Minister's wife desperately seeking Madonna?
Pop star Madonna was at the center of a diplomatic tiff in Israel Sunday involving the foreign minister, his celebrity wife and the ambassador to Washington.
Channel Two TV said Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's wife had an assistant to ambassador Danny Ayalon fired for failing to secure her an audience with Madonna when the singer, a follower of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, visited Israel last September.
Judy Shalom Nir Mozes denied the report, amid a flurry of headlines that rivalled the wall-to-wall coverage of Madonna's visit eight months ago.
"I don't meddle, that's not me," Shalom Nir Mozes, a popular television and radio host, told Channel Two.
The Foreign Ministry said diplomat Liron Petruzil's three-year tenure in Washington was not renewed for "professional reasons."
 

Indiana adopts Daylight Savings Time statewide
Indiana's governor on Friday signed a law that will make the entire state recognize Daylight Savings Time next year but whether the state will declare itself in the Central or Eastern time zones is still up in the air.
The Midwestern state will join the rest of the United States -- except for much of Arizona and Hawaii -- by adopting Daylight Savings Time and "spring ahead" one hour in April and "fall back" in October starting in 2006.
Currently, 77 of 92 counties stay on Eastern Standard Time year-round. Five counties in the southeastern corner of the state are on Eastern Time but change clocks with Daylight Savings Time.
The law also calls for hearings into whether Indiana should join either the Eastern or Central time zones, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said. Currently 10 counties in the western part of the state are in the Central time zone, while the other 82 counties recognize Eastern time.
The result is a confusing mishmash of clock watching that some business interests have argued damages the economy.
Critics say Daylight Savings Time is unnecessary and they had blocked repeated legislative attempts to change the system. One argument held that cows would have to be milked an hour earlier during Daylight Savings Time, causing them to lose sleep and produce less milk.
 

Cook killed in sword attack at hospital
A cook at a Paris children's hospital was killed in a sword attack Saturday evening by a man he met on the Internet, police sources said Sunday.
The fatal attack took place inside the Necker hospital, after a disagreement between the 34 year-old victim, who has not yet been named, and his attacker.
"He stabbed him. The security team and one of his colleagues tried to intervene, but were unable to do anything," Isabelle Lesage, director of the hospital, told Reuters.
The attack was carried out with a short Japanese sword, known as a "katana," a police source said.
"The cook suffered one or more sword blows, particularly in the area of the carotid (artery), which caused a quick death," a police spokesman said.
A police source said the attacker, a male in his 50s, then went to a police station with the weapon, and told police he had just killed someone.
Police said he had been examined by psychiatrists but appeared to be of sound mind.
 

Court to rehear bartender's lipstick lawsuit
A federal appeals court agreed on Friday to reconsider the case of a bartender who was fired from her job at a Nevada casino for refusing to wear lipstick, blush and other make-up.
Alleging sex discrimination, Darlene Jespersen sued her employer, Harrah's Entertainment Inc., after it dismissed her in 2000 for refusing to comply with a policy that required women to wear makeup.
In December, Jespersen's case was dismissed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the policy was legal. Without comment, the court reversed the ruling on Friday and ordered the case to be reheard by an 11-judge panel.
Jespersen's attorney said the case of the 20-year Harrah's veteran could determine the rights of women in service professions to choose how to present themselves.
"What makes it discriminatory is that it requires women to present themselves in a particularly feminine way," said the attorney, Jennifer Pizer of Lambda Legal in Los Angeles.
Jespersen started work at Harrah's in 1979 as a dishwasher before being promoted to work as a bartender helper and then as a full bartender. Jespersen felt deeply uncomfortable wearing the foundation, lip stick, blush and mascara that her employer required, her attorney said.
Harrah's implemented a mandatory policy that it called "Beverage Department Image Transformation," which required, among other things, that women wear makeup. After refusing to comply with the policy, Jespersen was fired in 2000.

Tailpiece

Disrupted by fire

A guy goes to a house of prostitution. He selects a girl, pays her $200 up front, and he gets undressed. She's about to take off her sheer blue negligee, when the fire alarms rings!
She runs out of the room, with his $200 still in her hand. He quickly grabs his clothes and runs out after her. He's searching the building, but the smoke gets too heavy, so he runs outside looking for her.
By this time, the firemen are there. He sees one of them and asks, "Did you see a beautiful blonde, in a sheer blue negligee, with $200 in her hand?"
The fireman says, "No!"
The guy then says, "Well if you see her, you can have her. It's paid for."