World vignettes –Diana hugs Camilla, oops her namesake!

I don’t think people will accept Camilla the way they have accepted Diana all these years. Diana is more interested in people, she is really down to earth. She talks to everyone and she is so lovely.”

Pavarotti scorned

ROME: An angry Luciano Pavarotti has a little music lesson for those who say he can’t read music. After the Milan daily Corriere Della Sera reported that minor gap in his education, the tenor fired back in an interview with another newspaper: All garbage. The invention of hunters of a non-scoop,” Pavarotti told the Bologna paper Il Resto Del Carlino yesterday. Pavarotti said the Sunday Corriere article misrepresented his comments about not reading musical scores. Journalists always write about music with approximation. So, the score is the book that the conductor has in front of him with all the parts: The instruments, the voices, the chorus, etc. The part for voice and piano is what we singers use,” he said. Pavarotti clarified that he in fact uses cue cards during recitals with the text, in case he has a memory lapse. I know the music by heart, but I tend to forget the words. Therefore I need the text and prefer to have only that in front of me,” he said. The newspaper pointed out that the tenor breed long has had the reputation of being culturally and musically ignorant.

Clergy digger

MOSCOW: A Russian orthodox clergyman digging potatoes in his garden in the southern region of Voronezh unearthed 19 mines left over from World War II, a report said on Monday. With the help of a neighbour who had served as an army sapper and should have known better, Father Georgy stacked them up alongside a fence and then notified authorities, Itar-Tass news agency reported. A regional emergency official said Fr Georgy had been fortunate the minepile didn’t blow up, which at the very least would have left his potatoes mashed.

Ershad `coup’

DHAKA: A jilted lover of deposed Bangladesh president H M Ershad has returned to her former husband after the latter withdrew his divorce notice from a local court, a leading daily has reported. The Bangladesh Observer said on Monday the marriage of Zeenat Mosharraf, a lawmaker from Ershad’s Jatiyo Party, had been restored after her husband A K M Mosharraf, a deputy of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), agreed to drop divorce proceedings against her. Zeenat had been romantically linked to the 67-year old former military strongman who ruled Bangladesh for over eight years before he was toppled and jailed for corruption in December 1990.