World Vignettes

Sharon Stone has a quiet weddingBEVERLY HILLS: Actress Sharon Stone was married to a San Francisco newspaper editor, Phil Bronstein, during ...

Sharon Stone has a quiet wedding

BEVERLY HILLS: Actress Sharon Stone was married to a San Francisco newspaper editor, Phil Bronstein, during a Valentine party at her Beverly Hills home on Saturday night, her publicist said on Sunday.No wedding plans had been announced previously, and no details of the ceremony were made public in the brief news release by publicist Cindi Berger.Stone, 39, a former model and musician, rose to international fame when she starred with Michael Douglas in the torrid Basic Instinct in 1992. Bronstein, 47, is executive editor of The San Francisco Examiner.

She was co-producer and starred in the western The Quick and The Dead in 1995 and in Casino with Robert de Niro the same year.

State funeral

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MOSCOW: On their 80th execution anniversary, a state funeral will be given to the last Czar of Russia and a dozen of his close relatives in St Petersburg, according to an official announcement here.

The last Czar’s body, presentlyburied in Yeksternburg, will be laid to rest in the family burial grounds on July 17, the day he was killed along with his family after being detained in the Siberian city.

This was in response to the demand from a number of Russians that the last remains of the Czar and his family be removed to their ancestral burial grounds.

“Death industry”

LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the growing “industry” trading on the memory of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, as “inappropriate and tacky.”

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His comments come at the end of a week which has seen a new book published about the circumstances surrounding the Princess’s death with her companion Dodi Al-Fayed in a Paris car crash last August.

Downing Street did not specify the “industry” to which Blair was referring, but his comments were understood to be aimed at the growing number of books, films and souvenirs.Both allegations have been strenuously denied.

Dodi’s father Egyptian millionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, has said hebelieved the couple’s death was not an accident but due to a conspiracy.

INXS leader

SYDNEY: Paula Yates spoke for the first time about the death of her lover, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, blaming her ex-husband Bob Geldof for his death, published reports said on Sunday. “We won’t be speaking again. Ever. Everyone knows I blame Bob, The Sunday Telegraph quoted Yates as saying.

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Yates believes Hutchence lost his will for life when Geldof won a court battle, preventing her taking their three daughters to Australia for Christmas.

“I left the court, turned to my barrister and said this will kill Michael. He died a few hours later,” she told women’s day magazine.