British police on Saturday said that they had arrested a suspect following reports that 3,000 photographs had been hacked from Pippa Middleton, the sister-in-law of Britain’s Prince William, and were being touted for sale.
The pictures were reported by the Sun and Daily Mail newspapers to have been stolen from Middleton’s iCloud account and included shots of her sister, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, plus her and William’s children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
Someone had been in touch with media via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp to offer them for sale, the reports added.
The Sun said it had been asked for ￡50,000 (US$64,845) for the shots.
Scotland Yard detectives said they had received a report on Friday concerning the alleged hacking of a personal iCloud account and specialist officers were investigating.
On Saturday, a 35-year-old man was arrested at an address in Northamptonshire, central England, they said.
“He was arrested on suspicion of a Computer Misuse Act offence and is being taken into custody at south London police station,” a statement said. “Enquiries continue.”
Pippa Middleton, 33, is the younger sister of Catherine and found fame after acting as bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding to William in 2011.
She is engaged to hedge fund boss James Matthews and the couple are expected to get married next year. The allegedly hacked photos also reportedly included shots of her own wedding preparations.
William and Catherine and their children were due to start an eight-day tour of western Canada on Saturday.
The duke and duchess of Cambridge are set to view spectacular nature sites and meet with refugees and Aboriginal people during their visit.
William’s grandmother, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, is Canada’s head of state and he is second in line to the throne.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS