Monaco

MONACO - At her royal wedding, Britain's Kate Middleton donned an heirloom tiara charged with historical significance. Princess Charlene of Monaco opted for something more personal, choosing a bold, asymmetrical creation that symbolizes the onetime Olympic swimmer's love for the sea. Made by French-German jeweler Lorenz Baumer, the "Diamond Foam" tiara, in white gold and with nearly 60 carats' worth of diamonds, evokes the spray thrown off a crashing wave....

His opponent ailing and at times too exhausted to run after shots, Carlos Moya won the Monte Carlo Open in Monaco yesterday with a 6-3, 6-0, 7-5 victory over Cedric Pioline. Pioline, wearing a bandage on the elbow of his serving arm, was coming off a draining semifinal win over Alberto Berasategui on Saturday. "There was a miracle yesterday, but there wasn't today," Pioline said. "I was too tired and I had some pain, but I tried to play. " Moya, the 14th seed, lost only one set all week and beat Thomas Muster, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Alex Corretja en route to the final.

Monaco Cool is rather offbeat by travel book standards. In fact, it's rather offbeat by any literary standards. Mysterious, too. The author spent a year living in Monaco, and wrote a funny book about his experiences. That much is clear. It is also clear that Bartleby Press will publish the book this week under its Enigma Books imprint as a $14.95 hardcover. After that, things get a little murky. Such as the identity of the author, for example. The book is attributed to one Robert Westgate.

PARIS - With three triple-star Michelin restaurants and more than 20 other temples of haute gastronomy scattered around the globe, celebrity chef Alain Ducasse is used to catering to the rich and famous. But the veteran cook admitted his blood pressure is rising ahead of next month's royal wedding in Monaco, where he will prepare a multicourse gala dinner for Prince Albert, bride-to-be Charlene Wittstock, and their 500 A-list guests. "I've done gala dinners before, but never an official meal for a head of state.

Six-time defending champion Rafael Nadal reached the Monte Carlo Masters final in Monaco with a 6-4, 2-6, 6-1 win Saturday over Andy Murray , who needed a cortisone shot in his right arm before the match. Murray, seeded third, also took a medical timeout while down 3-0 in the third set to have his arm and elbow massaged. Nadal will play fourth-seeded David Ferrer in Sunday's all-Spanish final. Ferrer defeated seventh-seeded Jurgen Melzer , of Austria, 6-3, 6-2, to advance to his second Masters title match.

Golfer Seve Ballesteros of Spain plans to move to Monaco to avoid paying Spain's income tax on prize money won outside the country, a daily newspaper in Madrid has reported. The Roman Catholic YA said authorities in the tiny Mediterranean principality have granted residence to Ballesteros, who currently is on tour in Japan. The story came in the wake of reports in the Spanish press that the Finance Ministry was beginning a crackdown on professional athletes who do not accurately report their earnings and pay the required tax. YA quoted Internal Revenue Director Jose Borrel as saying that, in 1986, a Spanish golfer whom he did not name "declared earnings of 7,500,000 pesetas ($66,370)

By all accounts, the marriage of Princess Caroline of Monaco and Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi was an idyllic one. With him, Caroline seemed to have found contentment, after a sometimes rebellious youth and a brief, stormy first marriage. Now, with tragic suddenness, she is a widow at 33, with three small children. Casiraghi was very different from Caroline's first husband, incurable playboy Philippe Junot. He was faithful. He had the approval of Caroline's father, Prince Rainier III. He was nearly four years younger than Caroline, while Junot was 17 years older.

QUOTE "The hardest part is having them put makeup on your rear end. " - Oft-exposed "NYPD Blue" star RICK SCHRODER, one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" Who's your daddy? If only Princess Stephanie's baby girl Camille Marie could talk, she might have spilled the beans during her low-key baptism ceremony, said to have been held the other day in Monaco. There's still no official word on who fathered Stephanie's third child, who'll be a year old in July.

The man who transformed one of the most beautiful women in the world into a princess is dead. Prince Rainier 3d of Monaco, 81, whose marriage in 1956 to Grace Kelly, a poised, silken, Philadelphia-born film star, captured the imagination of the world, died yesterday at a hospital overlooking the principality's yacht-filled main harbor. A palace spokesman said Prince Rainier, who had a history of heart problems, had been placed on a respirator March 21, suffering from cardiac and kidney failure.

His Serene Highness Prince Albert of Monaco is hosting dinner. To his left sits Goldie Hawn in form-fitting black lace, burbling on about Hollywood nothingness. A few seats more to the left is Hawn's lover boy, Kurt Russell, throwing back whiskeys and getting louder and redder with each slug. On Albert's right is a pretty French starlet, tossing her brown mane as she chatters. And then there's Albert, at the center of the table in the center of the room of the Monte Carlo Yacht Club, of which he is president.

Maree Frisby Rambo, 84, of Chestnut Hill, a patron of cultural and charitable organizations who was a bridesmaid to Princess Grace of Monaco, died of an apparent aneurysm at home Saturday, March 3. In April 1956, Mrs. Rambo was Maree Pamp, one of the bridesmaids at the royal wedding of Grace Kelly - a friend from the Stevens School in Philadelphia - to Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Kelly, an Academy Award-winning actress, had given up her career and was a princess after her storybook romance.

ALLENTOWN'S AMANDA SEYFRIED , who has been adopted by Tattle as our favorite "local" actress, was on the phone from L.A. to talk about her new movie, "In Time. " The call started out ironically, because the publicist got on first to say the interview had to be cut short - so like Amanda's character Sylvia in "In Time," our time was quickly running out. Cut to the chase: Amanda was thrilled about working with writer-director Andrew Niccol ("Gattaca"). "It's really high-concept science fiction," she said, "but he grounds everything.

MONACO - At her royal wedding, Britain's Kate Middleton donned an heirloom tiara charged with historical significance. Princess Charlene of Monaco opted for something more personal, choosing a bold, asymmetrical creation that symbolizes the onetime Olympic swimmer's love for the sea. Made by French-German jeweler Lorenz Baumer, the "Diamond Foam" tiara, in white gold and with nearly 60 carats' worth of diamonds, evokes the spray thrown off a crashing wave....

MONACO - After waiting for nearly 30 years, the glitzy principality of Monaco has a new princess. Charlene Wittstock, a onetime Olympic swimmer from South Africa, married Prince Albert II in an intimate civil ceremony Friday. A more elaborate religious ceremony will be held Saturday. Wittstock follows in the steps of Grace Kelly, the Hollywood beauty and Philadelphian who wed Albert's father, Prince Rainier III, in 1956 and had three children with him. Grace died in a car crash in 1982; Rainier died in 2005.

MONACO - Charlene Wittstock has not one, but two tough acts to follow. As the future princess of Monaco and wife to longtime bachelor Prince Albert II, the Zimbabwe-born, South Africa-raised former Olympic swimmer is to succeed Grace Kelly, whose 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier III is still widely seen as the gold standard for royal nuptials. And as if the blue-eyed Hollywood beauty-turned-beloved princess didn't cast a long enough shadow, Albert's long-awaited marriage to Wittstock comes on the heels of the royal wedding of the decade, Kate Middleton's union with Britain's Prince William.

PARIS - With three triple-star Michelin restaurants and more than 20 other temples of haute gastronomy scattered around the globe, celebrity chef Alain Ducasse is used to catering to the rich and famous. But the veteran cook admitted his blood pressure is rising ahead of next month's royal wedding in Monaco, where he will prepare a multicourse gala dinner for Prince Albert, bride-to-be Charlene Wittstock, and their 500 A-list guests. "I've done gala dinners before, but never an official meal for a head of state.

Six-time defending champion Rafael Nadal reached the Monte Carlo Masters final in Monaco with a 6-4, 2-6, 6-1 win Saturday over Andy Murray , who needed a cortisone shot in his right arm before the match. Murray, seeded third, also took a medical timeout while down 3-0 in the third set to have his arm and elbow massaged. Nadal will play fourth-seeded David Ferrer in Sunday's all-Spanish final. Ferrer defeated seventh-seeded Jurgen Melzer , of Austria, 6-3, 6-2, to advance to his second Masters title match.

If you access the powerful Nexis search engine, the standard for information collected from most major publications in North America, and keyword "New Orleans Saints" and "Katrina" and "long-suffering," the result is a list of 51 recent articles each pimping the idea that civic renewal can be accomplished within the space of a professional football game. That was just yesterday. Certainly, there will be more instances by this morning. It is a familiar, if threadbare, concept, and that same basic idea - including the same adjectival description of local sports fans - has also been applied to economically ravaged Detroit, which was going to be saved by a Michigan State win in the Final Four, and to New York, which was to have its shattered resolve somehow mended by the New York Yankees in the 2001 World Series.

Growing up in East Falls, Lizanne Kelly and an older sister, Grace, acted in productions at the Old Academy Players in Philadelphia. Grace would go on to become an Academy Award-winning actress and a princess. Lizanne would become an accomplished athlete, a community volunteer, a wife, a mother, and devoted "Aunt Lizzie" to Grace's three children and other nieces and nephews. Elizabeth "Lizanne" Kelly Le Vine, 76, died of cancer Tuesday at the Quadrangle, a retirement community in Haverford.

The Girl from Monaco isn't the only recent French flick to deal with murder, messy family histories and a sexy TV weathercaster. Claude Chabrol's Girl Cut In Two beat Anne Fontaine's Girl from Monaco to the punch by a good many months. Chabrol's thriller also beats Fontaine's in terms of making any kind of emotional sense. At best diverting, at worst an almost self-parodic compendium of French film cliches, The Girl from Monaco stars Fabrice Luchini as a legendarily successful defense attorney.