Free Republic

The French woman documented as the world's oldest person at 122 may be a fraud, according to Russian researchers. A 2018 study suggests that the woman known as Jeanne Calment was actually Jeanne's daughter, Yvonne, who allegedly assumed her mother's identity after her death in 1934 in order to not have to pay the inheritance tax. When "Jeanne" died in 1997 at the supposed age of 122 and 164 days, she was actually thought to have been just 99, the researchers claim. Gerontologist Valery Novoselov, who initially called for the investigation into Jeanne's age, said he first became suspicious because...

The last surviving actress from the iconic movie Casablanca has died. Madeleine Lebeau played Yvonne, the jilted lover of Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine, in the 1942 film. Lebeau's stepson told The Hollywood Reporter that she had died aged on May 1 in Estepona, Spain aged 92, after breaking her thigh bone. The French-born actress was preceded in death by all of her credited Casablanca co-stars, including leads Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

The Libyan killer of a British policewoman will never be brought to justice in Britain after a secret deal approved by Jack Straw. The Foreign Office bowed to Libyan pressure and agreed that Britain would abandon any attempt to try the murderer of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot outside the Libyan embassy in London 25 years ago. Anthony Layden, Britain’s former ambassador to Libya, said this weekend he had signed the agreement with the Libyan government three years ago, when Straw was foreign secretary. At the time Britain was negotiating trade deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Libya. The...