US Vice-President Al Gore continued to trail Texas Governor George W. Bush in the run-up to the 2000 presidential race, an opinion poll published yesterday showed.
Bush, a Republican and son of the former president, scored 50 per cent support to Gore's 40 per cent, the Washington Post survey showed.
Indonesia's technocratic President B.J. Habibie revealed yesterday that he waits for his wife to fall asleep before sneaking out of bed to play with his three computers.
"My wife always tries to get me in bed before midnight, I say OK . . . but when she is asleep I go back to my computers," he told a newspaper editors' lunch.
North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Il failed yesterday to attend a party in Pyongyang to celebrate his 57th birthday, according to official media reports.
Kim Jong-Il has regularly missed the celebration since 1992.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook bowed to German demands and promised yesterday not to mention the war.
His pledge came after German culture minister Michael Naumann sparked a Basil Fawlty-style row by complaining that Britain had made victory in the second World War the country's "spiritual core".
The two-year-old daughter of the late rock star Michael Hutchence is claiming funds from his estate for her maintenance, education and "advancement in life," according to documents lodged in an Australian court yesterday.
Through her godmother Belinda Brewin, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence is seeking relief under the Family Provision Act.
Hutchence, singer with Australian group INXS, committed suicide at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Sydney in 1997.