Britain's main opposition Lab our party kicked off its annual conference Sunday with leader Ed Miliband under pressure amid sliding poll ratings 18 months before a general election.

As the conference got under way in the seaside resort of Brighton, southeast England, Miliband tried to draw a sharp distinction between his party and the Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron, who he said represented only the "privileged few."

British police arrested two men on suspicion of endangering an aircraft after a Sri Lankan Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Stansted Airport, officials said Saturday.

The Airbus A330, which was carrying 267 passengers and crew, was due to land at London Heathrow Airport but was diverted to Stansted, eastern England, just after 1830 GMT on Friday, a Stansted spokesman said.

It's the next best thing to parking that costs peanuts: parking that costs chestnuts.

A company that runs parking lots in the English cities of Leeds and Manchester is temporarily letting drivers pay with the dark brown seeds that fall from horse chestnut trees each autumn.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday that the threat of military action should remain on the table to make Syria keep its promises on giving up chemical weapons.

Speaking after he met British Prime Minister David Cameron in London, Rasmussen welcomed the recent U.S.-Russian agreement under which the Assad regime says it will give up its poison gas stocks.

British police said Tuesday they had arrested two men on suspicion of involvement in terrorism overseas and seized ammunition after they arrived at the port of Dover from France.

The men aged 29 and 22, both British citizens, were held on Monday morning at the port in southern England and remain in custody at a London police station, the Metropolitan Police said.

Damascus on Tuesday accused the West of trying to impose its will on the Syrian people, after major powers said they would press for a U.N. resolution to rid Syria of chemical arms.

"The United States, France and Britain have revealed their true objective... which is to impose their will on the Syrian people," the Foreign Ministry said.

British police said on Saturday they had arrested a man who scaled a fence to get into Buckingham Palace, the official London residence of Queen Elizabeth II.

No members of the royal family were in the palace at the time of the incident on Monday night, said a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police.

More than a thousand anti-war protesters rallied in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to proclaim "victory" after Britain's parliament blocked Prime Minister David Cameron from taking military action in Syria.

The activists filled the tourist hotspot with Syrian and communist flags, plus banners with slogans such as "No Attack on Syria" and "Hands Off Syria" in the rally organised by the left-wing Stop the War Coalition.

British Prime Minister David Cameron counted the cost on Friday after a humiliating rejection by parliament of his call for military action on Syria, a defeat which dealt a severe blow to the "special relationship" with the United States.

Cameron suffered the worst setback of his three years in office when lawmakers he had recalled from their summer holidays voted 285 to 272 to defy the government's motion late Thursday.

Any military response to alleged chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad will likely rest squarely on U.S. shoulders after Britain's refusal to commit its forces.

Once again at the spearhead of a possible lightning strike against Syrian military targets, the United States has reinforced its naval units in the eastern Mediterranean and could get help from France.