"Clinton to Divorce?" asks the headline of the Xinhuanet article, above a photo of Bill Clinton and a "mysterious woman". Yet another Chinese newspaper falls prey to the seductive scandal of the American tabloid weeklies.

The story, originally broken by Globe magazine in its issue of 9 May, was summarized alongside news from Turkey and Iraq in The Beijing News today before being picked up by Xinhua. The "mysterious woman" is Canadian politician Belinda Stronach, who had dinner with Clinton in the company of Jerry Bruckheimer and Jack Nicholson.

Globe, while not quite the absolute nadir of scandal-mongering, has quite a history of reporting on the Clinton divorce - it claimed in 2000 that it was a "sure thing" Bill and Hillary would split in early 2001. Issues are not available online, but the cover of the current issue can be found on its web site.

Link: Previous Danwei post on Xinhua's appropriation of a Weekly World News article.

UPDATE: Hong Kong-based journalist once worked for the Weekly World News. You can find his confessions on Asia Times: An alien ate my brain. -JG