British authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating after a report that an employee had tried to obtain the personal medical records of Catherine, Princess of Wales, at the London hospital where she was treated. undergo abdominal surgery in January.

The hospital, the London Clinic, a private institution with an elite clientele, has opened an investigation into the alleged breach, according to The Daily Mirror, a British tabloid, which first reported the matter on Tuesday evening.

A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees data protection issues in Britain, said on Wednesday: “We can confirm that we have received a breach report and are assessing the information provided.”

The Mirror said the hospital reported the incident to Kensington Palace, where Catherine and her husband, Prince William, have their offices. “This is a matter for the London Clinic,” a palace spokesman said.

It is unclear whether the employee was able to access the files or share them with anyone outside the hospital. But the allegations added another layer of intrigue to Catherine’s sudden hospitalization and lengthy recovery, which have already become the source of feverish rumors And conspiracy theories.

Despite all the speculation, there has been no informed reporting on the condition that prompted Catherine’s surgery. The palace has released virtually no details, saying in its initial statement that it was Catherine’s “wish that her personal medical information remain private.”

As Catherine has remained out of the public eye in recent weeks, social media users have come up with increasingly wild theories about her prognosis, her whereabouts and even her relationship with her husband.

Catherine, 42, added to the maelstrom by admitting last week that she had digitally modified a Mother’s Day photo of her with her three children. The palace released the photo, which was reportedly taken by William a few days earlier, in a misguided attempt to dampen public speculation.

On Monday, the Getty Images news agency added an advisory to a second, earlier photo, taken by Catherine of Queen Elizabeth II, surrounded by the monarch’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The agency said the photo showed signs of being “digitally enhanced.”

On Monday, two London tabloids published images and a video showing Catherine and William walking out of a grocery store near their home in Windsor, west of London, last weekend. If verified, these would be the first images of Catherine to reach the public since she entered the hospital in January.

Kensington Palace declined to comment on the video, sticking to its policy that it would provide no information about Catherine’s recovery other than to say she would resume her official duties sometime after the Easter holidays.

The accusation that a staff member may have tried to compromise Catherine’s personal medical records is an embarrassment for the London Clinic, which has treated other members of the royal family, as well as celebrities such as actress Elizabeth Taylor and foreign leaders including the Chilean dictator. General Augusto Pinochet. John F. Kennedy was diagnosed by doctors with Addison’s disease while hospitalized in 1947.

Catherine spent almost two weeks in hospital, where she was visited by King Charles III, who himself presented himself at around the same time treatment of an enlarged prostate. After he was released, Buckingham Palace announced that doctors had discovered an undisclosed form of cancer during his procedure.

The palace zealously protected Catherine’s privacy during her stay. There were no photos of her children going to visit her at the hospital, which is in the Marylebone area of ​​London, and only a single photo of William behind the wheel of a car outside, presumably after a visit.

On the day she was released, the palace said: “The Prince and Princess would like to extend a huge thank you to the entire team at the London Clinic, especially the dedicated nursing staff, for the care they provided.”

The alligator’s name was Albert Edward.

He was 11 feet tall, 700 pounds and 34 years old, and until this week he lived in a pool house next to his owner’s home in Hamburg, N.Y., about 13 miles south of Buffalo.

But the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation removed Albert from his home on Wednesday after determining he was being held there illegally. said in a Facebook post.

The alligator’s owner had built an addition to his home where Albert lived in an in-ground pool, according to the department. The agency also said the owner had let people, including children, play in the pool with Albert, who is blind in both eyes and has a back injury.

According to a statement from the department, it is illegal to own an alligator in New York unless you have a permit. But those licenses are only for “scientific, educational, exhibition, zoological or propagation purposes” department website said.

“To be clear, even if the owner is properly licensed, public contact with the animal is prohibited and is grounds for revocation of the permit and relocation of the animal,” the department said in the statement.

The agency said Albert’s owner, Tony Cavallaro, had a permit for the alligator, but it expired in 2021. In an interview, Mr. Cavallaro, 64, said that while visitors to his home sometimes took photos with Albert, they never swam with him or rode him. Instead, they went into the water briefly for a quick photo with the animal, often while it was sleeping, Mr. Cavallaro said.

“I did everything by the book the whole time,” he said. “They changed the rules, and I should be grandfathered in. I shouldn’t have to stick to it.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation adopted new rules for ownership of alligators and other dangerous animals in 2020, an agency spokesperson said. The department notified Mr. Cavallaro of these changes and required updates to the alligator’s enclosure, but said Mr. Cavallaro had not made the necessary adjustments.

Mr Cavallaro said he would have had to spend $15,000 to put up a fence around his garden and even more for zoo insurance, while Albert was already covered by his personal insurance. Mr. Cavallaro claims he sent paperwork to the department, but the agency said it was not enough.

When it comes to Albert’s health problems, Mr Cavallaro said they can be attributed to both his old age and his species; alligators often develop cataracts. “He’s always had problems with his eyes,” he said.

The department took the alligator to a licensed caretaker who will care for Albert until he can be transported to a permanent facility, the Facebook post said, adding that charges against Mr. Cavallaro are being considered.

Mr. Cavallaro said he bought Albert at a reptile show in Columbus, Ohio, in August 1990, when the alligator was just born. Mr. Cavallaro is a reptile enthusiast who at one point owned more than 100 reptiles, he said, but caring for them was too much work. Since he gave up the last of his snakes sixteen years ago, it has been just him and Albert. Till Wednesday.

“The poor thing loves me,” said Mr. Cavallaro. “He was scared.”

Mr Cavallaro said he treated Albert like a child and wanted to be reunited with him quickly.

“I hope I can get him back, that’s all,” he said.

Russian authorities have warned Aleksei A. Navalny’s mother that if she does not agree to a secret funeral, the late opposition campaigner will be buried by the state on prison grounds, Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman said.

Lyudmila Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s mother, was given three hours to agree — or until about 12:30 p.m. EST — but she refused to negotiate, arguing that Russian authorities had no legal right to determine the time and place of to determine her son’s funeral. according to Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh.

“She demands compliance with the law, which requires investigators to hand over the body within two days, from the time the cause of death is determined,” Ms. Yarmysh said in a statement released on X. The two days expire on Saturday.

Mr Navalny’s mother “insists that the authorities allow a funeral and memorial service to be held in accordance with tradition,” Ms Yarmysh added.

The ultimatum is the latest twist in a macabre saga in which Mr Navalny’s 69-year-old mother has been trying for almost a week to retrieve her son’s body from an Arctic morgue in Russia, near the prison where he died.

His death was announced on February 16.

Ms Navalnaya had to wait five days before Russian authorities showed her the body on Wednesday. She later signed a medical report claiming he died of natural causes. She has accused authorities of “blackmailing” her by refusing to release her son’s remains until she agrees to a secret funeral without a public farewell.

The standoff has led to an outpouring of support for Mr Navalny’s family from celebrities, who have released videos demanding that Russian authorities hand over the body. Ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich and director Andrei Zvyagintsev were among those who released video messages.

“It is uncomfortable to even discuss this in a country that until now still considers itself Christian,” Dmitri A. Muratov, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian editor, said in a video.

Russian authorities have said opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny died of natural causes but are refusing to release his remains until his mother agrees to a “secret funeral,” Mr. Navalny’s mother and his spokeswoman said Thursday.

Lyudmila Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s mother, said she was taken “secretly” to a morgue on Wednesday evening, “where they showed me Aleksei.” She was shown a medical report on Mr Navalny’s death, which said he died of natural causes. according to to Navalny team spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.

But Ms Navalnaya said she was now locked in a grim battle with local authorities in the northern Russian city of Salekhard, who did not release custody of the remains on Moscow’s orders. She said authorities warned that if she “didn’t agree to a secret burial,” “they would do something with my son’s body.”

“They are blackmailing me,” Ms. Navalnaya said in an interview video posted on her son’s YouTube channel. “They are giving me conditions about where, when and how Aleksei should be buried.”

The back-and-forth over Mr. Navalny’s remains reflects how crucial he is to Russian politics, even in death. The Kremlin appears to fear that a funeral gathering of Navalny’s supporters could become a flashpoint for protest. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities on Ms Navalnaya’s claims.

“They want to take me to the edge of a cemetery, to a new grave and say, ‘Here lies your son,’” Ms. Navalnaya said in her video from Salekhard, the closest town to the Arctic prison where Mr. Navalny was last held died. week. “I don’t agree with this. I want those of you who appreciated Aleksei and consider his death as a personal tragedy to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him.”

As the drama unfolded, President Vladimir V. Putin remained silent about Mr. Navalny and continued his publicity tour that seemed focused on next month’s presidential election — a rubber-stamp issue that Mr. Putin is certain to win but which the Kremlin expected to win. to demonstrate Mr Putin’s legitimacy.

On Thursday, Putin made a short flight with a supersonic bomber, a stunt that was also a striking reminder to the West of his country’s status as a nuclear superpower.

The flight lasted just 30 minutes, the Kremlin said a statementbut the range of the wide-wing Tu-160M, also known in Russia as the White Swan, allows it to reach the United States with two dozen nuclear weapons on board.

Russian state television showed Putin, 71, climbing the stairs beneath the giant fighter plane, one of the largest and heaviest in the world, before it took off from the runway of an airport in Kazan, a city east of Moscow. The Kremlin has been released a video of Mr Putin’s flight, on which he sits in a pilot’s seat.

As he stepped off the plane, Mr. Putin told reporters that the flight left a good impression and praised the new, modernized bomber as “very reliable.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov told state television that Putin spontaneously made the decision to take the flight on Thursday when he visited an aviation factory in Kazan, where he inspected four modernized Tu-160M ​​bombers.

But since he became president of Russia more than two decades ago, Putin has become known for publicity stunts designed to portray him as a strong leader of a great power.

During this time, Mr Putin has flown in a fighter jet, plunged into the sea in a submarine and… sent Siberian cranes to their winter habitat in a motorized hang glider. The widespread stunts projected Mr Putin as a physically fit and fearless leader.

The bomber flight appeared to be an attempt to send a sharp message amid the most dire geopolitical conflict between Moscow and the West since the darkest times of the Cold War.

A 7-year-old girl died Tuesday after the hole she was digging with her brother on a Florida beach collapsed, burying the couple in sand, authorities said — one of the few cases in which such an episode has occurred every year turns out to be fatal. the United States.

The girl, Sloan Mattingly, was vacationing with her family from Indiana in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a coastal town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Miami, and playing in the sand with her 9-year-old brother Maddox. when they became trapped Tuesday afternoon, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

In a 911 call from the Sheriff's Office, beachgoers can be heard screaming as a breathless woman, describing herself as a registered nurse, tells the operator that “there's a little girl buried in the sand.” The girl's father had called for help and people tried to dig her out, the woman said. She says she couldn't see any part of the girl's body. “My mom yells, 'My daughter is in there,'” she says.

Film material appeared to show other beachgoers crowded around the sand hole and tried to dig the girl out before rescuers arrived. Other 911 callers sounded distressed as they described the frantic scene.

Sandra King, a spokeswoman for Pompano Beach Fire Rescue, said rescuers were called to the beach around 3:15 p.m. and found several adults frantically trying to dig the two children out of the hole, which was about three to five feet deep. with a width of four to five meters. The boy was buried up to his chest and the girl was completely covered in sand, she said. Rescuers secured the edges of the hole to prevent it from collapsing further and managed to get them both out.

Rescuers attempted to revive the girl, who had no pulse, as they took her to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead, according to the sheriff's office. The boy was unharmed, Ms King said. “The scene was very, very traumatic and the parents were understandably absolutely hysterical,” she said. “They are there to enjoy a day at the beach and this terrible tragedy happens.”

The sheriff's office is investigating the girl's death. Ms King said that would also include investigating how the gap got so big.

Up to three people are killed each year in the country by collapsing sand on beaches, said Tom Gill, vice president of the United States Life Saving Association. “We have always known that the ocean is an incredibly dynamic environment,” he said by phone Wednesday. “But the sand is quite similar.”

Earlier this month one The 2-year-old boy was rescued from a collapsed sand pit on a Jersey Shore beach, and in May a teenager died after being buried in three feet of sand in a hole dug in a dune area in a North Carolina national park. a Study from 2007 published in The New England Journal of Medicine cited 52 fatal and non-fatal cases nationwide in the previous decade.

Mr Gill, of the Life Saving Association, said a good rule of thumb is never to dig a hole deeper than the knee of the smallest person who can get into it. Lifeguards are alert to holes that appear too big or need to be filled, he added, and play a crucial role in preventing such accidents and rescuing people who become trapped.

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea officials did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for information about whether or not the beaches have lifeguards. They directed further questions to the sheriff's office.

The girl's family could also not immediately be reached on Wednesday.

Kirsten Noyes research contributed.