World Vignettes

Sayo and Keiji travel to New Zealand, Caro8217;s home country, for their honeymoon in a bid to escape the stifling attentions of Keiji8217;s mother.

Tragedy strikes when Keiji is drowned and Sayo, as tradition demands, returns to live with her selfish mother-in-law. Overwhelmed by the memory of Keiji, Sayo decides to return again to New Zealand where she becomes, as in the title of a famous Japanese film, the woman of the dunes8230;

Dl8217;s school
LONDON: Mohammad Al-Fayed, whose son Dodi died alongside Princess Diana in a Paris car crash last year, is trying to buythe school that Diana attended as a young girl. The owner of London8217;s famous Harrods Store has offered four million dollars for West Heath School in Sevenoaks, Kent, which closed last year through lack of funds a spokesman said yesterday. He said the Egyptian millionaire has plans to turn it into a school for traumatised children so that it becomes 8220;a living memorial8221; to Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed.

Hale 8216;n8217; hearty
HOUSTON: A young man whose heart was taken out of his body, then put back in after surgeons cut away a lemon-sized tumour, left the hospital yesterday in good condition. Guy Altmann, 20, told reporters as he walked out of Methodist Hospital that he is doing 8220;a lot better than when I came in.8221; The lanky Altmann underwent the historic 8220;autotransplant8221; surgery on April 27 after surgeon Michael Reardon determined that the only way to get at the entire cancerous tumour was to take his heart out. It was thought to be the first time that heart cancer had been successfully treated byautotransplant. Altmann was kept alive by a heart-lung machine during the six-hour surgery.