Royal news: William and Kate announce Earthshot Prize winners as trip overshadowed by palace racism row

The Princess of Wales wore a rented mint green gown to the climate event.

The royal rented the off-the-shoulder dress from Solace London using rental platform HURR - which charges between $91 (£74) and $238 (£194) to loan the gown.

Princess Kate also donned an emerald and diamond choker necklace that once belonged to her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana.

WATCH: William and Kate join David Beckham and other celebrities on Earthshot Prize ‘green carpet’

Earthshot Prize announces winners of $1m fund to tackle climate change.

Awards were decided across five categories - Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix our Climate.

Among the winners was Notpla, a London-based startup which created a green alternative to plastic packaging from seaweed.

Other winners included a Kenyan startup, Mukuru Clean Stoves, which provides cleaner-burning stoves to women to reduce indoor pollution; a women-led, Indigenous program in Australia which uses traditional knowledge and digital technology to protect the Great Barrier Reef; and an Oman-based company which turns planet-heating carbon into rock and permanently store it underground.

Read more about the winners of the $1m Earthshot Prize here.

The Prince and Princess of Wales have been pictured behind the scenes during rehearsals for the Earthshot Prize being staged in the US city of Boston.

William’s environmental awards will see singer Billie Eilish lead a stellar entertainment line-up during a ceremony – dubbed the prince’s “world cup” moment – that aims to celebrate and scale up environmental solutions to repair the planet.

Former England and Manchester United footballer David Beckham will present one of the five awards, with each category winner receiving £1 million to develop their project.

Ahead of the event being staged on Friday evening at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, the prince is due to meet US President Joe Biden.

But the couple’s three-day trip to Boston, which ends on Friday, has been overshadowed by the race row that saw William’s godmother Lady Susan Hussey resign as a royal aide after she repeatedly questioned a prominent black British-born domestic abuse charity boss about where she “really came from”.

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Ahead of the Earthshot Prize ceremony, Prince William’s meeting in Boston with US president Joe Biden was met with around 100 protesters hurling abuse at the two men.

The protesters could be heard shouting abusive slogans such as “F*** the royal family” and “Joe Biden is a scab” as the men met at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in the city.

The protest came after a vote in the US Senate that overrided rail union complaints and rejected giving workers seven days of sick leave.

Graham Norton skewers Prince William’s godmother over racism scandal

Graham Norton took aim at the royal family during the opening of his show on Friday when he showed the audience a photo of the Prince and Princess of Wales attending a Boston Celtics basketball game.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled and fascinated if I were Prince William looking at a basketball,” Norton said in front of the photo, which showed William looking perplexed at the ball.

“Has he never seen one before? It’s like his godmother talking to a Black person,” Norton joked, in reference to the palace’s recent racism scandal involving Lady Susan Hussey, who repeatedly challenged charity founder Ngozi Fulani about where she came from after she told her she was British.

The Princess of Wales wore Princess Diana’s emerald and choker necklace to the Earthshot Prize awards in a moment people are calling the “revenge choker”.

The choker, which is believed to be worth more than $15m, was given to Diana by the Queen who inherited it herself from her grandmother, Queen Mary.

The diamond and emerald choker was last worn by Diana on her 36th birthday.

Royal fans on social media have dubbed Kate’s jewelry choice her “revenge choker,” considering Prince Harry and Meghan Markle released the trailer for their Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, just one day prior.

Prince William and Princess Kate chat with celebrities inside the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Boston.

The New York Times interviewed Bostonians about Prince William and Princess Kate’s trip to the city, and social media is less than surprised by their unenthusaistic reactions.

“I said to my wife this morning, ‘I put my pants on the same way he does – why is he so special?’” said one Boston local about Prince William.

“I can’t talk about them because I’ll get mad,” another Dorchester woman said.

One woman waiting for her order at typical Boston Dunkin’ declined to talk to a reporter, until she asked what the story was about. When they informed her the story was about William and Kate’s trip to Boston, she said: “Don’t care.”

“The quotes from this article about how little people in Boston care about Will and Kate’s royal visit there are sending me,” tweeted one user.

“Boston doesn’t care for the royals? Ya don’t say,” said someone else.

Read more of their reactions here.

The third and final day of William and Kate’s visit to Boston will culminate in the glitzy Earthshot awards ceremony this evening with $1.2million prizes going to a new generation of innovators to help scale their climate-fighting solutions.

Among the finalists are a company which captures planet-heating carbon emissions and stores them in rocks; one which replaces wasteful plastic packaging with a seaweed alternative, and a “greenhouse-in-a-box” concept for smallhold farmers.

But how does the royal tour’s own eco-credentials shape up?

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