacked once it had regrouped. It could do that because the Bush administration decided to fight two wars on different fronts at the same time, and attacked Iraq. The Taliban regained strength, and spread its pernicious influence in Pakistan, contaminating the society whose fundamentals had weakened since General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s time.

Like in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban placed severe social controls such as banning music and closing girls’ schools in the areas they controlled, and targeted anything that would make the society modern. Led by Maulana Fazlullah, they controlled the Swat Valley, where Yousafzai lives, between 2007 and 2009. Many analysts have warned about the Taliban, but as the Western troops are winding down, there is an air of inevitability about the Taliban gaining some power in Afghanistan. Writers like my former colleague Ahmed Rashid have been warning what that might mean for Pakistan. It is in that environment that Yousafzai went to school and spoke out for her right to do so.

Yousafzai’s diary, which the BBC published online—initially anonymously—on its Urdu website, reveals her emotions. She writes with the simplicity and clarity that we lose as we grow older and lose our innocence.

She writes using a pseudonym, GulMakai. Friends of her parents show them printouts of her diary not knowing Yousafzai is the author, and her parents have to conceal their pride. After the Pakistani army regained control, Yousafzai could say she had written the diary, and she was called a national heroine, and won an award.

“My Swat is also very beautiful, but there is no peace,” she writes. She talks of her not being able to wear a uniform, nor being allowed to wear colourful clothes either. She is pleased that curfew is lifted in one town and so one of the popular teachers will return to teach. But then she writes about her disturbed sleep because of artillery fire, and wakes up to discuss homework with her friend. She writes: “I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.” Only 11 out of 27 girls have come to the class. A friend asks her: “For God’s sake, answer me, honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taliban?” Some families decide to move from Swat to other parts of Pakistan, where they can send their daughters to school safely. “I may not go to school again,” she writes with resignation, looking at the school one last time before leaving.

 

One night she has a terrible dream with military helicopters fighting the Taliban. These dreams recur. In a chilling passage, she writes: “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”

On Tuesday morning, they came for her. Imagine hardened militants so insecure that they see an enemy in a 14-year-old child.

Lately, some analysts are warming to the idea that Imran Khan can lift Pakistan out of its misery. He led a protest march recently—not against the attacks on Ahmedis, not the destruction of Sufi shrines, not the suicide bombs, nor against those who shot at Yousafzai—but against drone attacks. Once those stop, he thinks, all will be well. Meanwhile, the poison spreads further.