Hong Kong's most famous foreign correspondent was yesterday urged by a judge to drop her case against the head of a public-relations company, who she claims mishandled her finances.
Judge David-Michael Gill told lawyers representing 94-year-old Clare Hollingworth to mediate her financial dispute with Ted Thomas instead of going ahead with a High Court case.
The judge said it would be "sad" if Hollingworth, a former UK Daily Telegraph reporter famous for scooping the world on the outbreak of World War II, spent her latter years in court.
Hollingworth accuses Thomas, head of the Hong Kong-based Corporate Communications, of withdrawing nearly US$300,000 from her bank account in cash and cheques over a two-year period.
Hollingworth handed Thomas control over her finances in 2003 but says he failed to act in her interests when she was in ill health and has failed to account for more than half of the money.
In a writ filed with the help of her family, she claimed Thomas withdrew nearly US$23,000 from ATM machines using her cash card and a further US$265,000 in cheques. Many of the cheques were made out to Thomas, his companies and his associates.
Thomas last year repaid about half the money, but Hollingworth is seeking the return or accounting for a further US$153,000 that the writ said he has failed "to completely and adequately explain."
The writ lists cheques that included some for sums of up to US$90,000 to Thomas Edward Juson -- 76-year-old Thomas' real name -- made out between July 2003 and May last year.
The action is being brought by Hollingworth with the help of her two grandnephews, Patrick Garrett and Andrew Flude, and two executors who have power of attorney.
Thomas, the author of a book on how to deal with the media entitled I Was Misquoted, has vigorously defended himself against the allegations in the writ.
He says he acted at all times in Hollingworth's best interests and invested her money in ventures she was not aware of because he believed it would earn her more money than leaving it in the bank.
Hollingworth is famed for getting one of the greatest scoops of modern times when she was first to report on the outbreak of World War II.
Aged 27 and a journalist for less than a week, she was on the Polish-German border in 1939 reporting for the Daily Telegraph when she sighted a huge line of troops, tanks and armored cars facing Poland.
Her eyewitness account was the first anyone had heard of the invasion, and it began a journalistic career that would span seven decades and take her to Palestine, Algeria, China, Yemen and Vietnam.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
RSS