Free Republic

http://home.comcast.net/~thomasaxtell FAMOUS QUOTES "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- Archduke Franz Ferdinand "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- James Dean "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- Senator Ted Kennedy "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- Isadora Duncan "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" - Dale Earnhardt "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" -- Princess Diana "Yikes! I have to get out of this car!" --...

Since this is back in the news, here's a reissue of The Commonwealth Publications Saga Part I: "In the city of Edmonton, Alberta in the early 1990’s, there was one such man. His name was Donald Phelan, and what he built – and subsequently destroyed – left a long trail of broken promises and shattered dreams....."

Al Fayed quizzed over 'sexual assault' Oct 22, 2008 Mohamed al Fayed has been interviewed under caution in connection with an allegation of sexual assault against a girl aged under 16. Skip related content Related photos / videosAl Fayed quizzed over Video: Al Fayed quizzed over 'sexual assault' The Harrods owner voluntarily went to a police station in west London to answer questions about the alleged incident in May. His spokeswoman Katharine Witty said he vehemently denies the allegation and is confident his name will be cleared. She added: "We confirm that Mohamed al Fayed today voluntarily attended an interview...

The afterglow didn’t last long, however. The proverbial ‘red flags’ soon began to appear. The volume of complaints from authors steadily grew; the production backlog became the elephant in the room, and uncertainty over company funds became fodder for water cooler chat. Then on August 31, 1997, an event occurred that signaled the beginning of the end.....

Princess Diana was unlawfully killed due to the actions of driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi, an inquest jury has found. The jury reached the same verdict for her companion Dodi Al Fayed. The inquest investigating the 1997 Paris crash that killed her and Dodi lasted six months. The jury had to decide if the deaths had been an accident, unlawful killing by negligence, or unexplained. They could not find they had been murdered. Coroner Lord Justice Scott told the jurors they could not find the crash was an "unlawful killing by the Duke of Edinburgh or anyone else in...

The ten-year anniversary of the untimely death of the People’s Princess has brought the expected concerts, prayer services, and television retrospectives. Her celebrity sons’, long-since the holders of the media spotlight, can be seen everywhere with greater than normal scrutiny with the collective reminder of their Mom. Lost in the wave of reminiscence is the main cause of the tragedy. The death of Princess Diana was the first real example of Death by Paparazzi.

Feminist Germaine Greer has caused outrage in Australia for calling the late Princess of Wales, "slow", "devious" and "disturbingly neurotic". The controversial academic claims Diana is partly responsible for the car accident that killed her almost a decade ago - by initiating a love triangle between herself, Dodi Fayed and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan. "The saddest thought of all is that Diana's death may have resulted indirectly from another of her back-handed manipulations; it is said that she only went to Paris with (her late lover) Dodi Fayed in order to make heart surgeon Hasnat Khan jealous," writes Greer in...

No story yet but very interesting headline...

Diana 'converted to Islam' Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent in New York June 9, 2007 PRINCESS DIANA considered converting to Islam during her relationship with the Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, according to a new book. An extract from The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown, published in Vanity Fair, says Diana fell for the doctor while visiting a friend's husband in hospital. "Isn't he drop dead gorgeous!" she said of the doctor after he left the room. Diana then proceeded to visit the friend's surprised husband for 17 days straight in order to meet his doctor. Brown writes that in no...

It's Pop Culture Update time and folks, Princess Di…the driver was drunk, the tunnel was dangerous, they had on no seatbelts and were going on almost 100 mph. Time to put on our common sense hats and look into what might be behind this constant attempt to blame the wayward princesses' death on conspiracies. Jennifer Aniston caught topless again, Sharon Stone causes an international incident and yes, the guy really got drunk and fell asleep on the railroad tracks.

A LONG-awaited report into the death of Princess Diana in a Paris car crash due out today is expected to refute theories of a plot by British intelligence targeting her and confirm a French probe that said it was an accident. The report by Lord John Stevens, the former commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, has concluded that Diana died in a traffic accident after her driver lost control of the car, British newspapers said today. Fleeing paparazzi photographers, Diana, 36, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, 42, and their chauffeur Henri Paul, 41, were killed in a car crash in a Paris...

Did the Clinton Administration Engage in “Domestic Spying” Against Princess Diana? What the new revelations could mean. By Byron York The first thing to remember in trying to evaluate reports that U.S. intelligence services wiretapped Princess Diana is that British press accounts can be notoriously unreliable. We’ll know more about the story on Thursday morning, when results of the Lord Stevens inquiry into Diana’s death are released to the public. But if the reports out now are accurate, the Diana case could raise questions for veterans of the Clinton administration similar to those facing the Bush administration today. Some versions...

The American secret service was bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations without the approval of the British security services on the night she died, according to the most comprehensive report on her death, to be published this week. Among extraordinary details due to emerge in the report by former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens is the revelation that the US security service was bugging her calls in the hours before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.

A Kennedy-crazed Princess Diana was obsessed with becoming America's first lady - and plotted to use her torrid affair with a mysterious, older, New York billionaire to pull off the sensational scheme, the tragic royal's butler reveals in his explosive new book. "She had it all dreamed out in her head - how she would redecorate the presidential apartment and become 'the new Jackie O,' " Paul Burrell writes in "The Way We Were: Remembering Diana," which hit bookstores yesterday. Despite persistent rumors, Diana never had an affair with John F. Kennedy Jr., whom she considered intellectually challenged, Burrell scoffs....

LONDON Sept. 7, 2006— The first hearings in the inquests into the death of Princess Diana will take place early next year, judicial officials said Thursday. The courts service said the inquest would be led by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, a retired senior judge. Butler-Sloss, former head of the High Court's family division, will become Deputy Coroner of the Queen's Household next month so she can lead the inquest into the Aug. 31, 1997 deaths of Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed.

Strengthening relations between wartime allies basis for naming latest US Virginia class after British Princess. A long, black submarine lurks beneath the ocean waves, carrying a full arsenal of ship-killing weapons. No other class of warship can find it, fight it, or even defend against it. If current US military planners have their way, the latest of these fearsome weapons will be named the USS Princess Diana. "We have a destroyer named after Winston Churchill, and the 72nd Secretary of the Navy was named England (Gordon England), why can't we honor the late Princess Diana with the power and majesty...

A British official conducting a coroner's inquiry into Princess Diana's death reportedly thinks American and French intelligence agencies may be able to shed new light on what happened that night in August 1997 as Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, fled paparazzi. The allegations read like something out of a James Bond novel — that U.S. secret agents had bugged Diana's cellular phone and that her driver that night in Paris was a French spy. Lord Stevens, the British official investigating Diana's death, has reportedly subpoenaed more than 1,000 pages of transcripts from U.S. authorities, who were monitoring Diana's calls...

<p>The chauffeur of the car in which Princess Diana died was working for the French secret service, the British team reinvestigating her death has been told.</p> <p>The inquiry into the Paris car crash that killed Diana is now trying to obtain the chauffeur's files from French intelligence but is being delayed by the reluctance of the authorities to hand them over. Stevens' team has asked the country's domestic intelligence service to surrender all its "agent handling" files on Henri Paul, the chauffeur, to establish whether he was doing any work for his intelligence handlers that night.</p>

Diana Inquiry More Complex Than Expected By DAVID STRINGER Associated Press Writer LONDON An inquiry into the death of Princess Diana is "far more complex than any of us thought," the official leading the investigation said Friday without commenting on the conspiracy theories that persist nearly nine years after her death. Lord Stevens, the former head of London's Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that some of the issues raised by Mohammed al Fayed _ whose son, Dodi, was killed in the 1997 car crash with Diana _ were "right to be raised." He did not elaborate. Mohammed al Fayed, the owner of...

Yard calls on Charles over death of Diana David Leppard THE Prince of Wales has been formally interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives investigating the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash in 1997. Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, saw the prince at Clarence House last week to question him for several hours about the events that led up to the death of his former wife. The prince’s spokesman declined to release details of the interview, but it is known that Stevens had planned to ask Charles about his response to the bizarre allegation that...

An exact copy of Princess Diana's 1981 wedding dress has been attracting interest from around the world - a week before it is due to be auctioned. The replica of the ivory silk dress was made by designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel, apparently at the request of the princess in case of a mishap.

Some call it corny. Others call it ghastly. And some will no doubt find it magnificent. But whatever it may be, the life-size statue of Princess Diana and her companion Emad "Dodi" Fayed will soon be among the pricey food and clothing displays at London's Harrods department store. Dodi's father Mohamed al Fayed — the multimillionaire owner of Harrods — had tried years ago to erect a 10-foot-high memorial to the couple, but public reaction had foiled his plans.Now, on the eighth anniversary of the tragic car crash that killed Lady Di and her boyfriend in Paris on Aug. 31,...

On the eve of the eighth anniversary of Princess Diana's death, she has been honoured with a new sculpture dedicated to both her and her companion Dodi Fayed, who also died in the 1997 Paris car crash. The bronze statue, entitled Innocent Victims, was commissioned by Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohammed Al Fayed. Created by family friend Bill Mitchell, it is due to occupy a special place inside the legendary London store. The work depicts Diana and Dodi smiling into each other's eyes as they apparently run along a beach together, with a bird poised for flight at the tip...

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's royal family forced the late Princess Diana to blood test her younger son, Prince Harry, to prove he was not the offspring of an affair with an army officer, according to a newspaper report. Diana, who died in 1997, did not tell Harry why his blood was being taken, the Sun newspaper said in extracts from a book by Simone Simmons, an "energy healer" billed as a former close friend and confidante of the princess. Senior royals, notably Queen Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip, feared that their son, Prince Charles, who was married to Diana, might not...

Diana, Princess of Wales, took cocaine and was worried it would kill her, according to new claims today. Friend and confidante Simone Simmons makes the claim in her controversial book Diana: The Last Word, in which she also alleges the Princess had a relationship with John F Kennedy Jr. In the book, serialised in The Sun, Ms Simmons insists that Diana told her a boyfriend, who was a habitual user, once urged her to try the drug. She said the experience was so frightening for the Princess that she vowed not to use it again and help addicts. The 49-year-old...

Princess Diana had a passionate affair with John F Kennedy Jr, according to a new book on the late former wife of Prince Charles. Diana and Kennedy, who both died in tragic accidents in the 1990s, met in New York in 1995 when the son of the assassinated US president sought an interview with her for his magazine George , the Sun newspaper reported today. She refused but agreed to meet him in his luxury suite in the Manhattan hotel overlooking Central Park, according to Simmons, described by the paper as a "friend and confidante" of the late Princess of...

Princess Diana of Wales had a passionate one night fling with John F. Kennedy Jr, it was claimed tonight.The pair had a steamy one night stand, which Diana described as 'pure chemistry,' according to a new book by friend and confidante Simone Simmons. The author, whose book 'Diana: The Last Word,' is serialized in the London Sun, says the princess fantasized about becoming America's First Lady.Diana rated Kennedy Jr. a 'ten out of ten' in the sack and said their session in a New York hotel was 'pure lust,' Simmons reports.Simone said that she had kept the saucy secret for...

British government documents say change made at last minute LONDON (AP) -- The car in the crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris was a last-minute replacement either meant as a media diversion or because the vehicle she was supposed to take failed to start, according to British government documents released Tuesday. The papers, released by the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act, detailed correspondence between the government and British officials in France in the days after the August 31, 1997, high-speed crash that killed Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and the driver Henri Paul. A memo sent...

Every time Diana, Princess of Wales's ghost returns for another haunting, as it did last week on American television and thence into the British media, our perceptions of her the only thing that stays the same is the revolving cast of clapped-out courtiers, posh lowlifes and fleabag turncoats who continue to cash in on her memory. -snip- What's fascinating about the Settelen seance is the new insight it gives us into the Diana myth. We suddenly glimpse why the Royal Family was so afraid of her witchy power. Coquetting with the camera, she comes off as a performing charmer, a...

LONDON - Prince Charles was a "hopeless" lover who rarely slept with Princess Diana, according to a never-before-seen video to be shown next week. The late princess also claims her husband brazenly admitted carrying on an affair with his mistress and Queen Elizabeth brushed off her complaints. Diana recalls - in the 1993 tape made by her former voice coach - how "absolutely traumatized" she was when a TV interviewer asked the newly engaged couple if they were in love and Charles replied, "Whatever 'in love' means." After their marriage, their sexual relationship was "odd," with Charles sleeping with her...

LONDON (AP) -- Princess Diana's former lover, who was found drunk and carrying cocaine earlier this year, is a potential danger to public safety who should be barred from keeping weapons, a court was told Thursday. James Hewitt, 46, has appealed the revocation of his firearms license. Lawyers for the police told Blackfriars Crown Court in London that Hewitt was drunk and had cocaine in his pocket when he was detained July 21 outside a restaurant with girlfriend Alison Bell. When police searched his apartment, they found a disassembled shotgun in a case on the floor - a breach of...

The step-brother of the late Princess Diana died after an apparent overdose of sleeping pills in Cambodia, where he had been since early this month, police said today. Adam Shand Kydd, 49, arrived in the impoverished South-East Asian nation as a tourist on April 2 and was paying $1770 per month rent for a luxury home in the capital, Phnom Penh. He was found dead on Monday evening after his maid contacted the police. "We think he could have died from overuse of sleeping pills," said Prak Nhat, an autopsy police official. "No one killed him." Shand Kydd had been...

<p>The step-brother of Britain's late Princess Diana has been found dead of an apparent drug overdose in the red-light district of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.</p> <p>Police confirmed the body of Adam Shand Kydd, 49, was taken from a hostel late Tuesday, The Times of London reported.</p>

10 SECONDS THAT SHAKES ENGLAND: FURY AT CBS-TV AIRING OF DYING DIANA Wed Apr 21 2004 21:18:28 ET Friends of Princess Diana last night expressed disbelief after a picture of her dying in the wreck of her Mercedes was broadcast on TV, the UK DAILY MAIL splashes on Thursday. MORE The American network CBS showed the black and white image, taken by paparazzi moments after the car crashed in Paris. On air for ten seconds, it clearly showed Diana's face, shoulders and upper torso as she lay dying. Friends were distraught at the decision to show the picture, which they...

Friends of Princess Diana last night expressed disbelief after a picture of her dying in the wreck of her Mercedes was broadcast on TV, the UK DAILY MAIL splashes on Thursday. MORE The American network CBS showed the black and white image, taken by paparazzi moments after the car crashed in Paris. On air for ten seconds, it clearly showed Diana's face, shoulders and upper torso as she lay dying. Friends were distraught at the decision to show the picture, which they said would horrify Princes William and Harry. 'I am appalled, it is just beyond the pale,' said Vivienne...

Dear Editor, How many dead American soldiers are worth a politician’s picture with a Princess? Most Americans are paying a lot of attention to the fighting going on in Iraq. We cringe at the US casualties and pray America is doing everything it can to protect our troops. In the city of Fallujah, US Marines have been fighting block by block to secure and neutralize the enemy that infest this city. The US Army has fought off repeated ground attacks against several US bases in the Sunni Triangle. Marines in Fallujah are putting broken glass and other trash in front...

A British coroner asks police to investigate the death of the Princess of Wales, reviving all those wild conspiracy theories. Will they ever let her rest in peace? Never, says royals reporter STEPHEN BATES, even as he debunks the myths. For a man attending the inquests into the death of his beloved son and his son's girlfriend, Mohammed al Fayed was anything but mournful. Accompanied by a phalanx of lawyers and p.r. flacks, the Egyptian-born billionaire emerged last Tuesday morning from an inquest session in London with an unmistakable air of triumph. And no wonder: the coroner, Michael Burgess, had...

LONDON -- British police have doubts over the authenticity of a chauffeur's blood sample, used in a French inquiry which concluded that Princess Diana was killed by a drunk driver, The Times newspaper reported on Saturday. The Times reportedly learned that senior police officers have what it called 'high-level concerns' over the specimen and that French police have not carried out a DNA test which would prove it came from her chauffeur Henri Paul. Scotland Yard refused to comment on the report. The late Lady Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, along with her driver, died on Aug 31, 1997,...

<p>January 7, 2004 -- A DESPERATE and paranoid Prin cess Diana penned a chilling note accusing Prince Charles of plotting to kill her by tampering with her car brakes - 10 months before she died in a mysterious crash.</p> <p>"This particular phase of my life is the most dangerous - my husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure & serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry," the frantic princess scribbled on her official royal stationary in October 1996, the Daily Mirror of London reported yesterday.</p>

<p>LONDON -- Britain's royal coroner asked police yesterday to look into theories that a conspiracy led to the car crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed, saying he was obliged "to separate fact from fiction and speculation." Coroner Michael Burgess' request -- issued at the opening of official inquests into their 1997 deaths -- came as a tabloid newspaper reported that Diana feared Prince Charles was plotting to kill her by staging a car accident. Mr. Fayed's father said he suspects not only Charles, but also his father, Prince Philip. A French investigation found that the crash was an accident and that driver Henri Paul, who also died, had been drinking. But more sinister explanations for the crash abound, and Mr. Burgess said he had asked police to investigate whether they should be considered in the inquests. "I'm aware that there is speculation that these deaths were not the result of a sad but relatively straightforward road traffic accident in Paris," Mr. Burgess said. "I have asked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner [Sir John Stevens] to make inquiries. The results of these inquiries will help me to decide whether such matters will fall within the scope of the investigation carried out at the inquests," he said. The coroner immediately adjourned his long-awaited inquiry -- Britain's first investigation of the crash -- for at least a year to 15 months, saying he needs that time to review evidence gathered by French authorities and to conduct his own investigations. He said, "It would have been desirable for these inquests to have been heard and completed long ago." But he must rely heavily on French evidence that will not be available to him until all legal proceedings springing from the case there are finished, he said. Mr. Burgess said he expects the French proceedings to wind down soon, but warned that any unexpected delay could slow his work further. An appeal by French prosecutors is pending against the November acquittal of three photographers whom Mr. Fayed's father accused of invading his son's privacy by taking pictures at the crash scene. France's highest court dropped manslaughter charges in 2002 against nine photographers who pursued the car before it crashed or who took photos at the site. Yesterday, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported that Diana, in a letter to her butler, Paul Burrell, said her ex-husband "is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry" his longtime girlfriend, Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles' office said it would not comment on the charge. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, told Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" that the report was "disgraceful" and "absolutely outrageous." The paper reported the letter in October but originally did not identify Charles as the person Diana suspected. Egyptian-born billionaire Mohammed al-Fayed, Dodi Fayed's father, reiterated his belief that Diana, 36, and his 42-year-old son were victims of a plot and said he thought Charles and Philip were involved. "It's absolute black and white, horrendous murder," Mr. al-Fayed told reporters at the formal opening of the separate inquest into his son's death in Reigate, outside London, hours after Mr. Burgess opened the Diana inquiry. "It's the head of the royal family, and I suspect not only Prince Charles" but also Queen Elizabeth II's husband, Philip, whom he described as "racist at the core." Mr. al-Fayed in the past has said Philip plotted against Diana because the royal family objected to her relationship with a Muslim. The palace dismisses such charges. Mr. al-Fayed, who owns Harrods department store, has campaigned for a full public inquiry into the deaths and had said a coroner's inquest was too narrow. But Diana's former bodyguard Ken Wharfe dismissed speculation that she was murdered. "I have said this many, many times: The Princess of Wales was killed tragically in nothing more than a mundane road traffic accident," he told ITV television. "If we look at the conspiracy theories perpetrated by Mohammed al-Fayed again, you look at the evidence, there is no evidence here. It is mere speculation," Mr. Wharfe said.</p>

PARIS – Three photographers who took pictures of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed at the scene of their deadly crash were acquitted yesterday of invading the couple's privacy. The three men, whose photos were confiscated and not published, were among the swarm of photographers who pursued the car carrying Diana and her boyfriend across Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, and took photos after it slammed into the pillar of a traffic tunnel. Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez, and Fabrice Chassery faced a maximum of one year in prison plus fines.

On Sunday, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, placing her on course for eventual canonization as a saint. An estimated crowd of 300,000 cheered the memory of the tiny nun who spent much of her life serving the poor and the dying. The ceremony was not without its critics. Some believe that the Vatican may have cut corners to elevate Mother Teresa more quickly. Others have voiced concerns that, in her eagerness to spread her ministry, she accepted contributions from tainted sources such as Charles Keating. The big problem some people have with the nun from Calcutta is that...

LONDON (Reuters) - Princess Diana made a chilling prediction of her own death in a car crash just 10 months before she died in Paris road tunnel, according to a secret letter revealed by her former butler. The former wife of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles wrote the letter in October 1996 claiming there was a plot to kill her in a car crash and gave it to her butler Paul Burrell, asking him to keep it for insurance for the future. The Mirror newspaper, which is serialising Burrell's book "A Royal Duty", said on Monday the letter includes an allegation by...

DIANA LETTER SENSATION: 'THEY WILL TRY TO KILL ME' WORLD EXCLUSIVE PRINCESS DIANA claimed there was a plot to kill her in a car crash in a handwritten letter only 10 months before she died. She gave it to her butler Paul Burrell with orders that he should keep it as "insurance" for the future. The princess predicted: “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous.” She said "XXXXXXXXXXX is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry”. In the letter, revealed by...

DIANA LETTER SENSATION: 'THEY WILL TRY TO KILL ME' Oct 20 2003 WORLD EXCLUSIVE By Jane Kerr, Royal reporter   PRINCESS DIANA claimed there was a plot to kill her in a car crash in a handwritten letter only 10 months before she died. She gave it to her butler Paul Burrell with orders that he should keep it as "insurance" for the future.The princess predicted: “This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous.” She said "XXXXXXXXXXX is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for...

DI INQUEST TO GO AHEAD  Aug 29 2003   EXCLUSIVE   By Justine Smith The Mirror  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13345429_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-DI%2DINQUEST%2DTO%2DGO%2DAHEAD-name_page.htmlAN inquest into the tragic car crash that killed Princess Diana is finally to be held in Britain, six years after she died. Surrey coroner Michael Burgess will announce the date in the next few days. The £1million inquest - into the death of Diana's lover Dodi Fayed - may at last give answers to how and why the princess died in the 1997 Paris car crash. __________ THE date for an inquest in Britain which could finally solve the mystery of the car...

Spies killed Di, says authorBy LEO SCHLINK in London 18aug03PRINCESS Diana was murdered by British and French security forces, according to a controversial book. The book, Diana: Secrets & Lies, will mark the sixth anniversary of her death in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997. Author Nicholas Davies claims the princess was murdered along with her millionaire boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, by rogue elements of Britain's MI5 and its French equivalent, the DST. He says they orchestrated the car crash by flashing a bright light in driver Henri Paul's face in a tunnel. Davies believes the British establishment...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. comic book publisher has decided to let Princess Diana rest in peace, dropping plans to reincarnate her as a mutant comic superhero this fall, the company said on Thursday. Marvel Enterprises Inc. said in a statement that "upon reflection" it will remove Diana and all references to the royal family in its upcoming "X-Statix" monthly comics. The about-face follows a recent announcement by Marvel Comics that it planned to introduce Diana as one of a team of super-powered mutants in a five-series storyline called "Di Another Day." Company spokespeople were not immediately available to...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Princess Diana will be reincarnated as a mutant comic book superhero this autumn, according to publisher Marvel Comics. The character will appear in a five-series storyline called "Di Another Day" in Marvel`s "X-Statix" monthly comic, a spinoff from its popular X-Men, Marvel spokesman Brian Reinert said on Monday. "X-Statix" writer Peter Milligan said the late princess was "tailor-made" for the series because she is "someone famous for being famous." "At a glance, Diana may not resemble the flying, teleporting, lethally oscillating characters that populate my comic, but the strange power she exerts from beyond the grave...

Palace IntrigueBy Taki One of the first letters of congratulations I received when I began writing the Atticus column for the London Sunday Times in 1994 was from … Princess Diana. I had only met her once and very briefly, at a ball, so I was flattered that she remembered. (I had been rather tipsy at the time.) When the spin doctors of the estranged Waleses, as the royal couple used to be referred to by the press, first began battling in earnest over media coverage, I received not a small amount of “inside” gossip from their respective publicists. Without...