PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Cub reporters The Prince and Princess of Wales were said to have 'recruited national newspapers to carry their own accounts of their marital rifts', according to Lord McGregor, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commis- sion. He had written confidentially on this matter last month to Sir David Calcutt, who had been entrusted with a report on the regulation of the press. Lord McGregor attributed his claim to information given him by Mr Andrew Knight, the chairman of Mr Rupert Murdoch's News International. As for Sir David, his impending report had already been leaked, with his proposals for establishing a tribunal to control the press, made up of a judge and two lay assessors; this would take the place of the self-regu- lating Press Complaints Commission. A Murdoch publication in Australia published a purported transcript of a telephone con- versation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, in which the Prince contemplated reincarnation as a Tampax. This considerably complicated things. The tanker Braer discharged most of its cargo of 80,000 tons of oil as heavy seas broke over it on rocks to the south of Shetland, as sal- vage crews stood by helpless. An unspecific bridging fund for local sufferers from the disaster was announced in the Commons.
Lord Donaldson was asked to hold an inquiry into the incident. Snow covered Scotland. Mr Richard Branson received £500,000, and his Virgin airline £110,000, in an out-of-court libel settlement with British Airways, which also agreed to pay costs of perhaps £3 million. Mr John Birt, the new director general of the BBC, announced a thoroughgoing but rather vague shake-up of the corporation. A civilian woman work- er was raped by a prisoner in the chapel of Long Lartin jail, but no charges are to be brought. Rudolf Nureyev died of Aids, aged 54. Sir Joseph Cantley died, aged 82; he was the judge who had presided over the trial in 1979 that found Mr Jeremy Thorpe innocent of conspiring to murder Mr Nor- man Scott.
IRAQIS repeatedly entered Kuwait to retrieve military equipment, without UN permission. Iraq had earlier withdrawn mis- siles from the south of the country after the United States and other UN Security Council members had threatned it with unspecified retribution. The warring fac- tions in Bosnia accepted in principle a peace package proposed by Lord Owen and Mr Cyrus Vance. A deputy prime minister of Bosnia had been shot by a Serb soldier at
the weekend while he was under UN pro- tection near Sarajevo airport. Angolan gov- ernment forces claimed the capture of the headquarters of the rebel Unita army, whence its leader Dr Jonas Savimbi had fled. Two of the Palestinians trapped in the freezing no-man's land in south Lebanon after being expelled by Israel were returned home, since they had been victims of mis- taken identity. Nine others of a similar sta- tus were obliged to remain, as were another 400 accused of being linked to the anti- Israel Hamas movement Renewed rioting and murder broke out in Bombay. Some 400 Haitians seeking refuge in the United States drowned off Cuba. Mr Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, visited Argentina, where both he and the Argen- tine government renewed claims to sovereignty over the Falklands. Ireland put up overnight interest rates to 100 per cent, then brought them down to 30 per cent; it also settled upon a Left-leaning coalition government after weeks of negotiations. Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz trumpeter, died aged 75. The spy Helen Kroger died in obscurity in Russia, aged 79. Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan is to marry Miss Masako Owada, the daughter of a vice-minister for
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