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People

Gucci widow's sentence reduced
The estranged 51-year-old widow of murdered luxury goods designer Maurizio Gucci had her jail sentence reduced from 29 to 26 years on appeal on Friday for ordering his 1995 shooting in Milan. A Milan appeals court reduced the sentence passed on Patrizia Reggiani after a sensational five-month 1998 trial, although the prosecution had demanded it be upped to life. Gucci, who was 46 at the time of his death and a scion of the Gucci Florence fashion house dynasty, was shot dead at the entrance to his office in Milan's business district in March, 1995. His widow was arrested in January 1997 and charged with taking out a contract on her husband, from whom she had been separated since 1984 after 12 years of marriage.

Reggiani pleaded not guilty at her main trial, telling the court she had been obsessed with the idea of finding someone to kill her ex-husband after they had separated. She said she paid $285,000 to an intermediary of her husband's alleged killers, but did not follow through with the plan. The prosecution portrayed Reggiani as a vindictive woman outraged by her ex-husband's poor business sense and failure to invest properly the $120 million he had earned from the sale of the Gucci fashion empire in 1993. The appeals court also reduced sentences on four other defendants.

`Milosevic a menace'
Prime minister Ivica Racan of Croatia branded Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic a threat to his neighbours on Friday and blamed him for stirring up trouble between Montenegro and Serbia. ``We have reason to be worried as the Milosevic regime has been and remains a permanent threat for all countries bordering on Serbia,'' he said in an interview with Croatian national television. ``We are concerned because Yugoslav forces and the institutions of Milosevic's regime are provoking tension and threatening Montenegro with arms,'' Racan added, speaking during a summit of Balkan leaders in Budapest. His comments were the first official intervention of Croatia's new government into the crisis in Montenegro, whose pro-western President Milo Djukanovic has threatened to pull out of federal Yugoslavia sparking threats of a crackdown by pro-Belgrade forces.

Racan called on ``European democratic institutions to do more to help the Montenegrin government''. Montenegro has opened its border with Croatia despite Opposition from Belgrade.

Third man back in Vienna
With gun shots, shouts and the sound of pursuing feet in the sewers of Vienna, Harry Lime or The Third Man has made his return to the city's underground canals, 50 years after the film was released, based on a Graham Greene novel. To mark the anniversary, the city of Vienna is offering a guided tour of the sewers which includes a re-enactment of director Carol Reed's famous final scene, when Harry Lime played by Orson Welles is chased to his death in the tunnels under the war-torn city. We descend a spiral staircase, lit only by the guide's torch, and enter the eerie underground world of misty canal tunnels, closed in by the thick damp walls, where Harry Lime met his end.

The guide follows the path along the canal of dirty water and stops to inform the group behind him of the canal system, which dates back to the Romans. He explains that 240 million cubic metres of water flow each year through the 2,150 kilometres of underground canals. But a gun shot stops him short. A man is running, his pursuers are shouting. We hold our breath, suddenly transported to the Vienna of rubble and ruin at the end of the war, a city divided into four by the allied powers, where Harry Lime made his living trafficking contreband penicillin.

St Patrick's Day Peace
First Lady Hillary Clinton and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani foes in the upcoming Senate election joined hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers on Friday in the city's St. Patrick's Day Parade down Fifth Avenue. Clinton and Giuliani, both competing for an open New York seat in the US Senate, were the stars at the traditional celebration in honor of Ireland's patron saint, held despite a snowstorm. Both attended mass on Friday morning at the New York's imposing St. Patrick's Cathedral. Then Giuliani took his mayoral position at the head of the parade while the First Lady marched some 10 blocks behind in the many-blocks long procession.

Cardinal John O'Connor, 80, could not participate due to his fragile state of health. His spokesman, Joseph Zwillig, told AFP the cardinal was feeling ``very weak, and therefore is not planning to march in the parade''. It was the first time O'Connor, son of an Irish immigrant, was unable to participate in the parade since he was made archbishop of New York in 1984.