SOUTH African's President, Nelson Mandela, is to undergo three days of comprehensive medical tests in order to prove he is in good health.
The South African rand has been under pressure in recent weeks due to market rumours that the 77 year old is in ill health.
The three remaining members of the Beatles have turned down a multi million dollar offer to perform live on a world tour, Paul McCartney said yesterday. A consortium of US and German businessmen had offered McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison $225 million to get together for 22 concerts in Japan, Europe and the US.
McCartney said the Beatles were not prepared to perform live without John Lennon, who was murdered in New York in 1980.
The film star Katherine Hepburn had been seriously ill with pneumonia and at one point was not expected to live, the New York Daily News reported yesterday. It quoted an administrator at Lenox Hill Hospital as saying that the star, who was admitted under an assumed name, had now been discharged. Family members said she was now resting comfortably at her Connecticut home.
The wife of the former Barings trader Nick Leeson yesterday described claims that her husband controlled secret foreign bank accounts containing £23 million as "unbelievable". Lisa Leeson said the allegations were "nonsense". Leeson's German lawyer, Eberhard Kempf, also said they were "completely wrong".
The Sunday Times in London claimed investigators tracking the Barings missing millions had discovered the bank accounts in three German cities.
A five year old Dutch boy survived after falling off a 200-300 metre cliff and spending a night in freezing temperatures in the French Alps, police at Avoriaz said yesterday.
Gerhard Schroeder (51), who is the best placed political opponent to defeat Chancellor Helmut Kohl, according to opinion polls, said yesterday he and his third wife, Hiltrud, were planning to separate. The opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) number two and head of the Lower Saxony regional government said he would give no explanation for the break up. The couple have been married for 13 years.