Eyecare accepts pounds 13.3m offer

Western witnesses to the reality of life in Chechnya are few. A Dutch film-maker who has just returned from Grozny tells David Winner what it's like

The first Christmas card always comes from someone you weren't going to send a card to

Icepick

A DEVOTED son took his father on a last motorcycle ride through Copenhagen, bought him a drink and a cigar, and at the end of the three- hour spin delivered him to a police station in Frederikssund. Untouched by this exuberant display of filial love, the law charged Flemming Petersen with illicit handling of a corpse.

Savile Row tailor Ozwald Boateng has dressed Spike Lee, Lawrence Fishburne, Mick Jagger and Eternal, among others

MONICA LEWINSKY and the President exchanged numerous gifts. By her estimate, she gave him about 30 items, and he gave her about 18.

Confess - you're praying for a fashion bible to show you the way. Search no more. With the Vatican's new range of designer chic, you need never be a sacrificial victim on the altar of style.

JUST WEEKS before his relationship with Monica Lewinsky erupted into the headlines, President Bill Clinton gave the former White House intern a series of gifts at a farewell meeting in the Oval Office, her testimony reveals.

He's sorted out Elton and Robbie Williams, so does Beechy Colclough have any advice for Bill and Hill?

Gucci, Valentino, Armani, MaxMara - Knightsbridge ladies wouldn't pick at a low-fat salad in anything less. By Melanie Rickey

you now have exactly one year to book your place in the Millennium's final total eclipse of the sun. According to my celestial charts, the best place to be if you really want to get an eyeful is Bucharest. A guaranteed 2 minutes, 22.59 seconds of pitch black. The trouble with that calculation is that it means being in Bucharest. Better to hare off down to Cornwall, I reckon, coming off the A30 at Bodmin, even if you will thereby lose 22.14 seconds of darkness. It's not just the phenomenon you go for, after all. It's also the people.

Lawrence Inquiry

HERE'S ONE trend we can all afford: visors, or oversized glasses that allow the wearer to go cross-eyed and still enjoy protection from ultra-violet rays. It all started quietly last summer when trendier-than- thou London-based label YMC revived early Eighties aviator style visors, and they sold out straightaway. Then, for this summer, a minimalist German fashion designer, Jil Sander, together with the most influential spectacle designer of the Nineties, Alain Mikli, teamed up to create a range called Jil Sander Eyes, which - you guessed it - includes many variations on the visor. The ones pictured here are German army issue and were bought from an army surplus stall in East London for pounds 9.99, but Woolworth's and Boots have been doing a similar style of sunglasses for years, (since they were last in fashion in 1983) and have proved to be a key source of the style which are far cheaper than the designer equivalent and yet offer a comparable level of protection. In the last few (unfortunately) sun-starved weeks, visors and oversized shades like these have been spotted perched upon the heads of fashionable and cyclist types alike. Surprisingly, once one has got over their largeness, they are extremely flattering, and can even double-up as a hair-band. Indeed, four of The Independent's trend-spotters noticed them out and about in London, Brighton and Manchester. Whether they go mainstream is another question. But who cares, these shades block out more sunlight than any others we've come across, and are highly practical when coping with a World Cup-induced hangover.