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Princess Of Wales, Catherine, Finishes Chemotherapy, Vows To Stay Cancer-free

Published

1 year ago

September 10, 2024

Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced Monday that she had completed her course of chemotherapy following a shock cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

The announcement will provide welcome relief for Britain’s royal family after a troubled year in which head of state King Charles III also revealed he was battling cancer.

“I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment,” Kate, as she is often called, said in a message on X and Instagram.

The princess, 42, said the last nine months had been “incredibly tough” for the family—her husband Prince William and their children Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six.

“Life as you know it can change in an instant and we have had to find a way to navigate the stormy waters and road unknown,” she said.

Catherine, a future queen seen as a key figure in maintaining the royals’ position in a changing Britain, added that “doing what I can to stay cancer-free is now my focus.”

“Although I have finished chemotherapy, my path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes,” she said.

“I am, however, looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can.”

Catherine announced in March that she was undergoing a course of “preventative chemotherapy” for an undisclosed cancer.

– Solidarity –

The announcement came just weeks after it was disclosed that her father-in-law had also been diagnosed with cancer after undergoing treatment for a benign prostate.

Charles, 75, was given the green light to resume public duties in April after doctors said they were “very encouraged” by his progress.

The video message shows Catherine and William looking relaxed and happy with their children in the Norfolk countryside in eastern England, where they have a home.

The video was filmed last month, their Kensington Palace office said.

Catherine added in her highly emotional message that the months since her diagnosis had “above all reminded William and me to reflect and be grateful for the simple yet important things in life, which so many of us often take for granted. Of simply loving and being loved.”

“Everyone’s kindness, empathy, and compassion have been truly humbling,” she said.

And she expressed solidarity with fellow cancer sufferers.

“To all those who are continuing their own cancer journey, I remain with you, side by side, hand in hand. Out of darkness, can come light, so let that light shine bright,” she said.

Catherine has appeared in public on only a handful of occasions this year.

When she announced her cancer diagnosis in a video on March 22, she had not been seen in public since Christmas.

The disclosure came after royal officials said in January that Catherine would spend two weeks in hospital for abdominal surgery.

That announcement came shortly before a separate statement from Buckingham Palace that Charles was to have surgery.

He later spent three days at the same private hospital in central London. Officials then said in early February that tests had identified “a form of cancer,” without giving further details.

Catherine tentatively returned to UK public life in June, attending a military parade in London to officially mark Charles’s birthday.

In July, she attended the Wimbledon men’s final, at which she received cheers as she walked onto the court to present the trophy to Carlos Alcaraz.

Here is a summary of the key dates for Charles and Catherine’s cancer diagnoses:

January 17: Kensington Palace announces Catherine, Princess of Wales, is hospitalised for abdominal surgery (non-cancer-related). Buckingham Palace reveals Charles will undergo surgery for a benign enlarged prostate.

January 26: Charles undergoes surgery at The London Clinic, where Catherine is also recovering.

January 29: Both Charles and Catherine are discharged from the clinic.

February 5: Charles is diagnosed with cancer and begins treatment. He takes an indefinite break from public duties.

February 6: Charles makes a brief public appearance after his son, Prince Harry, visits him in London.

February 27: William pulls out of a memorial service, with reports suggesting Catherine had received her cancer diagnosis.

March 22: Catherine publicly announces she has cancer and has started chemotherapy, requesting privacy.

April 26: Charles begins a limited return to public duties after positive progress in his treatment.

June 14: Catherine announces progress in her treatment and attends the Trooping the Colour parade.

July 2024: Catherine attends the Wimbledon men’s tennis final.
September 9: Catherine reveals she has completed chemotherapy and is focusing on staying cancer-free while gradually returning to public duties.
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Related Topics:Cancer Catherine Princess Of Wales

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UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

1 hour ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

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UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

2 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

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Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

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King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP