PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
A serious outbreak of cuffing.
The Tories did very badly in the elec- tions for the European Parliament, but not so badly that Mr Major was forced to resign; he made do with promising to sack some people from the Cabinet. The results were: Labour 62 (with 44 per cent of the vote); Conservative 18 (27.8 per cent); Lib- eral Democrat 2 (16 per cent); others 5. The turnout was lower than ever. Mr Adri- an Sanders, the Liberal Democrat candi- date for Devon and Plymouth, burst into tears when the Tories held the seat after more than 10,203 people voted for the rival Literal Democrat Party. Mrs Edwina Cur- rie failed to gain a seat after one of the biggest swings against a candidate in a Tory constituency. Mrs Neil Kinnock was elected with a majority of 122,247. In the birthday honours Sir Alec Guinness, the actor, was made a Companion of Honour, as was Lord Owen, the politician; life peers includ- ed Professor Sir Randolph Quirk, the philologist; among knights were Ludovic Kennedy, the writer; Simon Rattle, the con- ductor; Tim Rice, the composer, and Bobby Charlton, the footballer. The Duke of Edinburgh said that absolute poverty did not exist in Britain. Mr John Patten, the Education Secretary, sent out 20 million copies of a 'Parent's Charter' to each house in the land, including those of elderly spin- sters and mental patients being cared for in the community. Signalmen halted trains in a 24-hour strike. Kitty Muggeridge died, aged 90. A policeman was fined £100 and told to pay £50 compensation to a 14-year- old delinquent he had caught and slapped across the face. Tottenham Hotspur foot- ball team was fined £600,000, banned from the next FA Cup competition and docked 12 points by the Football Association for some dodgy business with money in the late 1980s; nothing illegal had occurred.
NORTH KOREA left the International Atomic Energy Authority and again threat- ened to go to war; it had refused to let inspectors know whether it was making a nuclear bomb. Mr Jimmy Carter, the for- mer President of the United States visited both North and South Korea. Mr and Mrs Bill Clinton were separately questioned under oath by the special prosecutor inves- tigating the Whitewater property affair. Members of the Organisation of African unity met in Tunis to decide what to do about Rwanda, where thousands more were being killed. A month's ceasefire was agreed in Bosnia, but did not cover Mus- lims who fought each other in the north. Austria voted to join the European Com- munity. In EC elections the socialists did badly in France, Spain, Italy and Germany; in France the new anti-federalist L'Autre Europe Party, supported by Sir James Goldsmith did well; the ruling Christian Democrats did well in Germany. In both Nigeria and Zaire the de facto presidents were defied by opposition leaders who said they had been validly elected. The founder of the Bank of Commerce and Credit Inter- national, Agha Hassan Abedi, was jailed for 14 years in the United Arab Emirates over the matter of a missing $6,000 million. An American court found Exxon negligent in the matter of the sinking of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker; those who suffered dam- age plan now to enter claims for some $15,000 million. The Zapatista National lib- eration Army rejected peace overtures from the Mexican government. Rabbi Men- achem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher leader who some thought might be the Messiah, died, aged 92. Twenty Cubans broke into the German embassy in Havana seeking asylum; 100 who had broken into the Bel- gian embassy were still there. German post- men went on strike. Lions in Tanzania were said to have contracted 'Mad Lion Disease'. Henry Mancini, Oscar-winning composer of such hit songs as 'Moon River' and the theme tune for the Pink Panther films, died,
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