BRITISH tycoon Richard Branson, whose attempt to circle the earth by balloon came to an abrupt end in the Algerian desert, left Algiers for London yesterday.
He said that contrary to reports from his control centre, the balloon was only 60 seconds from hitting the ground before crew member Alex Ritchie managed to jettison a propane tank.
"It would have been nasty if we had hit, at 2,000 feet a minute the whole thing could have gone bang," Branson said.
Paul McCartney's lawyers are trying to stop the sale of the handwritten lyrics of With A Little Help From My Friends from the 1967 album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The song was to be sold by Lily Evans (60), whose husband Mal was the Beatles' road manager.
She had hoped to sell it for £60,000.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl yesterday dismissed as "rubbish" an open letter from a group of US celebrities, printed in the International Herald Tribune, which accused Germany of persecuting Scientologists.
Signed by actors Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn, director Oliver Stone, novelists Mario Puzo and Gore Vidal along with 21 other entertainment figures, the letter urged Kohl to put "an end to this shameful pattern of organised persecution" which it compared to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews in the 1930s.
A two day conference paying tribute to the late French president Francois Mitterrand opened at UNESCO headquarters in Paris yesterday, with keynote speakers including Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. Cuban President Fidel Castro is scheduled to appear today.