BREAKING NEWS

Galliano to tell trial he lost it on booze & drugs

PARIS - Fashion designer John Galliano will tell a Paris court that multiple addictions to drugs and alcohol led him to lose all self-control when he defends himself against charges of anti-Semitic behavior on Wednesday.
Galliano's trial is the latest chapter in a saga that began in February when Galliano was questioned by French police after a couple accused him of hurling drunken racist and anti-Semitic abuse at them on the terrace of a cafe.
The Feb. 24 incident -- combined with a video in which an apparently inebriated Galliano was filmed telling a woman he loves Hitler and that her parents might have been gassed in a Nazi death camp -- led to the designer's dismissal from his post as creative director for Parisian fashion house Dior.
Magistrates were expected to arrive at a decision quickly in the trial, which pits Galliano, 50, against two accusers -- one a woman who claimed to have never heard of the British designer before their February encounter, and another whose accusations refer back to events last October.