Prince Harry recreates Diana's famous landmine walk 28 years later
Prince Harry, visiting as a patron of landmine clearance charity the Halo Trust on Wednesday (16 July), gave advice to children in a remote village near Africa's largest minefield on avoiding detonating mines.
Speaking in Portuguese, Harry said: 'Stop, go back and tell your elders.'
The Duke highlighted the threat of the munitions in Angola, the same nation Diana, Princess of Wales visited in 1997 in a plea for the world to ban the weapons.
Iconic images showed Diana, wearing a protective visor and vest, walking through a minefield being cleared by the Halo Trust.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Glaring signs Harry is the 'Spare' in his marriage revealed by expert: How the words he whispered in Meghan's ear during public event let slip his real role
Of all the things Prince Harry enjoyed during his trip to Colombia - the food, festivals and beautiful beaches - his drumming lesson likely wasn't one of them. On the third day of the Sussexes' quasi-royal tour of the country in August 2024, they visited a lively African drumming school in a suburb of the port city of Cartagena.
Telegraph
4 hours ago
- Telegraph
I stayed in one of the multimillion-pound Omaze houses. This is what it was like
Every time I pick up my phone for a guilty scroll on Instagram, or turn on the TV mid-day, there it is: an advert for Omaze. It's usually a jolly media personality extolling the virtues of the latest prize – a swimming pool here, a cinema there. The company has recognised something in the British public that has enabled them to captivate the nation; our love of a good raffle mixed with our addiction to property porn, tied up with a neat feel-good factor bow (a guaranteed minimum donation of £1m and 17 per cent of ticket sales from each draw go to charity). The prize may be a multimillion pound house, but – with upkeep costs sky high – an overwhelming trend has seen all but a handful of the 39 winners to date choose to sell up and cash out, rather than move in. Indeed, April's prize, a Highland Perthshire property on the banks of Loch Rannoch, won by 81-year-old Patricia Moule, went on the market almost immediately – at the end of June – and is currently listed on Rightmove for £3,975,000. There is one alternative, however: renting out the property to holidaymakers. This is what Lisa Morgan chose to do, after she won a £4.5m home in Cornwall, along with £250,000 in cash, in September 2024 (and hit the headlines when she turned up for her 11.5 hour shift as an NHS nurse in Merseyside the next day). Her home, Seahorses, in Maenporth near Falmouth, is one of just two properties in the UK openly advertised as an Omaze-winner's home – the other being Post Knott Lodge in Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District. The opportunity for a real-life snoop around one of these media-famous houses was too tempting an opportunity to pass up, so I tracked Seahorses down on Cornish Holiday Cottages, booked in, and bundled my family off for a weekend by the sea. I'll admit, the struggle to get our compact crossover SUV up the steep incline approaching the house filled me with a sudden apprehension – but once I was out of the car, punching in the code for the electric gate and confronted with the spectacular views, my fears abated. If the south Cornwall coast is good for anything, it's a touch of drama. It was a rare, sunny day in early May with clear blue skies and a bracing breeze, and across the lawn I could see straight out to sea, with Falmouth blinking in the sun on the horizon. I traced the coastal path – accessible through the gate at the end of the garden – scrawling away through the lush green clifftops opposite, the grass dropping into dramatic granite grey towards the crashing seas below, while Pendennis Castle stood in stately, historic contrast to the glass-clad luxury home beside me. 'Swimming pool!' screamed my three-year-old son, breaking me from my quiet moment of wonder. The family had begun exploring, and my husband was already rolling back the electric top on the outdoor heated pool – my children watching, delighted, from the safety of the pool house. Seahorses feels like the sort of place that's been designed so that you hardly ever need to leave it – and over the next three days, aside from a trip to a local supermarket (to supplement the lovely Cornish Food Box which was left for us), and a spot of exploring, we barely did. Open plan in design, its two lounges have very distinct purposes: a smaller room with sofas, an Xbox and even a VR headset was clearly intended for teens; while a larger communal living space was connected to the kitchen and offered sublime sea views. There were also indoor and outdoor dining areas, a barbecue, fire pit, hot tub, four additional bedrooms – all with electronic blinds – multiple bathrooms, a boot room and utility space. There was even a wine room – although this, sadly (if not unsurprisingly), had not been stocked. But the highlight (for me at least) was the turret, reached by a winding, wooden, floating staircase, at the top of which was a desk and telescope, and a door opening onto a large, private terrace complete with sun loungers. A sun trap with outstanding views. 'From the moment I walked into the house I knew I had to keep it,' Morgan told me. 'The emotion I felt was quite overwhelming, knowing what I was about to give to my family.' A flick through the guest book made it clear that this generosity has been felt far beyond her own family, however. Inside, I found personal messages that suggested fond familiarity with the owner, signed off in shortened names and with kisses. 'This house couldn't have 'happened' to a nicer, [more] hard-working family,' one read. 'Memories made to last a lifetime,' said another. Morgan's passion for the home is undeniable. 'The decision to set Seahorses up as a holiday home was an easy choice because we didn't want to leave it empty for long periods of time,' she told me. 'I want others to be able to share in the magic and make lasting happy memories here. Families these days are so spread out, and Seahorses is an ideal place to bring everyone back together.' Her words are borne out in love and care which has clearly gone into making the house feel like a home. It's packed with thoughtful details – a wide variety of glass types (essential), plenty of washing powder, and baskets of blankets dotted throughout the common spaces, allowing you to roll back the doors and let the cool, refreshing sea air roll in while keeping warm. What was missing? Shampoo – though, to be fair, this is an omission typical of many a self-catering property. And search though I did across the many, many drawers of the five large bedrooms, I could not find a hairdryer (a small inconvenience, I know, but when there's a VR headset downstairs, a somewhat surprising one). Otherwise, however, our every need had been met. We also made time for a bit of exploring – or as much as you can do with a one- and three-year-old in tow – heading out for a walk along the undulating coast path (my son more interested in the discovery of abundant sticky weed than the views), and making the two-minute drive down to Maenporth Beach, where there was plenty of parking, soft sand and a café. The children also enjoyed nearby Trebah gardens, an eight-minute drive to the west, where a great adventure playground, small beach and – as the name suggests – pretty gardens made for a lovely day out. For those keen to venture further, popular Falmouth is just 10 minutes away by car (or 45 minutes on foot), and links by tiny ferry to even more popular St Mawes across the Carrick Roads estuary. It's a wonderful part of the world – but lovely as it was to explore the area (and put some money in the pockets of local businesses), it was even more lovely to come back to Seahorses each time; our tucked-away, temporary idyll. After a weekend of bubbling in the hot tub, splashing in the pool and barbecuing by the open log fire, my family returned home, as promised, with memories to last a lifetime. And, in my case, a monthly subscription to Omaze. Essentials Penny Walker was a guest of Cornish Holiday Cottages (01326 250339). Seahorses has five bedrooms (sleeps up to 10) and six bathrooms, plus a hot tub, swimming pool, electric car point, dishwasher and woodburner. It is also pet-friendly. There is limited availability in August and September, although the calendar opens up in October. From £3,096 a week.
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
How the climate crisis and aid cuts could devastate global supplies of vanilla
The region known as Sava in Madagascar – roughly the same size as Wales – is responsible for around 80 per cent of the world's vanilla crop. While vanilla was first cultivated by the Maya in the forests of Mexico, it is in this region, in the northeast of Madagascar, that it found a home for modern times, after French colonists brought over the vanilla orchid in the 1880s. Chemical synthesis of the single vanillin chemical may have driven the 'vanilla' to become the world's most popular fragrance, found in everything from makeup to bug repellants, and now a term synonymous with blandness and mediocrity. But connoisseurs maintain that no laboratory product can match the subtle, creamy-rich flavour of the natural aroma, which contains nearly 200 chemical molecules. Madgascar's climate and soil proved ideal for vanilla, giving pods a higher concentration of natural vanillin than those grown in other markets. A large pool of smallholder farmers is also readily available to grow this labour-intensive plant, which is essentially a delicate vine that grows between the trees of the rainforest. Individual pods must all be picked by hand, before being blanched in hot water, massaged, and left to cure in the sun over a three-month period. Take a two-hour internal flight northeast from Antaniravo, Madagascar's bustling capital city, and you will find yourself in the lush green rainforests of Sava. Unlike the semi-arid southern part of the island or the naked mountains of the centre, Sava – which takes its name from the towns of Sambava, Andapa, Vohémar and Antalaha across the region – is Madagascar as seen on TV: A world-beating biological hotspot holding 70 per cent of the country's primary forest, and home to thousands of plants and animals. 'Arriving in villages in Sava, you drive up an unpaved road to these houses made of wood and straw, and you wonder where exactly the vanilla is,' explains Ernest Randriarimalala, a Malagasy advisor working with the NGO WaterAid who recently visited the region. 'It's really hidden away: there's a little bit in the forest here, a little bit there, and it can take many hours to walk between the patches.' With farmers waking up in the small hours to work 12-hour shifts, vanilla farming has never been easy. But the challenges faced by vanilla farmers are becoming ever more profound with the advent of climate change: a crisis that experts warn represents a potentially existential threat to Madagascar vanilla. The UN has labelled it the fourth-most climate vulnerable country in the world, and farmers in Sava are already warning of the threat to vanilla from changing rain patterns and the ever growing risk of tropical cyclones. According to Dasy Ibrahim, a Malagasay project manager at the NGO Care, high temperatures combined with increasingly volatile rain patterns are making vanilla vulnerable to diseases, particularly the fungal-borne disease fusarium wilt. At the same time, the vanilla flowering period has shifted in recent years, running from September to January, when it used to begin in November. 'This flowering phenomenon is attributable to stress caused by high temperatures and persistent, strong trade winds,' Ibrahim explains. A combination of this earlier flowering and delays in the rainy season means that a large number of pods are ripening earlier. But only those pods that have matured for a full nine months after pollination are judged to meet the required standard. That means that a large chunk of the crop becomes void, says Ibrahim. Edlyne Fenozara, a vanilla farmer in the village of Tsaratanana, has seen these impacts first-hand. 'Before we had regular rain and our vanilla plants grew properly. Now, it is getting warmer with less rain,' she says. 'Because of the lack of rain, we always have some vanilla dying as the rain comes later than it used to.' Ferozara has also experienced the devastation that tropical cyclones can cause to both vanilla plants and the villages in which farmers and their families live. 'The wind can rip off all the vanilla plants from the ground and throw them 20 meters away,' says Fenozara. 'Trees and falling branches are also breaking vanilla plants and the overly wet soil causes root rot.' Between 2000 and 2023, 47 tropical storms and cyclones hit Madagascar, with Sava one of the regions worst hit. Some 740,000 people were left homeless over that period - and in just the last few months, Cyclone Dikeledi and Tropical Storm Jude have displaced 30,000 more. 'Every year from January to March is the cyclone season and I personally pray to God so no cyclones with strong winds come across our area and destroy my plantation,' says Dricia, another vanilla farmer, who works in a village called Andrahanjo. Gael Lescornec, executive director at industry advocacy group the Sustainable Vanilla Institute, says that another big problem related to climate shocks is the volatile nature of vanilla prices when the shocks hit. 'Volatility makes it hard to give confidence to the market and you can invest in opportunities around vanilla and vanilla farmers,' she says. After Cyclone Enawo, a category 4 storm, displaced 500,000 people as it made landfall on the island in 2017, the price of vanilla bean pods surged to more than $400,000 per tonne. Vanilla became so valuable that farmers at the time reported widespread theft and gang violence. More recently, high production volumes coupled with lower-than-expected global demand have sent prices plummeting, with low prices creating economic difficulties for a region that is so heavily dependent on one crop. 'I really wish we could get a better price,' says Dricia. 'You can get a slightly better price if you sell your vanilla three or five months later than the others but for many of us, that is impossible as we are running out of everything and we can't afford to wait'. The impacts of climate change are heightened by the pervasive levels of poverty that exists in the Sava region. An isolated island in the India Ocean, Madagascar is neither culturally nor geographically close to its neighbours in East Africa, making it hard to forge close trading relationships. Madagascar's GDP per capita stands at just $506, and around 70 per cent of the population live on less than $1.90 per day. Houses that are typically built from materials like mud and bamboo stand little chance of withstanding major cyclones, while Sava's road system largely becomes impassable during heavy rains. Much of the population in Madagascar has long been reliant on overseas aid – though the remoteness of some towns and villages as well as generally weak governance in the country makes the provision of aid a challenge, even before recent aid cuts. According to Paul Melly, a researcher on Madagascar at the think tank Chatham House, there is a pattern of the political elite in the country being 'largely detached from rural concerns'. He adds that the country's authorities have often 'struggled to develop a clear long-term poverty reduction and development strategy', which makes it hard for donors to invest as they are unable to 'plug in' to an existing strategy. Many of the vanilla wholesalers in the global north that partner with vanilla farmers have taken matters into their own hands. German fragrances giant Symrise, for example, has been investing in environmental and social protection programmes in partnership with more than 7,000 farmers in the region for the last two decades, according to the company's Bernhard Kott. 'To improve standards and prevent poverty, we have worked with organisations including German international development finance company GIZ, and charity Save the Children,' he says. 'Madagascar is a poor country and suffering from aid cuts. Companies using vanilla have to take responsibility and invest in local programs and improve human aspects, and invest in agricultural practices to protect natural resources.' Tanja Stumpff, from GIZ, confirmed that the German government was working with private companies 'to maintain vanilla cultivation' and help 'improve living conditions'. WaterAid, meanwhile, is partnering with Captain Morgan – a rum brand that belongs to spirits giant Diageo and added 'real Madagascar vanilla' to its recipe in 2023 – in a three-year programme to deliver clean water and sanitation to small-scale vanilla farmers in Sava. According to WaterAid statistics, 43 per cent of SAVA's population does not have access to drinking water infrastructure, and only 10 per cent of people have access to safe and hygienic toilets. Residents of the three villages where WaterAid is active are beginning to beginning to build new latrines and engage in other improved hygiene practices, the NGO reports. But there is a broader sense from speaking to Malagasay people with connections to the region that the challenge of fighting poverty in Sava is not being met. 'We are helping a few villages. But the task of providing universal access to clean water in the area is huge,' says WaterAid's Ernest Randriarimalala. 'Not having access to clean water means that farmers are working in extreme heat and humidity for 12 hours a day, before they have to come home in the afternoon and have to spend several hours fetching water. 'But no matter how tiring it is for them, there is no other choice,' he adds. 'If there are any problems with the vanilla crop, then it becomes even harder.' Sava's poverty reduction challenge has became even more challenging in the face of aid cuts from government aid agencies, and in particular in the aftermath of USAID programme cuts announced earlier this year by Donald Trump. The US has historically been the single biggest country donor to the country's health programme - with USAID giving to Malagasy healthcare worth $787m over the past five years - while cuts announced in 2025 were worth an estimated $62m, or the equivalent of 54 per cent of the USAID country programme. In Sava, projects from which USAID has withdrawn include The Harena Project, a wide-reaching programme that promotes local initiatives to improve natural resource management and support community livelihoods, according to Care's Dasy Ibrahim. USAID has also withdrawn from The Mizana Project, a programme working with the mayors of 20 Sava municipalities to improve natural resource governance and better deal with local corruption. To add fuel to the fire, President Trump has threatened trade tariffs of 47 per cent on Madagscar, in a move that could devastate one of the world's poorest nations. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that the 'myriad of shocks' faced by Madagascar - including aid cuts, trade tariffs, and weather-related events - threatened growth in the country. Sava is certainly not the poorest region of Madagascar - the South of the island is in the grips of a devastating drought and food crisis - but even if vanilla helps bring in a stream of income, services including healthcare, education, and infrastructure maintainance are still highly dependent on external funding, according to the Sustainable Vanilla Initiative's Gael Lescornec. 'The south is a humanitarian issue, the north is a chronic poverty issue,' she explains. Consumers in the Global North have come to expect not only natural vanilla flavouring in food products, but also an ethical product that does not depend on the exploitation of people further down the supply chain. Evidence from the ground in shows that the vanilla supply is threatened on both these counts. As Lescornec puts it, with communities facing growing climate and developmental challenges, the ongoing failure to support resilience, 'threatens the long-term supply of sustainably-produced vanilla, as well as the very supply of vanilla.'
