Issue 695 (22)
29 Nov.- 5 Dec, 2016
CREEPY TRUMP TURNED OFF DIANA THOSE who were there still recall how dazzling Diana was that night. She wore diamond and pearl drop earrings and a velvet gown that was alluringly low-cut. Some 900 of New York’s most powerful movers and shakers had gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan for a glittering $1,000-a-plate charity dinner. It was December 1995, and fate had placed Donald Trump on the princess’s table, although his second wife Marla was also present. Diana had greeted him and other major donors earlier at the reception. She’d already met the tycoon several times, mostly at charity functions, but didn’t know him well, although he’d offered her complimentary membership of his Florida country club, Maralago — an offer she declined. She was certainly well aware of his reputation with women, though he had never made a pass at her. For his part, Trump had noted Diana’s qualities in some detail. As he wrote in his book, The Art Of The Comeback, published in November 1997, three months after her death: “I couldn’t help but notice how she moved people. She lit up the room. Her charm. Her presence. She was a genuine princess — a dream lady.” Totally unaware of how he felt, you can imagine Diana’s surprise soon after she and Charles were divorced in July 1996 — six months after that Manhattan dinner — to receive
Pesticides to heal cancer and HIV
A COMPANY which makes a pesticide called Doom has reacted angrily after a South African pastor said he could cure cancer and HIV by spraying it in people’s faces. In a Facebook post Lethebo Rabalago, who claims to be a prophet, says he can heal people by spraying them with Doom. Rabalago who runs the Mount Zion General Assembly in Limpopo province near the border with Mozambique. Tiger Brands, the company that produces Doom, has warned people the product is not designed to be sprayed at or even near people and a South African government commission has urged people to complain if they suffer as a result.
a huge basket of flowers from Trump. They were for her 35th birthday. Clearly the lascivious billionaire was making the princess an exception to his locker-room maxim that ‘it’s checkout time’ for women once they reach the age of 35. (Of course, history then could have taken a very different course. If they had hit it off, she might now be about to move into the White House as America’s First Lady — never having dated Dodi Fayed with such tragic consequences.) This week, however, it emerged how, two months after Diana was killed in that car crash in Paris, Trump talked about her with rather less respect than he showed in the
book. Rather, she was a potential sexual target. At the time, he was a guest on an American radio show presented by ‘shock jock’ DJ Howard Stern and he boasted, on air, that he ‘could and would’ have slept with Diana. “You could have nailed her,” suggested the DJ crudely, to which Trump replied: “I think I could have...She had the height,
the beauty, and the skin.” Nothing, notice, about what it was that he thought might make him attractive to her. For these were the obnoxious thoughts of a rich man whose own marriage was beginning to crumble and who believed his charm, fortified by his money, could buy him just about anything, or anyone. Two years later, his marriage to Marla
Japan skating rink slammed for freezing 5,000 fish TOKYO A Japanese skating rink that froze 5,000 dead fish into the ice as an attraction for visitors has been forced to close after receiving a barrage of criticism. Amusement park Space World is now melting the rink - which could take about a week - and will hold a memorial service for
the fish, the company said. The rink in southwestern Japan opened on November 12, after 5,000 fish were frozen under the surface of the ice as a decorative effect while customers skated above. But the concept was slammed as unethical and the rink in the city of Kitakyushu was forced to close on Sunday, Space World spokesman Koji Shibata said. “We received critical voices saying it is not good to use creatures as a toy, and that it is
bad to let food go to waste,” he told AFP on Monday. Social media erupted, with one visitor to the park’s Facebook page writing: “An event on an ice rink with frozen fish... How sinful.” “This is not personal but a social issue. They made food into a toy where children go and play,” said another. Shibata said the fish were all already dead at the time of purchase and were considered unfit to be sold in markets. “Internally we’d had discussions over the morality of the idea” before the display was set up, he said. Toshimi Takeda, general manager of Space World, said the intention was for customers to have fun while also learning about fish. “We wanted customers to experience the feeling of skating on the sea, but after receiving criticism, we decided that we could not operate it any more”, he said. “We are planning to hold a memorial service for the fish inviting a Shinto priest, which we’d planned before getting criticised.”
was over after just six years. The truth is Trump hadn’t said much to Diana that evening in New York. In fact, the one person Diana was really hoping to meet didn’t show up. This was John F. Kennedy Jnr, son of the assassinated JFK and, at 35, a year older than Diana and said to be the world’s most eligible bachelor. Young JFK Jnr was told later that he ‘missed a treat’ — Diana was so bewitching that she was described as having ‘won Amer ica’. As for Trump, his remarks at the Hilton gala were confined to expressing his admiration for the way Diana handled a heckler who interrupted her speech. It happened when the princess was talking about people in need, especially parents with small children, when a middle-
aged woman shouted out: “Where are your children, Diana?” “At school!” shot back the princess, and she moved seamlessly on. No doubt Trump would have liked to have had more than a few words with the princess, who that night was sitting between two of the most respected figures in America, the celebrated veteran statesman Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell, the U.S. Army four-star general who later became Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. The vain Trump clearly assumed he could be in with a chance. After all, the princess had then been separated from the Prince of Wales for more than three years and had been enjoying the company of another billionaire American.