British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton are planning a one-day international conference on September 21 in New York to launch their `Third Way' ideology, it was reported. The Guardian said the event, which will be attended by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Sweden's Premier Goran Persson, will accord a prominent role to US First Lady Hillary Clinton. She will lead one of the day's three seminars, which will be held at the New York University Law School. Clinton and Blair, who have forged a close relationship since the British premier's election 15 months ago, are both proponents of a `Third Way' between free-market economics and socialism. The German elections on September 27 will prevent the modernising German Social Democrat leader Gerhard Schroeder, from attending the event, while French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a traditional socialist, has not been invited. The New York conference follows a Blair-Clinton seminar in May held at the Britishpremier's country residence of Chequers.

Fighting the fund

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund is being sued by the US makers of an unlicensed commemorative musical plate which plays Elton John's song Candle in the Wind, The Daily Telegraph reported. If the legal bid is upheld, it could open the floodgates to a mass of unapproved Diana memorabilia, losing the fund millions of dollars in revenues. Bradford Exchange, an Illinois-based souvenir company with offices in London, has filed a complaint in the US state of Delaware, demanding that it be permitted to produce Diana products without a license from the fund, the newspaper reported. The $32 musical plate bears the inscription, `Diana, A Rose Everlasting'. The fund's lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, said they would fight the action vigorously. They also said they had alerted Elton John's legal advisors to the possibility that the musical plate may be in breach of copyright.

Paul's grief

Britain's Press Complaints Commission has ruledthat photographs taken for a celebrity magazine of Paul McCartney and his family inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris were an invasion of privacy and an intrusion into their grief. McCartney had filed a complaint against Hello magazine, which on May 30 published photographs taken of him and his family around Paris a month after his wife, Linda, had died of breast cancer. Since her death on April 17, McCartney has repeatedly pleaded with the press to let him grieve in private. According to a statement released by the former Beatle, McCartney said he had been unaware that he and his family had been ``stalked'' by photographers, who had taken ``highly intrusive photographs of us in our most private moments at this very difficult time in our lives''.

Rugova's team

Kosovo ethnic Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova named a five-member negotiating team for talks with Belgrade over the future of the flashpoint Kosovo province. Calling for the resumption of talks with Belgrade, Rugova said that the``situation in Kosovo is too dangerous and too serious, and that is why we have to put forward the process of negotiations''. US diplomat Chris Hill who has been working with Rugova to form a representative team welcomed the announcement. ``This team is prepared to resume the process of negotiations despite the fact that violence is continuing and it is precisely because of the violence that it is so important to restart the negotiations,'' Hill said. Missing from Rugova's list, however, were the KLA which many believe will inevitably be included in any Albanian negotiating team.