PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
London can take it! Blitz II. Tony Blair laughs off near miss by one of Livingstone's bombers. After a delay of several hours caused by a new 'high-tech' balloting system, Ken Liv- ingstone was elected Mayor of London, though not by as large a margin as the polls had suggested. Steve Norris, the Conserva- tive candidate, came second and Frank Dobson, the Labour candidate, a poor third. Mr Livingstone immediately said he would repel motorists from central London by charging them £10 a day, and simultaneous- ly called upon the government to offer sub- sidies to Ford to tempt them to continue producing motorcars at Dagenham. Labour also did badly in the local council elections, losing 568 seats and control of 15 councils. The Tories won 593 seats, gained control of 16 councils, and matched Labour's nine seats in the new Greater London Assembly, but lost a by-election in Romsey — said to be their 50th safest seat — to the Liberal Democrats by 3,000 votes. The IRA pledged to put its weapons 'beyond use', leading Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandel- son to announce that he hopes to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly within a fortnight. Meanwhile, three members of the Provisional IRA on trial for gun-running in Florida were revealed to have been instruct- ed by their superiors in Belfast to stock up for the end of the ceasefire. As the euro continued to fall against the pound, Michael Heseltine pressed the government to join the Single European Currency to prevent the strong pound destroying manufacturing jobs. However, the euro also fell against the dollar, suggesting that it was the euro rather than the pound which has the problem. BMW sold Rover cars to the Phoenix con- sortium for £10; meanwhile it was revealed that the recent crisis has caused sales of the British cars to double and those of the Ger- man firm to fall by 36 per cent. The chief executive of a fashion company lost his £1 million a year job for telling a female col- league that she had a 'nice arse'. A burglar was told by a magistrate that he got what he deserved after being beaten with a baseball bat during a break-in in Peterborough. The Duke of York hinted that he might remarry his former wife. Friends of a 77-year-old rugby fan who died in his hotel room after attending a match in Glasgow smuggled his corpse on to a bus so that it could be returned to his native Hull.
EIGHT hundred paratroopers were sent to Sierra Leone to help evacuate British pass- port-holders caught up in the country's civil war. Seven United Nations troops were killed by guerrillas and many more taken hostage, as the Revolutionary United Front threatened to take the capital, Freetown. The Sri Lankan President passed a law for- bidding criticism of him as 28,000 of his troops became trapped by Tamil Tigers in the city of Jaffna. While another white farmer was being beaten in Zimbabwe by `war veterans', President Robert Mugabe promised to seize half of all farmland in white hands and said, 'I will never order the war veterans to retreat. Give them these farms and they will retreat on to them.' Britain blocked the export of 450 Land- Rovers to the Zimbabwean police and the former South African president called Mr Mugabe a 'tyrant'. Two Libyans were put on trial at a Scottish court based in the Netherlands accused of the bombing of Flight 103 over Lockerbie 11 years ago. The racing driver David Coulthard escaped sur- vived a plane crash in Lyon which killed the pilot and co-pilot; he then went straight to Barcelona to compete in a grand prix, corn- ing second. Computer-users around the world were bedevilled by a virus after being tempted to read an e-mail beginning with the words 'I love you'; the virus was traced to a couple in the Philippines. Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, staged a military parade through Red Square and attacked those 'trying to wipe away the memory of a vast and powerful country'. A Greek pris- oner escaped by driving off in a police car while wearing handcuffs. Douglas Fair- banks Junior died, aged 90. CSH
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