Why the paparazzi are ignorant
I have been on 10+ hour plane flights, and completely sympathize with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen regarding this story:
Were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen wearing itty-bitty binding crankypants when they landed in Australia this weekend? The Sydney Morning Herald snipes that the twin titans, 19, who are Down Under to stump for their new tween-targeted clothing line, appeared "tired," "irritable" and "thinner than ever" in their ubiquitous super-sized sunglasses as they beat a hasty retreat from the airport with their burly bodyguards running interference.
But Ashley is firing back at this assessment, countering that the paparazzi-packed incident perfectly illustrates how tough it is for them to strike a balance between their private and public lives.
"We don't really like our photos being taken when we're not working," Ashley tells the Daily Telegraph. "Over the weekend here we had about 20 photographers at the airport and we'd just got off a flight. Then they write a headline like we're miserable and so upset to be here. We couldn't be happier to be here [but] when you're being attacked after a 16-hour plane flight, that's not nice."
Meanwhile:
Three French photographers have each been fined a symbolic one euro by France's appeals court for taking pictures of Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al-Fayed on the night they were killed in a Paris car crash in 1997, justice officials said.
Jacques Langevin, Fabrice Chassery and Christian Martinez were cleared of breach of privacy charges in court rulings in 2003 and 2004, but Dodi's father Egyptian millionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed took the case to France's high court of appeal, the Cour de Cassation.
The Cour de Cassation quashed the acquittal and referred the charges back to the appeals court, which last Friday ruled that the photographers had indeed broken the law and issued the symbolic fine, the officials said.
The three took pictures of the couple as they left the Ritz hotel in central Paris on the night of August 31, and a few minutes later at the scene of the crash in the Alma underpass.
The appeals court also ordered the photographers to pay for the publication of its ruling in three "national or international newspapers chosen by the civil plaintiff," Mohammed Al-Fayed.
According to the court, both series of pictures -- outside the hotel and at the crash scene -- were a breach of France's strict rules on privacy.
"The photographs (at the hotel) were taken with Dodi Al-Fayed inside the vehicle, a location where access is forbiddden without permission of the occupant and which therefore comes under the definition of a private place," the court found.
Concerning the second series at the crash scene, the court said that the "car's involvement in an accident and the consequent opening of a door, exposing a seriously injured person involuntarily to outside view, in no way diminishes (the car's) quality as a private place.
"By showing Dodi Al-Fayed mortally injured, bloody, his body broken by the shock of the accident, the photographers unquestionably committed a breach of the respect due to a human being and as a result violated the personal privacy of the individual concerned," the court said.
Who gets the money?
The single euro divided between the trio will be paid to Mohamed al Fayed, the Egyptian-born millionaire and father of Dodi al Fayed, Diana's companion who also died in the crash.
Why don't they give Prince Charles half of it? Dunno.
Comments
Same with illegal drugs, by the way. Hard for us to blame Afghanistan and Peru when we're buying the junk by the ton.