Hong Kong's most famous foreign correspondent was yesterday urged by a judge to drop her case against the head of a public-relations company, who she claims mishandled her finances.
Judge David-Michael Gill told lawyers representing 94-year-old Clare Hollingworth to mediate her financial dispute with Ted Thomas instead of going ahead with a High Court case.
The judge said it would be "sad" if Hollingworth, a former UK Daily Telegraph reporter famous for scooping the world on the outbreak of World War II, spent her latter years in court.
Hollingworth accuses Thomas, head of the Hong Kong-based Corporate Communications, of withdrawing nearly US$300,000 from her bank account in cash and cheques over a two-year period.
Hollingworth handed Thomas control over her finances in 2003 but says he failed to act in her interests when she was in ill health and has failed to account for more than half of the money.
In a writ filed with the help of her family, she claimed Thomas withdrew nearly US$23,000 from ATM machines using her cash card and a further US$265,000 in cheques. Many of the cheques were made out to Thomas, his companies and his associates.
Thomas last year repaid about half the money, but Hollingworth is seeking the return or accounting for a further US$153,000 that the writ said he has failed "to completely and adequately explain."
The writ lists cheques that included some for sums of up to US$90,000 to Thomas Edward Juson -- 76-year-old Thomas' real name -- made out between July 2003 and May last year.
The action is being brought by Hollingworth with the help of her two grandnephews, Patrick Garrett and Andrew Flude, and two executors who have power of attorney.
Thomas, the author of a book on how to deal with the media entitled I Was Misquoted, has vigorously defended himself against the allegations in the writ.
He says he acted at all times in Hollingworth's best interests and invested her money in ventures she was not aware of because he believed it would earn her more money than leaving it in the bank.
Hollingworth is famed for getting one of the greatest scoops of modern times when she was first to report on the outbreak of World War II.
Aged 27 and a journalist for less than a week, she was on the Polish-German border in 1939 reporting for the Daily Telegraph when she sighted a huge line of troops, tanks and armored cars facing Poland.
Her eyewitness account was the first anyone had heard of the invasion, and it began a journalistic career that would span seven decades and take her to Palestine, Algeria, China, Yemen and Vietnam.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in
REGIONAL TENSIONS: China boosted spending on its military for the 29th straight year, raising it by 6% to US$296bn, while Taiwan spent US$16.6bn, an 11% increase Global military expenditure recorded its steepest increase in over a decade last year, reaching an all-time high of US$2.4 trillion as wars and rising tensions fueled spending across the world, researchers said yesterday. Military spending rose across the globe with particularly large increases in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). “Total military spending is at an all-time high ... and for the first time since 2009, we saw spending increase across all five geographical regions,” SIPRI senior researcher Nan Tian said. Military spending rose by 6.8 percent last year, the