The Prince of Wales on Thursday won a resounding legal victory concerning his privacy as the court of appeal in London ruled that the Mail on Sunday newspaper had infringed his copyright and confidentiality by publishing extracts from his private diaries.
Prince Charles took action after the newspaper published parts of his 1997 diary about the handover of Hong Kong. In his account, "The Great Chinese Takeaway," he referred to the Chinese hierarchy as "appalling old waxworks."
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, sitting with Lord Justice May, said that the information published was private and public disclosure was an interference with the prince's private and family life guaranteed under the Human Rights Act.
Dismissing the paper's appeal, he said: "Prince Charles is an important public figure. In respect of such persons the public takes an interest in information about them that is relatively trivial. For this reason, public disclosure of such information can be particularly intrusive."
A lawyer, Dan Tench, said this was one of a spate of privacy decisions from the courts all so far favouring the claimant.
"It appears these decisions represent a tectonic shift, the moment when the English courts are truly recognizing a legal right to privacy," he said.
The court had heard that the journal was one of eight given to the newspaper by Sarah Goodall, a secretary in the Prince's private office from 1988 to 2000. She published a memoir, The Palace Diaries, revealing some of the prince's eccentric habits.
The journals were handwritten accounts that Charles made following foreign visits over the past 30 years and which he circulated "in confidence" to between 50 and 75 people.
Phillips said Goodall had signed a contract that "placed her under a duty to keep the contents of the journal confidential," and that there was "an important public interest in employees in the position of Ms Goodall respecting the obligations of confidence that they have assumed."
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS