People

The Cook affair

Margaret Cook, the wife of British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, has started divorce proceedings, a Foreign Office spokesman said. An affair between Cook and his secretary Anne Gaynor caused ascandal, with the Conservative Opposition and some newspapers accusing the minister of taking his mistress on foreign trips at the taxpayer’s expense. Cook finally confirmed his liaison, announcing that he would divorce his wife and marry his mistress.

Prime Minister Tony Blair broke with the tradition established under the Conservatives that a minister caught in flagrante delicto should resign.

Gifts for all

Princess Diana’s will has required extensive amendments to ensure her wishes are met and that gifts go to her godchildren and former butler, The Times reported. The newspaper said the 10-page will, due to be published next week, would leave three-quarters of Diana’s 21-million pound estate to her two sons, Princes William and Harry, with the remainder going to her 17 godchildren. “It shows various corrections to ensure gifts for the godchildren and Paul Burrell, the butler,” said The Times, quoting an unidentified source in its report. “The princess left her estate to be divided betweenher sons equally with no account taken of the fact William is likely to inherit the throne. Adjustments have had to be made to reflect this.” Diana made the will in June, 1993. It was drawn up by her lawyers after her separation from Prince Charles in February, 1996.

No mad cow

Oprah Winfrey, US TV talk show queen, left a Texas court in triumph after a jury threw out the only remaining count in the beef libel suit brought against her by Texan cattlemen. Winfrey returned home to Chicago owing nothing at the end of a six-week trial that has gripped the US. Punching the air, Winfrey told a cheering crowd outside the court in Amarillo: “Free speech not only lives. It rocks.” The cattlemen had sued for damages after a vegetarian activist said on Winfrey’s show in 1996 that mad cow disease could spread as quickly through the US as it did in Britain and agreed that the consequences “could make AIDS look like the common cold”. Winfrey then told the audience: “It has just stopped me cold from eatinganother burger.” The cattlemen claimed that her remarks caused the beef market to crash. Winfrey gave the cattlemen a second helping: “I’m still off hamburgers.”

Paid to kill

Rightwing extremists plotted to assassinate Nelson Mandela at his presidential inauguration ceremony, in front of guests including Yasser Arafat, the Duke of Edinburgh and Fidel Castro, it was alleged on Thursday.

Members of the South African police force’s now defunct security branch hired an extremist hitman to shoot Mandela as he was being sworn in front of worldwide television audiences in 1994, according to reports which surfaced in Cape Town. The extraordinary story with echoes of the plot of Frederick Forsyth’s thriller, Day of the Jackal emerged after an informer claimed that he was to have been the trigger man in an attempted murder which, if it had succeeded, would have stunned the world and probably resulted in civil war. Willem Frederick Else, currently serving a three-year-sentence for theft, is understoodto have told Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s truth commission that he was hired by security police for about $51,000 to shoot Mandela as he was being sworn in.

Paying up

Michael Milken the fallen junk bond king of the 1980s, agreed to pay a $42 million fine after being charged with illegally engaging in securities transactions. Wall Street’s watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, accused Milken of acting as a broker in media deals even though he had not registered his company. Milken, who was fined more than $1 billion and jailed for two years in 1990, had agreed not to get involved in securities. But the SEC claimed Milken was intimately involved in bringing together media magnate Rupert Murdoch and Bert Roberts, chairman of MCI, America’s second largest long distance telephone company. The meeting led to MCI investing $2 billion in Murdoch’s News Corp. Without admitting or denying wrongdoing, Milken agreed to repay $42 million he made from that and other deals in the mid-1990s as well as $5million in interest to settle the charges.

Yeltsin’s retreat

Boris Yeltsin threatened to dismiss three ministers during a government meeting on live television, but in further proof of the president’s weakening concentration, left mysteriously just before his announcement was expected. The cabinet, regional leaders and senior administration figures had gathered in the government’s headquarters in Moscow to hear Yeltsin call ministers to account for failing to ensure economic growth and pay state wages promptly in 1997. But Yeltsin started with bluster and ended with an embarrassing retreat to the Kremlin. “By the end of the session we may be short of three government members,” he said to nervous laughter before calling the prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, to the podium to defend his record. While Chernomyrdin tried to deflect blame on to the economic crisis in Asia, Yeltsin became distracted and started to cough. The Moscow stock exchange fell on news of Yeltsin’s disappearance, but recoveredwhen he emerged to greet his Ukrainian counterpart, Leonid Kuchma, in the Kremlin.