Couturier and set designer Erik Mortensen, who dressed royalty throughout the world, has died in Paris. He was aged 72. Born in Denmark, Mortensen worked most of his life in leading Parisian fashion houses. After a modest start as a dressmaker in Copenhagen during the second World War, Mortensen joined the French couturier Pierre Balmain as designer in 1948, becoming artistic director in 1980. After Balmain's death in 1982, Mortensen became head of the fashion house until 1990, when he switched to Jean-Paul Scherrer, where he was artistic director from 1992 to 1994.
President Nelson Mandela yesterday praised the efforts of his country's defeated soccer team and asked visiting Jacques Chirac to apologise for France's victory over them.
For his part, Chirac, on the second leg of a four-nation tour of southern Africa, said he knew well that South Africa had simply let the host nation win the game.
Cliff Richard, one of the artists at the Princess Diana tribute concert today, said he wished he had the chance to play at her funeral.
"A lot of us haven't paid tribute to her properly yet. I'd have killed to sing at the funeral," he told BBC Radio 5. He said: "Of course, only one person could do it, and when you think about it that person was Elton and that song was so perfect for the occasion."
Charlton Heston's wife was in Britain for the opening of an exhibition of her photographs yesterday. Lydia Heston's snapshots from her travels with her husband is called Around The World In Forty Years - A Positive View. Fellow photographer Koo Stark officially opened the display at the Olympus Gallery in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight.
Britain's Conservative leader William Hague (37) has undergone a minor operation to drain blocked sinuses at Darlington Memorial Hospital, in northern England.
Hague, who has been off work for a week with flu and sinusitis, is now back at his Yorkshire home.
His wife, Ffion, collected him from hospital where he had been treated as a National Health Service patient.