PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Cloning: how it works Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said on television that he agreed with the opinion of some presidents of the Bundesbank, past and present, that economic criteria for Economic and Mone- tary Union must not be fudged; Mr Wil- helm N011ing, a former board member of the Bundesbank, had said earlier, 'Even Germany is not going to meet the financial criteria laid down at Maastricht. There will have to be a fudge.' Mr Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, who had said on the wireless that the British Government was `on balance hostile' to a single currency, made a visit to Germany to dissuade Ger- mans from supporting it; he was then referred to as 'der Jude Rifkind' in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Queen entertained President Ezer Weizman of Israel to a state banquet. The British courts martial system was ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights in Stras- bourg because they lacked independence and impartiality. Sir George Young, the Secretary of State for Transport, confirmed that the privatisation of the London Under- ground would be in the Conservative mani- festo. Mr John Hume, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, said that an electoral pact between his party and Sinn Fein 'would be the equivalent of ask- ing our voters to support the killing of inno- cent human beings by the IRA'. Police found a primed mortar on a trailer at Mid- dletown, Co. Armagh. Three men impris- oned 17 years ago for the shooting of a newspaper boy, Carl Bridgewater, were released when new evidence was presented; a fourth man had died in prison. Scientists cloned a sheep by transferring genetic material from a cell into an emptied ovum and transplanting it into the womb of a sur- rogate ewe.
AFTER the death of Deng Xiaoping, the figurehead ruler of China, aged 92, it remained to be seen whether more power would be claimed by President Jiang Zemin or by the Premier, Mr Li Peng. Mrs Madeleine Albright, the American Secre- tary of State, arrived in Peking in time for the funeral, to which she, like all foreigners, was not invited. French police arrested 200 mostly Chinese illegal immigrants in the church of Saint Jean Baptiste in Belville, Paris; they had demanded papers from the government. President Boris Yeltsin said that he hoped for a compromise on the planned expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation when he meets Presi- dent Bill Clinton of the United States in March. Belarussian border guards found a packet of 300 radioactive American $100 bills being carried by a businessman from Moscow. Mr Zoran Djindjic took office as the mayor of Belgrade, which is now con- trolled by the opposition coalition, Zajed- no. The Pope said he would visit Sarajevo on 13 April and Beirut on 10 and 11 May Iraq agreed to hand over long-range missile parts to the United Nations after a visit to Baghdad by Mr Rolf Ekeus, the chief UN inspector. Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, was questioned about an alleged conspiracy behind the appointment of Mr Roni Bar-On for a short time as Attorney General. In the Zairean civil war, more than 25,000 Hottl refugees hurriedly left a makeshift camp at t, Kalima in the east of the country, to avoid advancing rebel soldiers. Mr Canaan Banana, the former president of Zimbab- we, was accused during the trial of a police- man of having committed homosexual acts, which are illegal in that country. A ferry foil of illegal immigrants sank off Eritrea, drowning 89. Thieves used a fishing-lino to hook a painting by Gustav Klimt, 'Portrait of a Lady' (1917), from the wall of a gallery in Piacenza. Three Brueghels were slashed with a nail at a museum in Ghent. A fire .at a Hindu festival in the Indian state of Ori- sa killed 120 and injured 200. A man shot seven people, one fatally, on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, then killed himself. An earthquake with a magnitude of at least 5.7 shook central and western Colombia; there were no reports of damage
Previous page
