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Prince Harry’s Effort to Pay for British Police Protection Fails in Court

(FILES) Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (L) and Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, attend the annual One Young World Summit at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, north-west England on September 5, 2022. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP)
(FILES) Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (L) and Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, attend the annual One Young World Summit at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, north-west England on September 5, 2022. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP)
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Prince Harry’s Effort to Pay for British Police Protection Fails in Court

(FILES) Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (L) and Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, attend the annual One Young World Summit at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, north-west England on September 5, 2022. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP)
(FILES) Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (L) and Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, attend the annual One Young World Summit at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, north-west England on September 5, 2022. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP)

A London judge ruled Tuesday against Prince Harry in his efforts to pay for police protection when he visits Britain.

A High Court judge rejected the Duke of Sussex’s assertion that the British government exceeded its authority when it denied him the right to hire police to provide security in the UK, The Associated Press said.

The British government stopped providing security after Harry and his wife, Meghan, quit their royal duties and moved to California in 2020. A lawyer for the government argued in court that it should allow hiring of “police officers as private bodyguards for the wealthy.”

Harry has said he doesn’t feel safe visiting Britain with his young children, and has cited aggressive press photographers.

The case was argued last week on the same day Harry and Meghan sought cover from paparazzi in a New York police station after a spokesperson said they had been involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” with photographers after a gala event.

No one was injured and no citations given, but police said photographers made it challenging for the couple to get where they were going.

Harry is separately challenging the decision to deny him government-paid security. That lawsuit is the only one of five active legal cases he has in London courts that is not against British tabloid publishers over allegations of libel or phone hacking.

He is due to testify next month in an ongoing trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror over allegations it used illegal means to gather material for dozens of articles about the duke, dating back as far as the 1990s.

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Climate Change Causing More Change in Rainfall, Fiercer Typhoons, Scientists Say 

People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
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Climate Change Causing More Change in Rainfall, Fiercer Typhoons, Scientists Say 

People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)

Climate change is driving changes in rainfall patterns across the world, scientists said in a paper published on Friday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.

Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were lashed by the year's most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shut as wind speeds surged up to 227 kph (141 mph). On China's eastern coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.

Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.

Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia at the China Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found about 75% of the world's land area had seen a rise in "precipitation variability" or wider swings between wet and dry weather.

Warming temperatures have enhanced the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, the researchers said in a paper published by the Science journal.

"(Variability) has increased in most places, including Australia, which means rainier rain periods and drier dry periods," said Steven Sherwood, a scientist at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study.

"This is going to increase as global warming continues, enhancing the chances of droughts and/or floods."

FEWER, BUT MORE INTENSE, STORMS

Scientists believe that climate change is also reshaping the behavior of tropical storms, including typhoons, making them less frequent but more powerful.

"I believe higher water vapor in the atmosphere is the ultimate cause of all of these tendencies toward more extreme hydrologic phenomena," Sherwood told Reuters.

Typhoon Gaemi, which first made landfall in Taiwan on Wednesday, was the strongest to hit the island in eight years.

While it is difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, models predict that global warming makes typhoons stronger, said Sachie Kanada, a researcher at Japan's Nagoya University.

"In general, warmer sea surface temperature is a favorable condition for tropical cyclone development," she said.

In its "blue paper" on climate change published this month, China said the number of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea had declined significantly since the 1990s, but they were getting stronger.

Taiwan also said in its climate change report published in May that climate change was likely to reduce the overall number of typhoons in the region while making each one more intense.

The decrease in the number of typhoons is due to the uneven pattern of ocean warming, with temperatures rising faster in the western Pacific than the east, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical cyclone research scientist at the University of Reading.

Water vapor capacity in the lower atmosphere is expected to rise by 7% for each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperatures, with tropical cyclone rainfall in the United States surging by as much as 40% for each single degree rise, he said.