No smokingPhilippine President-elect Joseph Estrada said on Friday he is quitting smoking and has taken to sucking cherry-flavored candies to get rid of what he swears is his only remaining vice. The former movie star, portrayed by rivals ahead of the May 11 election as a hard-drinker, womaniser and heavy gambler, has stressed that he has put his past behind him and will be forswearing his beloved Lucky Strikes when he takes office on June 30."I'm giving it up now," the 61 year-old told reporters after leading a flag-raising ceremony at Manila's Luneta Park to mark the 100th anniversary of the Philippines' declaration of independence against Spanish colonial rule. As he spoke he popped a piece of cherry candy into his mouth.Bad smellFrench French perfume maker Jean-Paul Guerlain was shot in the leg by a gang of armed robbers who broke into his home on the outskirts of Paris on Thursday night, detectives said. A security guard at the estate was shot in the chest and was in a criticalcondition, the detectives said.The 10-odd hooded and heavily-armed robbers made off with millions of francs worth of jewelry and silverware, they added. The ordeal began around shortly before midnight, when the gang burst into Guerlain's home in Mesnuls in the Yvelines region near Paris.Two of the robbers kept watch over the guard while the others entered the large house and ordered members of the Guerlain family to empty the family safes in a three-hour rampage.Public hitNoel coward's comedy Private Lives has returned home to Shanghai to help convince critics that the booming cosmopolitan business centre is no cultural desert. US producer Megan Gathercole brought in four professional thespians from abroad for eight performances, with the cast also featuring Shanghai-based Californian actress-journalist Lily Tung.The show proved so popular after a slow start that Gathercole added an extra performance on Friday at 50 Hankou Road, a restaurant just a stone's throw from the Peace Hotelwhere the very British Coward wrote the play in 1925.Private Lives is a humorous glimpse into the lives of a twice-married couple, who, having checked into a fancy hotel, have nothing to do but eat, drink, bicker, make love and congratulate themselves on their isolation from a world unworthy of them."The play was meant to be a light introduction to a 10-minute English language arts and culture programme to be aired on Shanghai Television," Gathercole said.Literary deathsBest-Selling thriller writer Hammond Innes has died at the age of 84, his former pubisher said on Friday. The author writer died at his home in Kersey, in the East of England on Wednesday morning, said Ian Chapman. He had been suffering from cancer.Ralph Hammond Innes was famous for a love of travel and adventure, which inspired many of his 34 novels. The books largely conformed to a set plot formula with clean-cut heroes often in inhospitable country, pitting themselves against villains and nature.At the height of hisfame in the 1950s and 1960s, his thrillers sold two million copies each. Born in 1913, the son of a bank manager, he began his career as a journalist.Dame Catherine Cookson, whose novels about working class hardships in 19th century England made her one of Britain's most popular writers, also died on Wednesday at 91.Her agent Anthony Shiel said she died at her home in Jesmonddene, a suburb of Newcastle, but he did not immediately know the cause of death. Cookson suffered for many years from a rare blood disease and required frequent hospitalisation. She had a heart attack in 1990.The author of more than 80 books that sold more than 100 million copies in 18 languages, she began life in poverty in the Tyneside area of northeast England, worked as a laundress in a workhouse and did not begin writing until she was 40.
