World Vignettes

Girls' offer not spicy enough for Israeli singer DanaTEL AVIV: Transsexual Israeli singer Dana International, who shot to stardom after winn...

Girls8217; offer not spicy enough for Israeli singer Dana

TEL AVIV: Transsexual Israeli singer Dana International, who shot to stardom after winning the Eurovision song contest last month, has rejected an offer to join the Spice Girls, the Ma8217;Ariv daily reported on Tuesday. The paper said the offer was made to Dana through her record company. It quoted Dana8217;s manager as saying that she was approached two days after Gerri Haliwell, Ginger Spice left the successful all-female band. At the moment, though the offer is flattering, Dana does not intend to accept, the manager said. Many believe that Dana will be the most successful artist in Europe by the end of the year so there is no point in turning Dana into part of a band, even one as successful as the Spice Girls.

An X-Files case?

SYDNEY: A Pizza delivery man, who stabbed a customer to death believing that he was controlled by aliens, was sentenced on Tuesday to an indefinite stay in a mental hospital. Robuen Barrioquito Diaz,21, of Punchbowl, a Sydney suburb, had pleaded innocent to murdering Edwina Leonora Powell, 20, on September 17, 1996, and maliciously wounding her neighbour, Kenneth Alan Breward. New South Wales state Supreme Court judge Graham Barr found Diaz innocent as he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. Barr, who heard the trial without a jury, said psychiatrists who examined Diaz found that he has been suffering a psychotic illness since mid-1996. During the trial the court heard that Diaz had told a nurse that a television set talked to him and told him a device had been planted in his head so he could be controlled by alien forces. Diaz told his mother he had been abducted by aliens, an occurrence, he said, he discovered when his watch lost an hour, and that aliens told him to write on a wall.For better or worse

NEW YORK: The only person former US president Ronald Reagan can consistently recognize is his wife, Nancy, because of his Alzheimer8217;s disease, Variety Fair magazine reports. TheReagans still sleep in the same bed and when Nancy is away Reagan wanders through their house looking for her, the magazine says in its July issue. 8220;Our relationship is very special,8221; Nancy told the magazine. 8220;We were very much in love, and still are. Thank God we found each other. Forty-six years? Can8217;t imagine it without him.8221; Reagan revealed in November 1994 that he was a victim of Alzheimer8217;s, a mind-crippling disease, and had begun a journey, as he wrote, 8220;into the sunset of my life8221;.

Traffic jam phobia

HAGUE: A court in the Netherlands has waived a fine for a 40-year-old man who reversed his car on the motorway illegally, after hearing that he suffers from a rare traffic jam phobia, newspaper reports said on Tuesday. The defendant was originally ordered to pay 280 guilders 140 dollars after he slammed his car into reverse when he saw a traffic jam. The man told the court that every time he saw a traffic jam he was overcome with an urgent desire to go to the toilet.