Kate Middleton news: Princess of Wales felt ‘awful’ over photo editing scandal as Camilla pictured

The post made no mention of how the edits had actually been made – what changes had been made, or what software had been used to make them. While it has led to much speculation about artificial intelligence, there is nothing to indicate that it was or wasn’t used in the image.

But the suggestion that it was edited in the same way that “many amateur photographers” do could be a hint at the fact that changed images are becoming increasingly prevalent – and increasingly convincing. There is a long history of misleading images, but they have never been so easy to create as they are now.

Indeed, edited images are now so commonplace that the people taking them might not even realise that they are doing so. New phones and other cameras include technology that tries to improve pictures – but can also be changing them in unknown ways.

Our technology editor Andrew Griffin reports:

A defamation case brought against Meghan Markle by her half-sister, Samantha Markle, has been dismissed by a judge in Florida.

Samantha Markle, 59, brought the legal action over comments Meghan, 42, made to Oprah Winfrey and on her Netflix show, Harry And Meghan.

She will now not be able to refile the case as Florida judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell dismissed it with prejudice.

Kevin E G Perry has more in this report:

Whoopi Goldberg has defended the Princess of Wales after she released an edited family photo of herself and her three children for Mother’s Day, my colleague Oliver Browning reports.

Discussing the royal row on ABC’s talk show The View, Goldberg suggested she knows very few people who don’t “manipulate” their snaps.

“I’m sorry, I know very few people who don’t manipulate their own photos. I mean all you gotta do is swipe. Those editors swipe, God knows people look how those photos look,” she said on Monday 11 March.

Princess Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, has said he was beaten and sexually abused at an elite boarding school as a boy.

In a frank account of his childhood at one of Britain’s top independent schools, Maidwell Hall, which caters for children aged 4-13, he said the traumatic experience “killed” a part of him.

Now, Spencer hopes the book will expose what he considers to be a “great conspiracy” of the upper classes.

My colleague Maira Butt has the full report:

Queen Camilla has been immortalised as a Barbie doll and joked it had made her look 50 years younger.

Camilla was presented with the toy, dressed in her outfit, in recognition of her work supporting the Women Of The World Foundation as its president. She held the miniature version of herself during a Buckingham Palace event celebrating Wow and quipped: “You’ve taken about 50 years off my life – we should all have a Barbie.”

Dame Helen Mirren, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Spice Girl Mel B and Dame Kelly Holmes were some of the nation’s leading women invited to the event alongside schoolgirls and others who have contributed to the promotion of women and girls.

In a speech, Camilla recounted the story of two suffragettes who broke palace windows with stones in May 1914 and how the objects were kept, on the orders of Queen Mary, wife of King George V.

After holding up the stones, the Queen said: “In 1914, I believe, they represented hope to the women who threw them, hope that, in the future, they would not be victims of their history, nor of the social and economic forces that were ranged against gender equality.

“Above all, they represented the hope that it was possible, as Christabel Pankhurst [daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst] said, ‘to make this world a better place for women’. Today, 110 years later, you have been invited into Buckingham Palace because you too represent hope for women in the present and in the future.”

The Prince of Wales has joined mourners at the private funeral of Lady Gabriella Kingston’s husband Thomas Kingston.

About 140 close friends and family of the financier, whose sudden death left the royal family in shock, gathered at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London on Tuesday.

Lady Gabriella was joined by her parents Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and Mr Kingston’s family. Heir to the throne William, the Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra were among the members of the royal family who attended.

The King – Lady Gabriella’s second cousin – and the Queen were not present. Charles is not attending public-facing events while he undergoes treatment for cancer, and the Queen was hosting a WOW (Women of the World) reception at Buckingham Palace.

Mr Kingston, 45, died on February 25 at his parents’ home in the Cotswolds and a gun was found near his body in an outbuilding, the opening of his inquest heard. His death is not deemed by police to be suspicious.

A US court has dismissed a defamation case brought against the Duchess of Sussex by her half-sister. Samantha Markle had taken legal action against Meghan Markle over comments she made to Oprah Winfrey and on her Netflix show, Harry And Meghan.

However, she will not be able to refile the case, after Florida judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell dismissed it with prejudice.

The judge, ruling in favour of the former Suits actress, said in a 58-page decision that the plaintiff had “failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation or defamation-by-implication”. Meghan’s lawyer Michael J Kump, said: “We are pleased with the court’s ruling dismissing the case.”

Samantha Markle, who has the same father as Meghan, claimed the couple’s comments during the high-profile tell-all interview with Winfrey in 2021 were “demonstrably false and malicious lies”. The duchess said to Oprah that she grew up as an only child, also saying her sister changed her surname back to Markle after she began a relationship with Harry.

The judge said Meghan’s statements could not be defamatory because they were either an opinion, “substantially true based on judicially noticed evidence”, or “not capable of being considered defamatory”.

She went on: “That Plaintiff used one last name and then the name Markle soon after reports of Defendant’s relationship with Prince Harry were published is substantially true, based on the exhibits in the record, of which the Court has taken judicial notice, and the Court cannot reasonably infer otherwise.”