PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Some suggested designs for the Millennium Dome Downing Street announced the forma- tion of an 'action group' of civil servants who will meet at the Foreign Office to deal with the plight of the island of Montserrat, which has been devastated by a volcanic eruption. Miss Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, had declined an invitation to visit the island, the 4,000 remaining inhabitants of which had been alarmed by Mr George Foulkes, her Minister of State, speaking of an expected `cataclysmic eruption' of the volcano. The islanders were offered £2,400 each if they left, and, when Mr David Brandt, the new Chief Minister of Montserrat, complained that this was not enough, Miss Short said: `They say 10,000, double, treble, and then think of another number. It will be golden elephants next.' In an interview with Le Monde, Diana, Princess of Wales, speaking of life in Britain, said: 'I think in my posi- tion any sane person would have left long ago. But I cannot. I have my sons.' The Department of the Environment wrote to local authorities urging the construction of extra incinerators to cope with the 800,000 cows more than 30 months old due to be slaughtered this year; 350,000 tons of bone, flesh and tallow are already in storage. Mr Peter Mandelson, the Minister without Portfolio, suddenly gave a contract to roof the Millennium Dome in Greenwich to an American company, which will use a coat- ing of polytetrafluoroethylene, instead of to German contractors, which had planned to use polyvinyl chloride at half the cost. The National Audit Office found that the Min- istry of Defence had made a loss of between £77 million and £139 million by the sale of 57,000 married quarters. From September next year, supermarkets will be able to sell paracetamol and aspirins in packets of no more than 16 tablets. Only one man was shot at the Notting Hill Carni- val, and not fatally.
AN IRISH High Court judge, after a judi- cial inquiry into the gift by a businessman, Mr Ben Dunne, of more than £1 million to Mr Charles Haughey, the former prime minister of Ireland, has sent papers to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Mr F.W. de Klerk, the former president of South Africa, resigned as the head of the National Party and retired from politics. Egon Krenz, the last communist ruler of East Germany, was sentenced to six years in jail for the manslaughter of those killed trying to escape across the Berlin Wall. In the part of Bosnia-Herzegovina controlled by Bosnian Serbs, troops from the Nato-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) stood by out- side police stations at Banja Luka lest sup- porters of the former president Radovan Karadzic overthrew President Biljana Playsic. Mr Kenneth Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, was grazed on the head and Dr Roger Chongwe, the leader of the Liberal Progressive Party, wounded by one bullet fired by a policeman taking part in the breaking-up of an opposition rally. A bomb on a train and two massacres in vil- lages left a further 100 or so dead in Alge- ria; dozens a week have been killed this year through action by extremist Muslims. Sweden was buffeted by stories of how more than 60,000 people were sterilised on eugenic grounds under a law repealed only in 1975. More than a million people attend- ed a Mass said by the Pope on the race- course at Longchamp. The entire state of Sarawak on Borneo was enveloped in the worst haze in memory, thought to be the combination of car exhaust and smoke from forest fires. The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh plans to raise mongoos- es and peacocks to kill snakes following the death of 40 people from bites in the last three months.
CSH
Previous page
