The Czech President, Vaclav Havel (61), will fly home today after spending three weeks in hospital in Austria following emergency surgery on holiday in the Tyrol, doctors said yesterday.
Havel will be flown home aboard a plane with special medical equipment, the surgeon who carried out the operation for a perforated intestine said. He described Havel's condition as "excellent given the circumstances".
Singer-songwriter Carly Simon was diagnosed as having breast cancer last October and had a malignant tumour removed, the New York Daily News reported yesterday. Simon, 53 next month, is undergoing chemotherapy but told the newspaper she feels "stronger and more vital than ever".
Simon, whose hit songs include You're So Vain, was quoted as saying she was "crushed" last month when her friend Linda McCartney died of breast cancer.
"This disease is practically epidemic," she said. "We need a lot more money for research. There's a feeling that if this had been a man's disease it would have been licked already."
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has paid more than £17.8 million for Lost on the Grand Banks, the last major seascape by Winslow Homer still in private hands, the New York Times reported.
The price paid is easily a record for American art.