FORMER Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown said yesterday she "thanks God" she met actor Hugh Grant a year ago.
In London to publicise her new video, Taken for Granted, she said: "I believe that everybody has a different role to play and a lot of people work very hard. I feel I have been blessed."
In the video, Brown, said to be 25, re enacts the infamous night of June 25th, 1995, when she was paid £36 for sexual services by the British film star.
Asked what she would say to Grant if she met him today, she said: "I would say I've missed you, baby. Let's have dinner."
Financial wizard George Soros (62) has teamed up with the BBC World Service to establish a BBC School of Broadcast Journalism in Sarajevo.
The speculator, who made £1 billion out of Britain's departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, has paid for equipment at the school through his Soros Foundation.
Pope John Paul II left Rome yesterday for Germany, where he is to make a weekend pastoral visit. He is to visit Paderborn, a historically important site of German Catholicism, and Berlin.
US billonaire Ross Perot's Reform Party said yesterday it would hold a two part convention to nominate a candidate to the presidential elections in August, coinciding with the Republican National Convention.
The two sessions, on August 11th and 18th, will sandwich the Republican meeting at San Diego, California, and likely steal the limelight from its candidate, Bob Dole.
Britain's Conservatives yesterday questioned the role of Labour leader Tony Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, after she proposed new powers for local education authorities.
In an article Ms Booth - a QC and school governor - proposed that authorities should be able to step in earlier in disputes over the actions of governing bodies. Conservative party chairman, Dr Brian Mawhinney, said he was writing to Mr Blair to ask whether the proposals were party policy.