Latest news with #Angola
News.com.au
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Harry walks in his mum's footsteps nearly three decades later
The word 'iconic' has been so grossly overused it should be banned, but, sigh, but there is no other adjective to describe the photo of Diana, Princess of Wales walking through an African minefield. Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex has just recreated this famed shot. For the third time. California might have deals and sunshine and more capped teeth and kale per square mile than anywhere else on Earth but fresh and powerful ideas that skew far from the royal playbook appear to be thin on the ground. On Tuesday he landed in Angola's capital of Luanda, met with the country's president in a well-pressed nice suit, and attended a reception at the British embassy. Then on Wednesday he took a series of two-person planes to reach Cuito Cuanavale, close to Africa's largest minefield. There, he spoke to children and replicated the famed moment when Diana travelled to Angola, only months before her death in 1997 and not once but twice (to make sure the cameras had gotten the shot) picked her way through a minefield. She was there on behalf of The Halo Trust; since 2019 Harry has held the same post. This new shot of Harry is a powerful image, one positively groaning under the weight of symbolism and poignancy, a photo guaranteed to garner global media play - and it adds fuel to the nation that Harry appears to be quietly angling to return to 'royal' life. When the duke landed in the Angolan capital of Luanda it was with an increasing number of signs that the 40-year-old, having quit the palace in a blaze of strong words and scorched bridges, is trying to rewind the clock and to return to a pre-Megxit existence. Exhibit one, the last week has seen his senior aides make nice with King Charles'; exhibit two, his reps have been meeting with the UK press (after years of lawsuits) as part of a 'charm offensive'; exhibit three, here he is restaging one of the most famous moments in the royal canon; and exhibit four, he even did some very HRH-y presidential hand-shaking t and willingly making small talk at a British embassy. How very 2019 of him. Gobs were left smacked on Sunday when it was revealed that top lieutenants for King Charles and Harry and wife Meghan, The Duchess of Sussexes had held a secret peace summit in London last week. Last week Meredith Maines, the Sussexes' chief communications officer and head of household, flew to a certain grey island to sit down with one of the King's right-hand chaps on royal home turf - and at Harry's reported instigation. Somehow a paparazzo for the Daily Mail managed to be on the hand to photograph Tobyn Andreae, the King and Queen Camilla's communications secretary, Maines, the Sussexes' chief communications officer and head of household, and Liam Maguire, the Sussexes' UK and Europe communications manager, arriving for drinks held at a private members club only a stone's throw from Charles' home Clarence House. (Who needs a blue beret when there is the universal convening power of a triple vodka tonic?) Initiating the face-to-face, according to the Times' Kate Mansey was Team Sussex and Buckingham Palace 'agreed to a meeting'. Going into it, the Palace was 'understandably wary' but felt it was 'sensible' to open communications channels 'with yet another new Sussex PR team'. (Maines took the reins earlier this year after years of headlines about the couple's staff turnover.) A well-placed source told Mansey that the summit was a 'desperate' attempt on the part of the Duke of Sussex 'to get back into the royal fold.' The sit down, the Times reported, was 'the result of years of trying on Harry's part to reconnect with the royal family' and these drinks were 'the closest he has got so far'. (When photos of the 'closely-guarded secret' meeting were published, there was 'considerable surprise' and a 'weary resignation' at the Palace. The Sussexes, for their part, were reportedly 'frustrated' by the talks being made public, The Telegraph has reported.) The Palace's was reportedly not the only door that Maines knocked on, with her itinerary including seemingly making nice with the Sussexes' long time nemesis, the British press. According to the Daily Mail's royal editor Rebecca English, Maines met with 'a host of London-based press and television journalists' during her trip along with business and charity partners as part of a 'a new charm offensive on the UK in a bid to turn around their negative public image.' (It remains to be seen if that particular rabbit can be pulled out of a hat.) So let us review: The Duke of Sussex has just re-enacted his mother's most history-making, world-changing photo op, he went to a British diplomatic outpost to talk to business leaders about the cause, and his reps are cap in hand trying to thaw the vast ice sheets that have stretched, for years, between London and California. I ask you this - what apart from the fact that the duke lives in the US, what is different about his life today than the before times? His years long attempt to strong arm Crown Inc and to bring them to heel have come to nought, his repeated interview demands for royal apologies having been run into a Westeros-like wall of icy silence and immovability. The 40-year-old has no paid work, as far as is known and every one of his non-royal projects has belly-flopped. All he outwardly does now is charity and his biggest philanthropic endeavours, like The Halo Trust and the Invictus Games, date back to his royal tenure. What was the point of Megxit, for Harry at least? Sure he has been released from the bondage of royal servitude and yet here we are, more than five years on, when he can do, say and go anywhere he wants, when he can clamber on top of any pulpit he fancies, and he looks to be quietly reverting back to living what looks like a royal life. Consider the cost of all this. His family. Some friendships, reportedly. A nation's adoration. Harry first made a private trip on behalf of the Halo Trust in 2010, visiting a Mozambique minefield. In 2019, during his tour of southern Africa with Meghan he travelled to Angola and donned safety gear to walk through a minefield. When he was last in Angola in 2019, it was as a representative of the Crown; soon he reportedly won't even be a representative of Netflix. Sure, the Duke of Sussex remains as committed as he ever to doing good but his ability to have an impact, to make a dent in the Zeitgeist, feels vastly diminished and dimmed as opposed to when his HRH preceded him as he travelled the world and the Sovereign Grant happily picked up the tab. In January 1997, a Halo Trust staffer drew their logo on a pillow case, cut it out and stitched it onto the front of the body armour. The next day, the Princess of Wales landed in Angola with about 90 international journalists and TV crews and created one of the most powerful images of modern royal life. Such was her truly awesome power to mobilise feeling and action that on September 1 of that year 100 nations gathered in Oslo for a historic convention to ban landmines. She had died the day before.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Prince Harry walks through minefield
Prince Harry said no child should have to "live in fear" of walking to school as he walked through a minefield in Angola.
The Independent
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Harry revisits Diana's footsteps in Angola with landmine walk
Prince Harry recreated his mother Princess Diana 's historic landmine walk in Angola, 28 years after her original visit to the country. Visiting as a patron of the Halo Trust, the Duke of Sussex advised children in a remote village near Africa's largest minefield on how to avoid detonating mines, telling them in Portuguese: "Stop, go back and tell your elders." His visit highlighted the ongoing threat of munitions in Angola, echoing Princess Diana's 1997 plea for a global ban on such weapons. Diana's original visit featured iconic images of her in protective gear walking through a minefield being cleared by the Halo Trust. Watch the video in full above.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Prince Harry recreates Princess Diana's famous landmine walk in Angola
The Duke of Sussex recreated Princess Diana 's historic Angola landmine walk on his solo visit to the country 28 years after her trip. 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.
SBS Australia
3 hours ago
- General
- SBS Australia
Australian invention could revolutionise minefield clearance
Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts . "Yes, I knew the statistics. But putting a face to those figures, really brought the reality home to me. Like when I met Sandra, the thirteen-year-old girl two days ago, who'd lost her leg. You know for people like her, the rest of her life will be very different. And we must stop the landmines if we can." It has been almost three decades since Diana, Princess of Wales walked through the minefields of Angola. Wearing a visor and flak jacket, Diana traversed along a live minefield, contaminated with hidden weapons left over from the decades-long civil war. "It's been a very intense four days, I have seen a great great deal. I've seen the people affected by landmines. I've seen the landmines themselves. Angola is an example of what the Red Cross can achieve around the world, given the sort of cooperation we have seen that exists between the Red Cross and the N-G-O's and the Angolan authorities." Given the public fascination with Diana at the time, her visit to Angola triggered a global conversation and sparked real efforts to address the crisis. The Princess died shortly after her visit, but the trip sparked a boost in funding for de-mining projects and, by spotlighting the issue, led to the creation of the Ottawa Treaty, which aimed to eliminate anti-personnel landmines. The issue of landmines, however, is far from over. According to NATO's Strategic Warfare Development Command, there are still 110 million landmines globally. The world's largest landmine clearance charity, The HALO Trust, says over 5,700 civilians were killed or injured by landmines and explosives in 2023. Now, an Australian innovation is hoping to revolutionise landmine clearance. "The old way, which is actually still the current way, would be using metal detectors or ground penetrating radar. What they do is they will detect an anomaly in the ground. The anomaly could be a mine? It could be metal? It could be whatever? So there's lots of false, what they call, false positives. So you will dig up one in 30 would be a mine, out of 30 that you may dig up, and that's based on the anomalies. Whereas our technology sends a low frequency radio wave into the ground tuned to the magnetic resonance of the structure of that mine, which could be RDX or TNT. So specifically, it is that mine. Not there's an anomaly, there's something here, it'll be it's that mine, yes or no. That's the real technological jump." John Shanahan is the Managing Director of MRead. MRead, or Magnetic Resonance of Explosives and Drugs, is an Australian company working in collaboration with the C-S-I-R-O. Together, they have developed the first handheld device using low frequency radio waves to identify the molecular signatures of explosives. "Every explosive, or drugs which we detect has a fingerprint. We are the only sensor that can detect the actual fingerprint. So not that there's an anomaly there, as we talked about earlier, it's just, this is that substance. It's just binary as that." De-mining is a meticulous process; it's estimated around 117,000 mines are cleared each year. Conducting trials in landmine fields in Angola with The HALO Trust, the MRead team simulates the real world and says their device can speed up mine clearing by at least 30 per cent. Nick Cutmore is the Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer. He says that with no real world testing, no one can be sure of how reliable the devices truly are. "The way that we test it is to simulate the real world. We have used real explosives that are buried and in land mines all over the world, we bury them, simulating a landmine, and we use our detector to look into the ground and determine if we can detect it, how effectively we can detect it, and how reliably we can do this. Because although we want new technology, the last thing we want is technology that only half works, because no one wants to leave landmines behind." Anti-personnel landmines are designed to be hidden in the ground and detonate when someone steps on or passes by them. According to the U-N's Mine Action Service 2025 figures, an estimated 100 million people in more than 60 countries and territories live with the threat of landmines. Earlier this year [[2025]], Angola's National Mine Action Agency said the country needs $240 million to clear nearly 1000 minefields from a civil war that ended over two decades ago. But Nick Cutmore says land mines don't only impact the people living around them. "The direct impact is easily understood from landmines, which is people get hurt or killed. There's a much wider impact than that. Angola is a really good example, where you've got people with subsistence living and slash-and-burn type existence. And that influences not just Angola but countries across the world, because the way you're limiting the way these people can live their lives, you're contributing to the loss of habitat and loss of forest that has an impact upon climate change itself." MRead are expecting to return to Angola in 2026 for an extended three month trial of their device, alongside The HALO Trust. The company expects that by the end of 2026 they will have developed the final model to then be deployed in early 2027. In Angola, the landmines left behind from the war, which ended in 2002, continue to harm and displace people. John Shanahan says it is critical for communities like those surrounding Angola's minefields to be able to live safely on their own land. "If you think of Princess Diana in the Angola minefields, that's where we were essentially last November, and they they lay it out very well, and then you see the impact on the communities when this land is handed back to them that they haven't been able to access for decades. Whether that's for economic reasons, whether that's for tourism, or whether it's actually just be able to grow your own crops and not have your children blown up. It's just what they do is marvellous. We love working with them (The HALO Trust)." Next, MRead is working to develop a T-N-T sensor, which Mr Shanahan says will make a huge difference. "So our next version is a TNT sensor, which ultimately we will combine into one sensor. If we are able to detect TNT and RDX, that is over 90% of land mines in the world, and we've been looking to do that throughout by '27, '28. Which is why all of the de-miners- saying, if you can do that, it's just never been done before, ever in the world, full stop. Which is the remarkable thing about it. So if we can do that in two and a half years time, we will make a huge difference." The 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty banned anti-personnel landmines and helped destroy over 50 million. While some countries in Europe are now looking to withdraw from the treaty, countries like the United States, China, Russia, and Israel are not party. Recently, Ukraine, which is considered the most heavily mined country in the world, has voted to suspend its participation in the treaty. John Shanahan says he hopes this new device can, at some point, help Ukraine rid itself of this problem. "I'll be going there (Ukraine) in September this year to see how our technology might be able to help out. We're looking for that to be a scoping visit this year to really understand the problem set, which is very different to the Angola one, to understand the problem set for us, then to go back after we come back from Angola next year. So we've really got a product now that we know really does work as well as we wanted it to, that we can then look to see how we can get that deployed to support a terrible problem in Ukraine."
