The King met schoolchildren and chatted in French to some well-wishers as he visited the highest village in highland Scotland.
The King, who is on his summer break at the nearby Balmoral estate in Aberdeenshire, visited Tomintoul in the Cairngorms National Park and was welcomed by primary school children and community stalwarts.
He wore a kilt made from the King Charles III tartan, which was first seen in public a couple of weeks ago.
Villagers flocked to greet the King and the Dufftown Pipe Band performed in anticipation of his arrival.
Tomintoul, which dates from the 1750s, has a history of whisky production but faced economic downturn in the 2000s.
As a result, the community pulled together to access grant funding and to promote tourism in the region.
It now has 750 villagers – nearly twice the population in 2012 – after the community worked to address socio-economic problems including lack of development, an ageing population, and unaffordable housing.
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The Glenlivet Development Trust was formed to address the economic problems and instigated a £3.3m energy-efficient housing development, the Auld School Close, on the site of a derelict school.
The King visited the site, which now has 12 affordable homes built on it, and met residents, conversing in French with some of them.
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He was welcomed by local school and nursery pupils, who greeted him wearing homemade crowns and waving Scottish and British flags.
The King said to one of the children: “You have been busy making things.”
During a walkabout at the village green, an elderly man asked the King to wish his wife a happy birthday.
A woman shouted: “We love you King Charles”, and another woman showed him a blue manicure and asked: “Do you like my nails?”
Alasdair Sharp, 79, a member of the Glenlivet Development Trust board, wore a kilt for the visit of the King, whom he described as a neighbour.
Mr Sharp said: “It’s very good for the community that the King is visiting.
“He was at Braemar Games recently. To come to our little community is pretty important, we are neighbours.
“My family have lived here since 1910.
“There was a time after the war when there was two petrol stations, four pubs, six shops, but it’s all been taken over.
“It’s worked very well, we’ve pulled together, the affordable housing was a great success.
“We are now a Dark Sky Area, we are hoping to develop a camping and caravan site.
“It’s amazing how, if you know who to ask for grants, you can get them for worthwhile projects.”
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In 2017, the trust bought a former museum and turned it into the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Discovery Centre, and last year a Post Office was saved from closure.
The King was shown a coat believed to have belonged to an exciseman in the 1820s during the era of whisky smuggling and violent confrontations between customs officers and the illicit distilleries.
The coat, which has a high collar, deep cuffs and mother-of-pearl buttons, was found in the rafters of an old house in the village in 2003 and was thought to have been handed down to a servant.
The King was told about the history of the Tomintoul Coat, and heard how the Northern Lights had lit up the region on Tuesday night.
The streets of Britain have turned into “theatres of intimidation”, Kemi Badenoch has warned in a speech to mark the opening of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.
Speaking just days after a terror attack at a synagogue in the city left two people dead, the Tory leader claimed extremism “has gone unchecked” in the UK.
She said this had manifested in Pro-Palestine protests which are “in fact carnivals of hatred directed at the Jewish homeland”.
She cited the use of “asinine slogans” such as ‘Globalise the Intifada’, saying this “means nothing at all, if it doesn’t mean targeting Jewish people for violence”.
Ms Badenoch added: “So the message from this conference, from this party, from every decent and right-thinking person in this country must be that we will not stand for it any more. We cannot import and tolerate values hostile to our own.
“We must now draw a line and say that in Britain you can think what you like, and within the bounds of the law you can say what you like, but you have no right to turn our streets into the theatres of intimidation and we will not let you do so any more.“
Nearly 500 people were arrested over protests supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action in central London on Saturday.
Demonstrators defied calls from political leaders, including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, to reconsider the event out of respect for the grief of the British Jewish community.
The chief of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, also called for the event to be postponed, saying he was worried resources would be stretched and the ability of the force to protect communities would be compromised.
Image: Supporters at this year’s Tory party conference greet their leader Kemi Badenoch. Pic: PA
She said that shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Alex Burghart will lead a review into a union-wide implementation of leaving the ECHR, so voters have “a clear, thorough and robust plan, not the vague mush that we see day in, day out from Labour, nor the vacuous posturing that we see day in, day out from Reform”.
The plan has been condemned by Former Conservative justice secretary and Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland, who lost his seat at the 2024 election.
“I have seen first-hand how deeply this issue touches our constitution, our Union, and our international standing. It would be a profound mistake to go down this path,” he wrote in an article for Conservative Home.
The comments reflect how the issue has long divided the party, with “one nation” moderates like Mr Buckland opposed to the idea of leaving the ECHR, and others seeing it as necessary to get a grip on illegal migration and tackle Reform UK.
In a sign she won’t shy away from that fight, Ms Badenoch told GB News earlier that every Conservative candidate must sign up to her plan to leave the ECHR, or they would be barred from standing at the next election.
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The Tories are languishing in the polls behind Reform and Labour after suffering their worst-ever defeat at the election last year.
Ms Badenoch, who was elected to lead the party last November, ended her speech acknowledging there was a “mountain to climb” but insisting she was up for the fight.
“Britain needs deep change. But I reject the politics that everything must go, that everything must be torn down, that everything is broken,” she said.
“If we leave it to Labour or Reform, Britain will be divided. Only the Conservatives can bring this country back together.
“So, I say to you all as we start our conference, yes, we have a mountain to climb, but we have a song in our hearts, and we are up for the fight.”
It follows the arrests of nearly 500 peopleduring demonstrations in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action in central London on Saturday.
Protesters defied calls to rethink the event in the wake of the Manchester synagogue terror attack on Thursday, in which two Jewish worshippers were killed.
The new powers will allow police forces to consider the “cumulative impact” of protests, assessing previous activity, when deciding to impose limits on protesters.
The limits that could be imposed include moving demonstrators to a different place or “restricting the time that those protests can occur”, Ms Mahmood said.
She added: “It’s been clear to me in conversations in the last couple of days that there is a gap in the law and there is an inconsistency of practice.
“So I’ll be taking measures immediately to put that right and I will be reviewing our wider protest legislation as well, to make sure the arrangements we have can meet the scale of the challenge that we face.”
Image: A demonstration supporting Palestine Action on Saturday in central London. Pic: Reuters
Image: Police officers detain a protester during the mass protest. Pic: Reuters
The changes will be made through amendments to the Public Order Act, and anyone who breaches the new conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.
‘More flexibility to prevent disruptive protests’
The home secretary has written to chief constables in England and Wales to explain the new powers.
She wrote: “The government will bring forward legislation to increase the powers available to you to tackle the repeated disruptive protests we have seen and continue to provide the reassurance to communities that they need.
“Through upcoming legislation, we will amend sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to allow senior officers to consider the cumulative impact of protests on local communities when they are imposing conditions on public processions and assemblies.
“This will allow you more flexibility to prevent disruptive protests from attending the same location and instruct organisers to move to a different site.”
The Greens and the Lib Dems said it was an attack on the right to protest.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski told Sky News: “Giving police sweeping powers to shut down protests because of their ‘cumulative impact’ is a cynical assault on the right to dissent. The whole point of protest is persistence; that’s how change happens. Do you think the suffragettes protested once and then gave up?”
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson said this will “do nothing” to tackle antisemitism “while undermining the fundamental right to peaceful protest”.
Earlier, Ms Mahmood said the right to protest was a “fundamental freedom” but this must be balanced “with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear”.
In a statement she said: “Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.
“This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.
“These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.”
Tories ‘will support’ measures
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said her party will “of course support” the new measures but asked why it took “so long” for them to be introduced.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she claimed that what happened in Manchester was foreseeable and not enough has been done to address fears over safety in the Jewish community.
Ms Mahmood addressed the Jewish communities’ concerns after being shown a clip of deputy prime minister David Lammy being heckled at a vigil on Friday.
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3:39
Home secretary reacts to moment Lammy was heckled
She told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips the government “of course” hears their strength of feeling and is “committed to dealing with antisemitism in all of its forms”, pointing to the “strengthening” of police powers announced today.
Asked if the reaction to Mr Lammy reflected anger at the government’s decision to recognise a Palestine state, she said it was important not to “elide” Thursday’s attack with the situation in the Middle East.
“People are entitled to their views and of course we were there to hear those views. What I would say is that the attack that took place, the person that’s responsible for that attack is the attacker himself,” she said.
“And, of course, four other people are in custody and the police investigation does need to take its course. It’s important that we don’t elide that into the wider questions of what’s going on in the Middle East.”
A man who helped barricade the Manchester synagogue has described how the terror attack unfolded.
Alan Levy said he was in the car park in the grounds of Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall when the incident started and he saw the attacker, who he called a “jihadist monster”.
“I was there when he crashed his car into the synagogue gates and ran down the security guard that was there and attacked a volunteer security guard and tried to gain access into the synagogue,” Mr Levy said in an interview with Sky News’ people and politics correspondent Nick Martin.
It was then that Mr Levy ran into the synagogue and sought to lock it down.
He and other congregants helped barricade the doors to stop the attacker from getting inside, as “he was shoulder-charging the doors trying to get in”.
“He was throwing plant pots at the glass. He was using a knife to try and get in. These brave men basically saved the community from further harm,” Mr Levy said.
“All I was thinking was ‘we’ve got to keep these doors closed’.
“He was trying each door in turn. When we realised which door he was going to, we moved doors so there was more pressure on the doors to keep them closed.”
Image: Alan Levy, helped barricade the synagogue
Two people were killed in the attack on Thursday, including one who died from a police bulletfired as officers shot dead the perpetrator, Jihad al Shamie.
The victims were named as Adrian Daulby, 53, a member of the congregation, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, a worshipper at the synagogue.
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1:43
Who was the Manchester synagogue attacker?
Mr Levy’s son, Marc, described the moment he first received news of the attack and said “it’s impossible to articulate the worry and concern” as he didn’t know whether his family was safe or not.
“I first knew that there was an incident when my phone started lighting up repeatedly and I realised that there was an attack on my synagogue,” he said.
“It’s a place where all my childhood memories of worshipping… pretty much going there throughout my whole life.
“I knew at that time that my father would have been on security at that time, as he is every morning, given that him and his friends are some of the first people who arrive.”
He said it was only when he saw his father on Sky News’ live feed that he realised he wasn’t one of the victims.
Six people were arrested over the attack but two have been released without charge.
Police revealed the attacker had been on bail over a suspected rape, but wasn’t on the radar of counter-terror police.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating the shooting – this is standard practice when a member of the public is killed – and will examine “whether police may have caused or contributed to the death” of Mr Daulby.
Al Shamie, 35, was named as the attacker on Thursday and is believed to be of Syrian descent.
He is understood to have been granted British citizenship when he was around 16, having entered the UK as a young child.
Police shot him dead seven minutes after the first emergency call as they feared he was wearing an explosive device – later identified as a fake.