Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner has said he has got engaged again.
Mr Hefner said in a Twitter message early yesterday that he gave a ring to girlfriend and Playmate Crystal Harris, saying she burst into tears.
“This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory,” he wrote.
To clear up confusion over whether the ring was simply a Christmas gift, Mr Hefner later tweeted: “Yes, the ring I gave Crystal is an engagement ring. I didn’t mean to make a mystery out of it. A very merry Christmas to all.”
This will be the third marriage for the 84-year-old, star of E! reality series The Girls Next Door, which chronicles Mr Hefner’s life at the Playboy Mansion. He divorced Playmate Kimberly Conrad last year.
Ms Harris is 23, according to her online biography by E! (PA)
Santas beat up palace guard
Two men dressed as Father Christmas attacked a guard outside Sweden’s Royal Palace in Stockholm on Christmas eve and escaped with his loaded gun, police said.
“A little before 2 a.m., the two men, dressed in Father Christmas clothes and masks, entered a restricted area by a guard post, hit him, and then ran off,” said Anders Krook, a Swedish police officer.
A second soldier tried to help his comrade and pursued the men, but they escaped in a nearby parked car. The attackers made off with the soldier’s loaded AK-5 automatic rifle, a standard-issue weapon in the Swedish army.
“It seems it was organised, given the circumstances,” Mr Krook said.
The Royal Palace is protected by soldiers, but Sweden’s royals live in a castle in the suburb of Drottningsholm. (AFP)
Dylan Thomas park set for refit
The park where Welsh poet Dylan Thomas spent much of his childhood is being given a £820,000 (€965,000) revamp, the local government said yesterday.
Authorities in Swansea, in south Wales where Thomas grew up, hope to have the redevelopment of Cwmdonkin Park ready for celebrations marking the centenary of his birth in October 2014.
Thomas was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, a stone’s throw from the park which would become a favourite schoolboy haunt and would inspire much of his work, including the poem The Hunchback in the Park.
“Dylan Thomas is Swansea’s most famous son and Cwmdonkin Park is one of the locations in the city that’s synonymous with the poet,” said Swansea Council member Graham Thomas.
Thomas, who died in 1953, wrote famous poems such as Do not go gentle into that good night. (AFP)
Filmmaker Greenspan dies, aged 84
Trailblazing filmmaker Bud Greenspan, who spent decades documenting the stories of Olympic athletes, has died at the age of 84.
Mr Greenspan’s companion Nancy Beffa says he died last Saturday from complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in New York City.
The award-winning filmmaker was known for documentaries chronicling athletes and their stories at both Winter and Summer Olympics. Ms Beffa said his most recent work dealt with the rough cuts of films from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.
The International Olympic Committee described Greenspan as “a true supporter of the Olympic Games and their values throughout his career”.
A native New Yorker, Greenspan got his start in radio before turning to film. (AP)
Rare puppy stolen on Christmas day
A British teenager has been left distraught after her puppy was stolen on Christmas Day.
As well as the 13-week-old puppy, called Bullet, a number of electrical items were taken including a 48in flat-screen TV, an Xbox, laptop and money.
Charlotte Lashbrook, 18, got the brindle brown Staffy-cross American bulldog just a couple of weeks before Christmas. Miss Lashbrook said: “I’m devastated, especially for this to happen on Christmas Day.
“My boyfriend came downstairs this morning and everything was just gone. Bullet is the only one of his kind in Swindon, except for my sister’s, but he is the only boy like it. It’s just completely ruined Christmas.”
Wiltshire Police said the perpetrators are believed to have gained entry through an insecure window at the rear of the property in Verwood Close, Swindon. (PA)