Their Serene Highnesses Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene are currently in Paris, France where they attended a football match this weekend. Last evening the princely couple dined at Patrick’s Le Ballon Vert off Rue de Montreuil in the 11th Arrondissement.
Tomorrow, Prince Albert II will begin his state visit to Mali until February 15, 2012. Then the sovereign prince will make an official visit to Burkina Faso from February 15 to 17th.
Per the Palais Princier de Monaco:
His Serene Highness Prince Albert II will travel to West Africa for a state visit to Mali from 13 to 15 February and an official visit to Burkina Faso from 15 to 17 February.
On arrival in Bamako, the Sovereign will meet Ms Cissé Mariam Kaïdama Sidibé, the Prime Minister, and Dioncounda Traoré, President of the National Assembly. He will then speak with the President of the Republic, Amadou Toumani Touré, who was in the Principality on an official visit last 30 and 31 October.
On 14 and 15 February, His Serene Highness will visit the Sickle Cell Disease Research and Control Centre, the Yeleen School and Olympic Sports Centre and the Charles Mérieux Centre, structures co-funded by the Monegasque Office of International Cooperation.
Cooperation has been present in Mali for 6 years, mainly in the sectors of health and education. Over 16,000 people benefit directly from these projects.
The Prince will also inaugurate the Honorary Consulate of Monaco in Mali.
In Ouagadougou, the Sovereign will be greeted by Luc-Adolphe Tiao, Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, and participate in a working meeting with Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso. He will return to the Presidential Palace on 17 February.
During His stay in Burkina Faso, HSH the Prince will visit the National Fire Brigade and SAMU Social International as well as the village of Guié, where the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Mission Enfance and the Monegasque Office of International Cooperation are conducting programmes.
A delegation from the Chamber of Economic Development will follow in the wake of the Sovereign’s trip to Mali and Burkina Faso.
On February 9, 2012, Her Royal Highness Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg, along with the Minister of Justice, François Biltgen, visited the Givenich Prison Centre. The Grand Duchess toured the Men’s Detention building which offers workshops, education and training.
Meanwhile, Her Royal Highness Princess Caroline of Hanover’s charity AMADE recently raised over €475.000 for the Republic of Burundi. The funds raised will help “… improvements in medical aid and care as well as education…”
Sources: Cour Grand-Ducale de Luxembourg and Palais Princier de Monaco.
Photo courtesy of Palais Princier de Monaco
Recently, His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco attended the 2012 Imagina: The European 3D Simulation and Virtual Technology Event held at the Grimaldi Forum.
The purpose of this international event is to:
…showcase the many fields across which 3D visualisation and simulation technologies are applied, promoting them to decision makers and technical experts, presenting pioneering initiatives, encouraging participants to share their experiences and helping experienced users to transfer their skills to those who want to develop them.
Per the Associated Press:
Europe’s human rights court has rejected an invasion-of-privacy complaint by Monaco’s Princess Caroline — one of two potentially groundbreaking rulings Tuesday that uphold the media’s right to report on celebrities.
The verdicts by the European Court of Human Rights, based in the northeastern French city of Strasbourg, take immediate effect and set a benchmark for members of the 47-country Council of Europe.
In both rulings, the court referred to the often-tricky balance between the media’s right to expression and the individual’s right to privacy.
Princess Caroline and her husband, Prince Ernst August von Hanover, had filed a complaint with the court alleging that their privacy rights had been violated in Germany over the 2002 publication by Frau im Spiegel magazine of a photo of the couple on a skiing holiday — a time when her father, Prince Rainier, was ailing.
A German court had initially upheld the media’s right to report on how the royal family was coping with Rainier’s illness, and how his children “reconciled their obligations of family solidarity with the legitimate needs of their private life.”
The ECHR upheld that ruling, saying Caroline and her lawyers “had not provided any evidence that the photos had been taken in a climate of general harassment, as they had alleged, or that they had been taken secretly.”
Princess Caroline’s personal secretary, Veronique Simian, declined to comment to The Associated Press and deferred questions to the princess’ German lawyer, Mattias Prinz. He couldn’t be immediately reached by phone.
Caroline, the court noted, has sought for nearly two decades to prevent the publication of photos of her private life in the press. Her legal team had argued that the German weekly violated the spirit of an 2004 verdict by the ECHR in her favor — that three German magazines had infringed her privacy by publishing photos of her and her children at a Monaco beach club.
Tuesday’s other ruling involved a Hamburg court’s injunction in 2005 to stop Axel Springer, the publishing house behind the hot-selling daily Bild, from publishing articles about a well-known TV star who was arrested on charges of cocaine possession. A German federal court later upheld the injunction.
The ECHR said Tuesday that the German courts violated the right of expression, and affirmed the “public interest” of some Bild articles in 2004 and 2005 about a nationally known star who long portrayed a police superintendent on TV.
The court noted that the actor, which it did not identify, had been arrested in a public place — the Munich Beer Festival. It said Bild had also received its information from German officials, and that there was no evidence to indicate the newspaper had acted in “bad faith.”
Claas-Hendrik Soehring, head of legal affairs at Axel Springer Verlag AG, welcomed the ruling, and said it flew in the face of recent decisions in German courts that had crimped the media’s ability to cover celebrities and judicial investigations.
“As a celebrity you cannot on one hand seek public attention — for example when it is about enhancing your career through the media — and then on the other hand, once there are judicial proceedings, seek to have all coverage forbidden,” Soehring said in a statement.
Mark Dennis, a London media lawyer with Taylor Wessing who has followed the case, said the ECHR’s decision could have broad implications in Europe — notably in Britain, where a parliamentary Committee on Privacy and Injunctions is looking into such issues.
“The court has expressly recognized the essential role played by the press in a democratic society, and the importance of journalistic freedom,” he wrote in an email. “The judgments will no doubt be a welcome relief for the UK media, given the current climate of scrutiny about press standards.”
The ruling also comes in the wake of an ECHR ruling in May against an attempt by former Formula One boss Max Mosley to force newspapers to warn people before exposing details of their private lives. He won a lawsuit against Britain’s “News of The World” tabloid for a 2008 front-page story claiming he had a Nazi-themed orgy with five women. He denied the claim of a Nazi theme.
Taken together, Tuesday’s ruling and the ECHR’s decisions on the Mosley case — which is still awaiting an appeal — signal a rollback of the power of the right-to-privacy defense, London media lawyer Mark Stephens said.
The court’s decisions suggest that the pendulum is swinging back in favor of the right to freedom of expression, Stephens said.
On February 5, 2012, the President of the Republic of Palau, Mr. Johnson Toribiong, arrived in Monaco for a four-day official visit. Upon his arrival His Serene Highness Prince Albert II greeted the president to his country. Later in the evening the sovereign prince and the president attended the concert, La Création du Monde, held at L’Auditorium Rainier III.
This afternoon, President Toribiong and his delegation arrived at the Palais Princier de Monaco where he was received by Prince Albert II. After a quick balcony wave and a successful meeting at the Palais Princier the duo attended a presentation of activities from the Fondation Prince Albert II (Prince Albert II Foundation) held at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo.
Tomorrow, February 7, 2012, President Toribiong and his delegation will participate a working meeting with members of the Monaco government and then attend the official opening of the Consulate of Palau in Monaco.
Click here to view photos from this morning’s activities.
Source: Palais Princier de Monaco
Photo courtesy of Daylife
On February 2, 2012, Their Serene Highnesses Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene of Monaco made a rare appearance at the Conseil National (National Council) in Monaco.
During their visit speeches were made my the President of the Conseil National, Mr. Jean-François Robillon, as well as from the sovereign prince.
Afterward, the princely couple signed the Livre d’Or (the Golden Book) of the Conseil National, and attended a cocktail reception on the terrace where they mingled with the members of the Conseil National and other local dignitaries.
Source and photo courtesy of Palais Princier de Monaco
The Royal Correspondent 