PORTRAIT OF TITE WEEK
There will be 200 more television channels by the autumn Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, reshuffled the Cabinet, admitting to it Mr Peter Mandelson as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; he will not use the title President of the Board of Trade, but he will be made a Privy Councillor. Mr John ('Jack') Cunningham became government policy 'enforcer' as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- caster, being replaced as Minister of Agri- culture Fisheries and Food by Mr Nick Brown, who is replaced as Chief Whip by Mrs Ann Taylor, who is replaced as Leader of the House of Commons by Mrs Mar- garet Beckett. Miss Harriet Harman was sacked as Secretary of State for Social Security, being replaced by Mr Alistair Darling. Mr Frank Field resigned as Minis- ter responsible for Welfare Reform, in a rage at the government's lack of enthusi- asm for his ideas. Mr Stephen Byers became Chief Secretary to the Treasury; Lady Jay of Paddington became Leader of the Lords instead of Lord Richard, who was sacked and said, 'I shall now have to earn my living in another way.' Mr Blair is not this summer taking his family to stay in the Tuscan villa belonging to Mr Geoffrey Robinson, but to a villa a couple of miles away belonging to Prince Girolamo Strozzi, who, with his family, will have to move out for the duration; but Mr Robinson was retained as a junior minister. Sir Thomas Legg's report on the supply of arms to Sier- ra Leone criticised Mr Peter Penfold, the High Commissioner, though he had acted to the satisfaction of the rightful ruler of Sierra Leone and of the British govern- ment. Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, announced easier criteria for 30,000 asy- lum-seekers still awaiting rulings on their applications from before July 1993; most would now be admitted. Trains costing £100 million for the Jubilee line of the London Underground were found to have the wrong sized wheels. Lord Snowdon, aged 68, was reported to be the father of a boy born to Miss Melanie Cable-Alexan- der, a journalist with Country Life. A man was shot and badly wounded in a con- frontation with armed police at Snitton, near Ludlow, Shropshire. R.W. 'Tiny' Row- land, a businessman with fingers in many African pies, the former proprietor of the Observer and unsuccessful rival of Mr Mohamed Fayed for the ownership of Har- rods, died, aged 80.
YUGOSLAV tanks and heavy artillery shelled positions controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Army as tens of thousands of Albanian-speaking civilians fled the fight- ing. President Boris Yeltsin sacked Nikolai Kovalyev, the head of domestic security, four days after an attempted assassination of Mr Asian Maskhadov, the President of Chechnya. President Bill Clinton of the United States was subpoenaed to appear in person before a court investigating allega- tions of his perjury with regard to claims about the sexual activity of Miss Monica Lewinsky, who was offered immunity from prosecution if she gave her own testimony. A deranged man shot dead two policemen in the Capitol, Washington DC, and was himself shot and gravely wounded. A cab driver shot four other cab drivers at Dallas- Fort Worth airport. Dallas marked 25 days in a row with night minimum temperatures above 80F. In Yemen, three nuns of the Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa were shot dead by a gunman in a car passing their clinic in Hodeida. Four men were shot dead in a tearoom in the diplo- matic quarter in Berne. A man fell five floors down a lift shaft in Seattle, Washing- ton, and was found alive a week later. A miner was found alive ten days after a rock fall underground at a talc mine at Lassing, in Styria, Austria. Four million people struggled to reinforce flood barriers on the Yangtze, which rose to its highest since 1954. Eight elephants were struck by light- ning and killed at the Xishuangbanna reserve in south-western China.
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