BOXING legend Muhammad Ali (55) has brought his campaign of racial and religious tolerance to Washington. The former champ was promoting the book Healing - A Journal of Tolerance and Understand ing, on which he collaborated with Thomas Hauser.
Ali, speaking few words because of the Parkinson's Syndrome disease from which he suffers, electrified an audience at George Washington University with gestures, facial expressions and brief quips.
Ali couldn't resist taking yet another jab at old nemesis Joe Frazier, joking that "Joe Frazier can't read". Frazier has considered Ali's jokes an insulting and racially insensitive portrayal of an uneducated African-American.
Claudia Schiffer is hopeless as a model, says French couturier Paco Rabanne. "She's not a good model. She is beautiful but she doesn't know how to walk down a cat-walk," he said in Le Temps newspaper.
The city-owned Paris flat which brought public opprobrium on its tenant, ex-prime minister Alain Juppe, is to be auctioned off.
The disclosure two years ago that Juppe was living in the fashionable left-bank - district apartment at a knock-down rent tarnished his image. He was eventually forced to move out to avoid prosecution.
Batman and Robin, the fourth film about the caped crusader, netted 843.6 million over the weekend.
Despite lukewarm-to-negative reviews, Warner Brothers expect to earn $200 million in box office receipts both in the US and in markets. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the villain in the film, while George Clooney is the third actor to zip into the Bat man outfit after Val Kilmer and Michael Keaton.
Nelson Mandela and his sweetheart Graca Machel are to holiday in London next month. The private visit will include the freedom of Oxford for him, an honorary degree at the University of Essex for her, a chat with Queen Elizabeth and dinner with Prince Charles.
Former Cheers actress Kirstie Alley is to star in a new comedy bought by ITV. The show is Veronica's Closet, a sitcom about a lingerie chain store owner and her efforts to keep tabs on her philandering husband.