FRENCH President Jacques Chirac has become a grandfather. His daughter Claude gave birth to a baby boy yesterday. Claude is the younger of the president's two daughters with his wife Bernadette, and a key aide to her father, acting as his adviser on communication matters.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has topped a list of the world's 100 most powerful women. Hillary Clinton was pushed into second place with Lady Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth in joint third.
The list, compiled by journalists from the London Times judged women on three criteria political power, financial power and general influence.
Alessandra Mussolini has taken issue with her political ally Silvio Berlusconi for criticising Italy's media access decree as an undemocratic law "worthy of Mussolini". The grand daughter of former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini said. To use the name of Mussolini disrespect fully is damaging to one and I call for more respect.
The late George Burns, who died just after his 100th birthday, got a pharaonic send off at his funeral.
"We dressed him in his best dark blue suit, light blue shirt and red tie. We placed three cigars in his pocket, put on his toupee, put on the watch Gracie (his wife) gave him, his ring and, in his pocket, his keys and his wallet with 10 hundred dollar bills, a five and three ones so wherever he went to play bridge he'd have enough money," his butler Daniel Dhoore said.
Trainspotting the controversial film about heroin addiction, has become the bestselling British film since last year's Four Weddings and a Funeral. In its first four weeks of release, the often gruesome depiction of low life in Edinburgh has taken £5.4 million at the British box office.
Adapted from a cult novel by Irvine Walsh, the film has drawn criticism from many who say it glamourises the use of heroin. Other critics have called it "a real shot in the arm for British cinema".