ZURICH -- A version of the culture wars, albeit a Swiss version, has been unfolding here beyond the boxes of geraniums and shops hawking $10,000 watches.Switzerland's leading rapper, Stress, has come out with a new album, "Kings, Pawns and Bishops." After provoking a minor scandal a few years ago with a song whose title had an expletive before the name of Christoph Blocher, the leader of the ultranationalist Swiss People's Party, the country's most popular party, Stress dishes out some more of the same this time. In person a cordial 30-year-old immigrant from Estonia (born Andres Andrekson), Stress was raised by his mother in Lausanne and is married to a former Miss Switzerland. After college, he worked at Procter & Gamble on the Swiss Mr. Clean account. His last album went double platinum here, which for a nation of 7.6 million, culturally split among German, French and Italian speakers, meant sales topped 85,000.
Switzerland's leading rapper, Stress, has come out with a new album, "Kings, Pawns and Bishops." After provoking a minor scandal a few years ago with a song whose title had an expletive before the name of Christoph Blocher, the leader of the ultranationalist Swiss People's Party, the country's most popular party, Stress dishes out some more of the same this time.
In person a cordial 30-year-old immigrant from Estonia (born Andres Andrekson), Stress was raised by his mother in Lausanne and is married to a former Miss Switzerland. After college, he worked at Procter & Gamble on the Swiss Mr. Clean account. His last album went double platinum here, which for a nation of 7.6 million, culturally split among German, French and Italian speakers, meant sales topped 85,000.
A FORMER lover of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France's first lady, has joined an informal "kitchen cabinet" of left-wing advisers around Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Raphaël Enthoven, a philosophy professor and father of Aurélien, Bruni's seven-year-old son, has become a regular visitor to the Elysée Palace and likes setting the world to rights in intimate gatherings with "Sarko" around the dinner table. Sources close to the presidential couple say that Bruni, 41, talks almost daily on the telephone to Enthoven, 34, whom she met and fell in love with while dating Jean-Paul, his father. Enthoven, who now lives with Chloé Lambert, the actress with whom he had a son last year, is one of several left-leaning intellectuals and friends of Carla to have fallen under the spell of a president once dismissed by the left as a dangerous rightwinger.
A FORMER lover of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France's first lady, has joined an informal "kitchen cabinet" of left-wing advisers around Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.
Raphaël Enthoven, a philosophy professor and father of Aurélien, Bruni's seven-year-old son, has become a regular visitor to the Elysée Palace and likes setting the world to rights in intimate gatherings with "Sarko" around the dinner table.
Sources close to the presidential couple say that Bruni, 41, talks almost daily on the telephone to Enthoven, 34, whom she met and fell in love with while dating Jean-Paul, his father.
Enthoven, who now lives with Chloé Lambert, the actress with whom he had a son last year, is one of several left-leaning intellectuals and friends of Carla to have fallen under the spell of a president once dismissed by the left as a dangerous rightwinger.
one of several left-leaning intellectuals and friends of Carla to have fallen under the spell of a president once dismissed by the left as a dangerous rightwinger.
He's no longer dismissed as a dangerous rightwinger? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did not have sex with a teenage girl at the centre of a scandal that has wrecked the conservative leader's marriage, the girl's ex-boyfriend said. In a letter to Italy's best-selling Corriere della Sera newspaper, Luigi Flaminio apologised for having talked publicly about Berlusconi's relationship with aspiring model Noemi Letizia. "I only told the truth," Flaminio said in the handwritten letter printed by Corriere on Sunday. "Now they are insinuating that he (Berlusconi) had sexual relations, something which I rule out a priori and is impossible knowing Noemi and her values."
ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did not have sex with a teenage girl at the centre of a scandal that has wrecked the conservative leader's marriage, the girl's ex-boyfriend said. In a letter to Italy's best-selling Corriere della Sera newspaper, Luigi Flaminio apologised for having talked publicly about Berlusconi's relationship with aspiring model Noemi Letizia.
"I only told the truth," Flaminio said in the handwritten letter printed by Corriere on Sunday.
"Now they are insinuating that he (Berlusconi) had sexual relations, something which I rule out a priori and is impossible knowing Noemi and her values."
The amateur singer Susan Boyle was last night admitted to the Priory clinic following her surprise defeat in the final of Britain's Got Talent. Boyle, who became a YouTube sensation after her first appearance on the ITV talent show, was taken to the Priory after staff from the show contacted police to say she was acting strangely at her London hotel, the Sun reported.
Boyle, who became a YouTube sensation after her first appearance on the ITV talent show, was taken to the Priory after staff from the show contacted police to say she was acting strangely at her London hotel, the Sun reported.
Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan said today that Boyle was "emotionally drained and exhausted" after being put under more pressure than any other contestant in the show. "Nobody has had to put up with the kind of attention Susan has had," he told GMTV. "Nobody could have predicted it. "It has been crazy, she has gone from anonymity to being the most downloaded woman in history." However, Morgan insisted that she was "essentially fine".
"Nobody has had to put up with the kind of attention Susan has had," he told GMTV. "Nobody could have predicted it.
"It has been crazy, she has gone from anonymity to being the most downloaded woman in history."
However, Morgan insisted that she was "essentially fine".
The only good thing Reid did was describe the Home Office as 'not fit for purpose.'
