PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The government, in an attempt to show that the English countryside was 'open for business', pressed county councils such as Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire, where no foot-and-mouth disease had been detected, to open footpaths; this the councils refused to do. Outbreaks suddenly appeared 40 miles from other areas of infection, near Whitby, Yorkshire, and at Nelson, near Caerphilly, in the South Wales valleys. After seven weeks there had been more than 1,100 outbreaks; out of 1,200,000 livestock condemned, more than 440,000 awaited slaughter. Another million and a half lambing sheep stranded on upland pasture also awaited slaughter; 250,000 slaughtered animals awaited burning or burial. A slaughterman at Great Orton, Cumbria, where vast trenches had been dug for carcasses to be buried, died after an accident with a captivebolt pistol. Mr Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, said it was untrue that the epidemic had been traced to food from a Chinese restaurant in pigswill. Perry Wacker, the driver of a lorry in which 58 Chinese illegal immigrants died, was jailed for 14 years. PowerGen is to be taken over by the German company Eon in a £10 billion deal. The world played hunt the issue when the Countess of Wessex resigned as chairman of her public-relations company after the News of the World published remarks caught on tape by a reporter pretending to be a Gulf busi nessman. The week before, the same newspaper published an embarrassing on-therecord interview given by the Countess on the understanding that it would not publish the tapes; on the same day the Mail on Sunday published what it said were transcripts, including such remarks as that Mrs Blair was 'horrid, horrid, horrid', which formed no part of the News of the World transcripts. A statement from Buckingham Palace said that both the Countess and the Earl of Wessex 'vigorously denied' exploiting their royal status for business ends. Only four out of 40 runners finished the Grand National, won by Red Marauder, ridden by Richard Guest, but no horses were seriously injured. The trial of two Leeds United footballers charged with attacking an Asian student was stopped after the Sunday Min-or published an article that risked 'seriously prejudicing' the jury, according to the judge. Steven Thoburn, a Sunderland greengrocer, was convicted for selling bananas by the pound, and given a conditional discharge.
CHINA hung on to the 24 American crew of a spy-plane that had crash-landed after colliding with a Chinese fighter, the pilot of which died; Mr George Bush, the President of the United States, declined to make the apology requested, but wrote to the pilot's widow. Mr Yoshiro Mori, the Prime Minister of Japan, said he would step down on 24 April, when his Liberal Democratic party is to elect a leader expected to become the new prime minister. Peru held elections for a president to replace Mr Alberto Fujimori, who refused to return from a trip to Japan to face corruption charges; Alejandro Toledo won 36 per cent of the vote, but a second round of polls will have to be held. A helicopter seeking remains of Americans missing in action in Vietnam crashed with the loss of 16, seven being American. Three tons of cocaine were seized on a British-registered ship, the Ban/ion Queen, 11 miles off the coast of Togo. Croats seeking independence attacked soldiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The bishops of Spain considered excommunicating members of Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna, the Basque independence terror group. Maoists attacked an isolated police station in westrn Nepal and killed 47, including 29 policemen; it was one in a series of such attacks since the leftist insurgency began in 1996, leaving 1,600 dead. A crowd demonstrated outside Marks & Spencer in the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris against the closure of the company's stores in Europe, which will entail the loss of 4,000 jobs, 1,700 of them in France. The golfer Tiger Woods became the first simultaneous holder of the Masters, the Open, the US Open and the US PGA.
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