Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney yesterday called for the legalisation of cannabis. "I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them criminal is wrong," he told the New Statesman magazine. He said it was pointless to fill jails with people who smoked cannabis because this was likely to turn them into criminals.
Lolita, the film remake of Vladimir Nabokov's novel about a man's obsession with an under-age girl, opens to the public for the first time in Rome today after US distributors judged it too hot to handle. The British director Adrian Lyne, whose steamy 91/2 Weeks and Fatal Attrac- tion were big hits, said he was baffled by the ban and had not given up hope of a US release.
Lolita stars British Oscarwinner Jeremy Irons as the middle-aged Humbert Humbert and unknown Californian schoolgirl Dominique Swain in the title role. James Mason and Sue Lyon starred in the original film version.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Social Democratic rival Ger hard Schroeder and his wife Hiltrud were divorced yesterday, less than six months before the Lower Saxony chief minister faces a key election in his home state, a judge said. Schroeder (53), and his 48year-old wife, were married 16 years ago.
Steven Spielberg missed the premiere this week of his new studio's first feature film, The Peacemaker, when he was slightly injured in an car accident on the way to the theatre in Los Angeles.