The Associated Press
Yoko Ono looks up at a statue of her late husband former Beatle John Lennon at the renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport on Friday.

Ono buys Lennon's childhood home

Olympian news services

Originally published Saturday, March 16, 2002

LONDON -- Yoko Ono has bought the childhood home of her late husband John Lennon.

Ono said she purchased the Liverpool house at 251 Menlove Ave. where Lennon lived with his Aunt Mimi and where The Quarry Men and The Beatles rehearsed.

The house is to go to The National Trust, which already owns former Beatle Paul McCartney's childhood home at 20 Forthlin Road in Liverpool's Allerton district and opens it to the public.

Ono joined Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, at the northwestern city's airport on Friday to unveil a statue of Lennon at the renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The lawyer defending Winona Ryder against shoplifting charges got a new 10-second snippet of a department store videotape but said he doubts it will affect the case.

The clip apparently shows the moment when the 30-year-old actress was first spotted inside the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills, attorney Mark Geragos said Thursday.

"I don't think it's anything of any great moment," he said.

Geragos said that a 90-minute surveillance tape exonerates her.

"It clearly shows that she wasn't doing what everybody said she was doing, which was removing things with scissors," Geragos told reporters outside Superior Court.

WINDHOEK, Namibia -- Ethiopian officials have complained that a movie starring Angelina Jolie being filmed in Namibia gives a biased portrayal of their country.

Ethiopia lodged a complaint with the Namibian government, saying "Beyond Borders" only shows the 1984 drought and starvation in the country and none of the progress made since then.

In the film, Jolie falls in love with a doctor who travels to Cambodia, Chechnya and Ethiopia to help war victims.

Scenes for the movie are being shot in Namibia instead of Ethiopia -- both countries have similar terrain -- because at the time filming was being considered in Ethiopia, the country was at war with neighboring Eritrea.

"The portrayal of happenings of 1984 in the film does not reflect the true image of Ethiopia today," said Tegenaw Goshu, spokesman of the Ethiopian embassy in South Africa.

Jolie, who serves as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said she had been wanting to shoot the film for three years, and that the script was one of the best she had ever seen.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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