PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
First controller: 'Right, Tony, good! Ignore the newpaper creep! Go ahead, look sincere, pick up the baby and kiss it. . now, move on . . . keep smilling .
Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, dismissed as 'total and complete junk' accu- sations in the Guardian that he had delayed removing Mr Tim Smith as a junior minis- ter after learning he had perhaps taken £18,000 offered him by Mr Mohamed Al Fayed; the newspaper had printed selected parts of evidence sent to it in an inquiry by Sir Gordon Downey, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who has not yet reported. The whole matter, under the heading of 'sleaze', acquired impenetrable ramifications as the campaign for the gen- eral election on 1 May got under way. Mr Tony Blair, the leader of the Labour party, told the News of the World, 'If I break my promises on tax, on not raising basic and top rate tax, on trade unions and these essential things that I have said we will do, we are gone. We are probably finished for- ever.' Labour also said it would legislate to give a right to negotiate pay and conditions to unions representing more than 50 per cent of workforces. The post of chairman of the Tote is to remain vacant after the retirement of Lord Wyatt of Weeford in April because Mr Jack Straw, the shadow Home Secretary, refused to approve the government's choice; selection will begin afresh after the election. A 40-foot tunnel dug from an Irish Republican Army H- block jail unit at the Maze prison, Co. Antrim, was suddenly discovered by offi- cers; 45 tons of rubble from it had been hidden. Sir V.S. Pritchett, the writer, died, aged 96. The Revd W. Awdry, the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, died, aged 85. The Scout Association declared itself favourable to numbering openly homosexu- al men amongst its leaders. A committee of senior army officers sat to consider ways in which they too might employ homosexuals. A judge sentenced two crown court jurors to 30 days in prison for refusing to give a verdict. Cinemas in Britain sold 112 million tickets in 1996, an increase of 16 per cent over 1995.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton of the United States met President Boris Yeltsin of Rus- sia in Helsinki. The three main results were: Russia will attend the summits of the G7 (group of seven industrialised nations), to be renamed 'Summit of the Eight'; Rus- sia will join the World Trade Organisation in 1998, all being well; a treaty will be drawn up between Russia and the 16 mem- bers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisa- tion. President Mobutu of Zaire returned from France, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer, in an attempt to pre- vent the country being taken over by his rival Mr Laurent icabila; he began by sack- ing his Prime Minister. A bomber belong- ing to the Arab extremist group Harnas killed three people and himself in Tel Aviv; Israeli police opened fire on Palestinian protesters, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were blockaded and the Israeli cabi- net voted to stop talks with the Palestini- ans. Islamic extremists cut the throats of seven women during the hour of prayer in the village of Ouzra, 60 miles south of Algiers. Four men were beheaded in Saudi Arabia for robbery and one for drug-smug- gling. A mob of Buddhist monks desecrated a mosque in Rangoon after a Muslim assaulted a woman. The United States cut off aid to Belarus after demonstrators In the capital, Minsk, were beaten by police; the first secretary of the US embassy, Serge Alexandrov, was arrested at an anti-govern- ment rally. Mr George Bush, the former US President, who is 72, made his first parachute jump since the war. The Domini- can Republic offered asylum to a group of Tupac Amaru guerrillas to solve the impasse over the 72 hostages they have been holding in the Japanese ambassador s residence in Lima all year. The Dalai Lama visited Taiwan much to the annoyance of China. An 18-month-old boy playing on a railway at Nagasaki was unharmed when a train passed over him. Strong winds closed Funchal airport on Madeira for two days, stranding 5,000 holidaymakers. CSH
Previous page
