A royal chauffeur allowed two undercover journalists into Buckingham Palace for cash and let one of them sit in Queen Elizabeth II’s Bentley car, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The News of the World tabloid said the security breach took place after two of its journalists, posing as wealthy businessmen from the Middle East, paid a chauffeur £1,000 (US$1,600).
They got into the palace without being searched or checked, despite walking right past a uniformed police officer in a security booth, the paper reported.
A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said: “Any security matter is taken very seriously and we will look into these allegations.”
WORRIES
London’s Metropolitan Police also said they were worried by the report.
“We are naturally concerned about the issues raised by this story and are liaising with palace officials about their staff security arrangements,” Scotland Yard said in a statement.
The queen was staying at Buckingham Palace at the time of the alleged breach on Friday, the paper said.
As well as the Bentley, which is used for state occasions, the chauffeur also showed the reporters the queen’s personal car — a 2005 V8 Daimler with a floor which has been specially raised to accommodate her short legs, it was reported.
They also saw Princess Anne’s green Bentley on their visit.
PRECEDENT
The incident would not be the first time security at Buckingham Palace and other royal palaces has been violated in recent years.
In 2003, a journalist from the Daily Mirror newspaper got a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace — the monarch’s London residence — with a false reference.
This allowed him access to the queen’s breakfast table and the bedroom where then-US president George W. Bush and his wife were due to stay on an imminent state visit.
At Windsor Palace — the queen’s favorite home, just west of London — two journalists from the Sun newspaper claimed to have smuggled a fake bomb past security days before the wedding of Prince Charles and wife Camilla in the town in 2004.
And in 2003, Aaron Barschak, a comedian dressed as al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing