Oscar winning film star Tom Hanks says the revelations of Bill Clinton's White House affair with Monica Lewinsky makes him regret giving $10,000 (£6,900) to the President's defence fund.
Hanks hinted in a magazine interview that he, too, has White House ambitions.
"We gave 10,000 bucks to Clinton's legal defence fund, very early on," Hanks told New Yorker magazine, adding that he now "regrets" helping Clinton pay for his lawyers. "In all honesty, in the light of events since, it would be awfully hard to say now, `Oh, here, let me help you out with this problem'," he said.
Sudan has sent Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a gift of two African lions, the Londonbased Al-Wassat newspaper reported yesterday. The paper said the lions were sent by Sudan's Interior Minister, Brigadier Abdel-Raheem Mohamed Hussein.
It was unclear if the lions were intended as a personal gift for Saddam or for Iraq's zoo, where many animals reportedly have perished since the UN imposed trade sanctions against Iraq. Meanwhile, Saddam's oldest son, Odai, has been awarded a doctorate in political science with distinction by Baghdad University. It follows the free distribution of thousands of copies of Odai's dissertation, the Post-Cold War World, in which he predicted the moral and economic decline of the US.
Texas Governor, George W. Bush, touted as a favourite for the US Republican presidential nomination, visited Jerusalem holy sites yesterday. Bush, the son of former US President George Bush, laid a wreath at the grave of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and paid his respects at the Yad Vashem memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust. "The relationship between Israel and the US is a very special relationship. It will always be that way," said Bush, on a three-day trip to Israel. He often speaks of the importance of his Christianity.