PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`You mean there's someone else?'
More than 2,000 people who had been tested for cancer in Birmingham over the past eight years are to have their cases re- examined after a couple of dozen misdiag- noses were discovered; a 20-year-old physi- cal education student had half her leg amputated, though it has now been found that she never had cancer, and others were given unnecessary chemotherapy. The Gov- ernment made plans to privatise some more prisons. Judge Tumim, the chief inspector of prisons criticised the Wolds private prison for men on remand because inmates were allowed to stay in bed too long and to sunbathe. The Government hinted at various ways to get round the Lords' amendment which would allow British Rail to bid for contracts following its privatisation. The Timex factory in Dundee was suddenly closed; there had been pickets at it for six months during a trade dispute and the American company had already announced that production would cease by the end of the year. A small bomb was found and rendered safe in the City of London. Three men were arrested by police investigating illegal supplies of fire arms to loyalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Freedom Fighters said they 'deeply regretted' killing Mrs Marie Theresa Dowds De Mogollon in error for her husband. The Marquess of Blandford was fined £1,000 for dodging taxi fares. The Revd Anthony Freeman was sacked from his training post by the Bishop of Chich- ester after writing a book declaring he does not believe in God; he retains for a year his living as priest in charge of St Mark's, Sta- plefield, Sussex. Nigel Short, the challenger for the World Chess Championship accused the champion, Garri Kasparov, of having had KGB connections. Kasparov denounced this as 'lies'. E. P. Thompson, the author of The Making of the English Working Class and a campaigner against nuclear weapons, died, aged 69.
ISRAEL AND the Palestine Liberation Organisation agreed in principle to limited self-rule for Jericho and the Gaza Strip. The move was approved by the Israeli cabinet after secret talks in Norway between Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, and PLO representatives. The next step is to be negotiation of the recog- nition by Israel of the PLO and by the PLO of Israel's right to exist. Talks resumed in Geneva on the parceling-out of Bosnia. The Serbians refused to cede more land than the Owen-Stoltenberg map specified; the Bosnian Parliament (mainly Muslim) refused to accept as little land as the map gave them. Eight transport planes turned back from a mission to drop aid supplies on
the besieged city of Mostar for fear of attack. Spanish UN troops were freed from Mostar where they had been prevented from leaving after delivery aid. United States troops, moving against soldiers loyal to General Mohammed Farah Aidid in Mogadishu, were obliged to release eight men they had arrested when it emerged that they were United Nations employees. Nigeria made it illegal to declare valid the election of 12 June that it had annulled; at the same time its government entered into talks with trade unions which had called a general strike in protest at the annulment. Price increases of 400 per cent were imposed in Ukraine. Famine in Angola got worse as the civil war continued. Military police in Rio de Janeiro shot more than 20 dead in a shanty town after a disagreement about payments from drug-dealers. Seven candidates for the Pakistani elections were disqualified after claims that they were involved with drug-producers. A cat jumped onto the lap of a pilot after stowing away on an Air Zimbabwe flight from Harare to Gatwick; Save the Children pointed out that anyone who wanted to save the cat from destruction by paying its quarantine could supply immunisation for 200 African children for the same price.
CSH
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