PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Yobbery with violence.
Five convicted terrorists belonging to the Irish Republican Army and another prisoner, who had helped in an escape from Gartree prison in 1987, broke out of White- moor prison in Cambridgeshire, after cut- ting through wire and climbing a wall with a rope-ladder made from sheets. They were soon recaptured. Six out of 13 people cross- ing a covered gangway onto a Belgian ferry at Ramsgate, fell 40 feet to their deaths onto a concrete pontoon below. Base rates were raised half a percentage point to 5.75 per cent in the face of a 0.3 per cent rise in factory-gate prices last month. Headline inflation rose by 0.1 per cent to 2.4 per cent; unemployment fell by 34,000 to just over 2.5 million, still more than 9 per cent of the work force. Mr Jeremy Hanley, the chairman of the Conservative Party, described as 'clearly an incompetent response' his characterisation of a brawl at a boxing match in which chairs were thrown as 'just exuberance'. Alistair Burt, the Social Security Secretary, criticised couples who had children without marrying. Rail- way signalmen held their 17th and 18th days of strikes. There were small riots in Protestant parts of Belfast. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, visited China. There was much impertinent and ill-
informed tittle-tattle about the Queen's finances, such as a telephone bill of £766,000. The Derby is to be run next year on a Saturday, not a Sunday, since the Queen would not attend on that day. The Marquess of Bristol was put on probation for two years by Horseferry Road magis- trates after pleading guilty to possession of 0.88 grammes of heroin; a man who was fined £250 for possessing 'magic mush- rooms' by Marlborough Street magistrates said he liked eating them on toast. Jessica Tandy, who won an Oscar for her role in Driving Miss Daisy, died, aged 85. A man climbed into a lions' den at London Zoo and was mauled by a lion called Arfur that had attacked another man who had done the same thing in 1992.
THE United States agreed to greet 20,000 entry visas a year to Cubans, but only if they applied from Cuba; in return Cuba acted to stop emigrants leaving by raft; 2,000 refugees held in the US Guanta- namo Bay base broke out in protest and were returned at bayonet-point. A man died when he crashed a small aeroplane into the garden of the White House, just outside the bedroom window of Mr Bill Clinton, the President of the United States; but Mr Clinton was not at home, since the decorators were in and he was sleeping over the road. Contingents from Caribbean countries joined in US manoeuvres that are seen as a preparation for the invasion of Haiti to reinstate President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Marion Barry who was jailed for four years after taking crack cocaine won the democratic nomination for the mayoral elections in Washington in November, and is likely to be re-elected as mayor. A mil- lion people applauded the Pope's appeal for peace in the former Yugoslavia during a Mass at a racecourse outside Zagreb. Sepa- ratists won elections in Quebec and promised to hold a referendum on inde- pendence. The justice minister of Nigeria was sacked after calling new decrees extending detention without trial 'obnox- ious'. The wife of President Alberto Fuji- mori of Peru has promised to stand against him in next year's elections. In Germany, a lottery prize worth more than £17 million was shared between four winning tickets. The spacecraft Ulysses passed beneath the sun's south pole. The gross domestic prod- uct of Russia has fallen by 16.5 per cent in the first eight months of the year, though Russian production of mayonnaise rose by
Previous page
