People: Karadzic gets saintly status

TO MANY, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, is a close partisan of the Devil. But to a religious order affiliated to the Greek Orthodox Church, he is 'one of the most prominent sons of Our Lord Jesus Christ' and is 'working for peace'.

At a ceremony in Pale, the Bosnian Serb stronghold, Mr Karadzic was named a 'Knight of the Sovereign Greek Order of St Dennis of Zante', which rewards 'merit and humanitarian achievement', The title and blue sash were bestowed by Mladin Zarobica, an American businessman of Serbian parentage who also is a knight of the organisation. 'I don't think the Serbs started the war,' he said. 'I think the Serbs may have started to defend themselves' and now, he says, they suffer from global misconceptions. 'The Muslims have a bigger lobby than General Motors.'

THE GIRL who has won a bruising US court battle to bar her biological parents from further contact with her says she will never have children of her own. Kimberly Mays says she would not 'want them to go through what I went through'. The 14- year-old Florida girl, who has been at the centre of a baby- swap controversy for five years, was responding to comments by the lawyer for her birth parents, Ernest and Regina Twigg, that even when she is an adult they will seek visiting rights with her children as their grandparents.

Her immediate plans include 'going to school - boys . . . being a model, helping children . . . I want to get on with my life.'

WHAT St-Tropez was is probably lost for ever, according to Brigitte Bardot, who put the fishing village on the international map. 'The town is overrun by hoodlums, drug addicts, crooks of all kinds, bits of garbage,' she told the newspaper France-Soir. In short: 'It's Miami.'

'The little, gleaming port of the 1960s, when there were pretty girls, models, cover girls, is gone,' she said of the town whose 5,000 population swells to 10,000 in summer. 'Today chips and sausages are king . . . What's become of the little fishing port where I'd tie up my little boat to do my errands?' As a young woman, Bardot said, she'd go to St Trop' nightclubs in bare feet, her hair covered with sea salt. 'Now you've got to go to the hairdresser's and put on an evening dress to go out at night.'