PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The Conservatives said that the election was about saving the pound; for Labour, Mr Tony Blair. the Prime Minister, said that he was confident that in a referendum some time during the next parliament people would vote in favour of adopting the euro. Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, indicated that the question in a referendum could be: 'Should Britain be in the single currency — yes or no?' Mr Francis Maude, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, said the question ought to be: The government propose that the pound should be replaced as Britain's national currency by the euro. Do you agree?' Labour put up posters of Mr William Hague, the leader of the Conservative party, with Lady Thatcher's hair superimposed round his face. About 500 Asian youths threw petrol bombs at police during seven hours of rioting by night in the Glodwick area of Oldham, Lancashire; about 100 attacked a pub called the Live and Let Live. There was a smaller riot the next night. In Portadown, County Armagh, 57 police were injured in rioting after an Orange Parade near the Garvaghy Road when republicans threw paving slabs, fireworks, acid and petrol bombs. Retailers said they expected the price of petrol to go up after the election to more than £4 a
gallon. Outbreaks of foot-and-mouth spread around Settle, North Yorkshire, and Clitheroe, Lancashire; after 14 weeks of the epidemic there had been 1,661 outbreaks, with 3,077,000 livestock slaughtered. Nearly three million of the 24 million census forms distributed in April have not been returned, Vodafone, the mobile telephone company, announced full-year profits of £4 billion, but its shares fell slightly in reaction to the £10 billion it would need to spend on setting up thirdgeneration networks. The BBC World Service is to end short-wave broadcasts to North America and Australia: it can still be heard through the Internet.
M. LIONEL JOSPIN, the Prime Minister of France, made a speech outlining his vision for the European Union; he said he wanted a common police force, criminal law justice system, immigration policy, corporate taxation regime, foreign policy, and in the meantime a rapid reaction force under central control. The next day Mr Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, said in a speech that the euro might fail unless tax and spending policies of member states were brought under tighter EU control. Mr Gerhard Schroeder, the chancellor of Germany, suggested a mora torium on debate about immigration in next year's election campaign, so that agreement could be more easily reached on a new immigration law this year; Germany's population of 82 million is expected to fall to 59 million by 2050, leaving great labour shortages. Mr William Burns, the American special envoy to the Middle East, had a meeting with Mr Yasser Arafat, the President of the Palestinian entity, and with Mr Aridl Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel; he hoped to persuade both sides to agree to the provisions of the Mitchell Report. Car bombs exploded in Jerusalem. At a wedding party in the city a dance floor collapsed, hurling hundreds of guests down through three storeys, killing 23 and injuring 300. Macedonian forces burnt villages where Albanian-speakers lived, driving thousands to flee across the border into Yugoslavia. Shanghai is to raise fines for jaywalking to £17, a week's wages, in an attempt to reduce traffic accidents in the city, which claimed 1,490 lives last year. The Very Rev. Emmanuel Milingo, aged 71, the retired Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lusaka, incurred canonical penalties after marrying Miss Marie Sung, aged 43, in a group wedding ceremony held by the Unification Church at the Hilton, New York City.
CSH
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