Mr Shapiro has accused Mr Cochran of dealing the “race card from the bottom of the deck” in his closing arguments.. “I sat there while he [Shapiro] tried to put together a manslaughter plea which would have gotten Kardashian a five-year sentence for something he never did,” Mr Bailey said. “He was negotiating with someone,” Mr Bailey told a Boston televison station, as he criticised Mr Shapiro’s abilities as a lawyer.The proposal would have seen Mr Simpson pleading guilty to manslaughter and Mr Kardashian pleading guilty to other charges. Mr Kardashian said he never looked inside it, and when he handed it over to police months later, it was empty. Mr Bailey contends the plea also involved Robert Kardashian, Mr Simpson’s friend and lawyer, who was seen carrying Mr Simpson’s garment bag from his estate when he returned from Chicago the day after the murders.Prosecutors have contended that evidence may have been in the bag. But he attacked the prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden for their “distortions”, and TV trial commentators for perpetuating them.”My basic anger is these misconceptions,” he said. “Fortunately for me, the jury listened to what the witnesses said and not Marcia Clark’s or Darden’s, or anyone else’s, rendition of what was said.” When the show’s host pressed him with questions, he said he had to go.So many times, Mr Simpson said, he went back to his cell and could not reconcile what he saw on television with the day’s events in court.He admitted being the “shadowy figure” seen outside his house by the chauffeur Allan Park on the night of the murders, but insisted he was simply dropping his bags by the door.The rift within Mr Simpson’s defence team grew more acrimonious yesterday when F Lee Bailey said that another defence lawyer, Robert Shapiro, had at one point discussed a manslaughter plea for Mr Simpson.

Slipping past the reporters who surrounded his Brentwood estate, he had earlier been reunited privately with his children: Justin, seven, and Sydney, nine.Mr Simpson began by paying public tribute to Mr Cochran. Gina Rhodes Rossborough, the latest juror to break her silence, opened her heart on Oprah Winfrey; schoolmates of the discredited police witness, Mark Fuhrman, revealed he spouted racial epithets as a boy.CNN’s Larry King Live matched the defence lawyer Johnnie Cochran with an alternate juror, Watson Calhoun, a retired bus driver That brought a telephone call to the studio from Mr Simpson. It would avoid the need to court advertisers – the Hertz rental car company, for one, has said it will not use him again.Though the trial of the century was over, the media circus continued relentlessly in a massive national talkathon. But a pay-per-view appearance would offer a sympathetic platform to face the outstanding questions. It could also more than pay off the reported $5m (pounds 3m) mortgage he took out to meet legal fees. One producer offered publicly to guarantee Simpson at least $20m (nearly pounds 13m).

The mixed reaction in the entertainment industry to Mr Simpson’s acquittal on charges of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman was one measure of the public discomfort.The decision by Mr Simpson’s defence team not to put him on the stand prevented a damaging cross-examination in court. Hugh Panero, president of Request TV, said “somebody has to draw the line”, adding such a show would be cynical, “even obscene”.Since Mr Simpson’s lawyers have publicly aired the idea, promoters have been itching to get on board. Television viewers would typically pay anything from $15 to $50 (pounds 10 to pounds 32) to receive such a programme on satellite or cable. TIM CORNWELL

Los Angeles
The head of the largest pay-TV distributor in the United States has refused even to consider screening an interview with OJ Simpson. ”When I went to school, no one ever sent me, no one ever watched over me,” he explained.”My mother and father did not even know what my grades were, but nonetheless, I finished It’s something nature gave to Gorbachev.”MARYANN BIRD.

The party has been accused of illegal electioneering in ordering people, mostly in central Java, to get busy with the paint brushes.Mikhail Gorbachev told Reuters news agency in New York this week: “I haven’t had a vacation in three years.”It’s not important if I like working or not – it’s because I must; I should like to stroll in sunny places and lie on the beach.”Mr Gorbachev, who could be planting potatoes at his dacha – or painting it yellow – is on his sixth lecture and conference tour of the United States since he became a pensioner four years ago.He is still thinking of running for the Russian presidency and is grappling with a problem few politicians ever face: what to do after profoundly changing history.Mr Gorbachev says his drive to keep doing things comes from within. ”Rocard has neither the capacity nor the character for this post,” he said of his 1988-91 Prime Minister. ”But since the French want him, they’ll get him.”Do politically correct Indonesian houses come in any colour you like, as long as they’re yellow? The country’s Minister of Information, Harmoko, has been accused of forcing government functionaries to paint everything yellow, the colour of the ruling Golkar party, which he heads.Golkar’s executive board ”never ordered ‘Yellow-nisation’ but it is impossible to prevent members who want to paint their houses yellow,” Mr Harmoko told the Antara news agency. ”He might get elected after me but he would soon be the laughing stock of the world.”Much of Mr Attali’s book is devoted to Mr Mitterrand’s dislike of his own former Prime Minister, Michel Rocard. Mr Juppe also allegedly made the city pay for 1m francs of renovations on his own flat.The man who was Mayor of Paris when Mr Juppe was in charge of the finances, President Jacques Chirac, was ”mad” and destined to become a global laughing stock, Francois Mitterrand has been quoted as saying.Jacques Attali, a top aide of the former President, has just published Verbatim III, his third volume of memoirs of the Mitterrand era ”At heart, this man is mad. He says and does anything,” Mr Attali quotes his former boss as saying of Mr Chirac.

For three months, the satirical weekly will mail free copies to Mr Juppe’s home. This follows the Prime Minister’s decision to slice the number of his office’s 70 subscriptions by two-thirds. ”This is, anyway, much longer than many magistrates and friends of Alain Juppe predict he will stay at [Hotel] Matignon [his official residence],” the paper said.
Opinion polls indicate Mr Juppe’s popularity has fallen sharply amid criticism of his economic policies. He faces possible prosecution for ordering a reduction in the rent on his son’s city-owned apartment when he was in charge of Paris’s finances in 1989-93. Alain Juppe, the French Prime Minister, is getting help in his cost-cutting campaign from an unexpected source: Le Canard Enchaine.