PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
IRA QUIZ TIME There are ten weapons hidden in the IRA stronghold. Can you find them? The winner gets a candlelit dinner with Peter Mandelson General John de Chastelain reported to the British and Irish governments on the lack of signs from the Irish Republican Army that it was decommissioning arms; the report was not immediately published. But Mr David Trimble, the First Minister of Northern Ireland and the leader of the Ulster Unionist party, said that it meant that the British government would have to suspend the Northern Ireland executive and assembly and review the Good Friday Agreement, but the government hesitated. Dr Harold Shipman, of Hyde, Greater Manchester, was sentenced to 15 life sen- tences for the murder of 15 elderly women patients; it was thought that dozens more had died in his care. Mr Andrew Penning- ton, a constituency worker, was killed and Mr Nigel Jones, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, was injured by a man with a samurai sword. Mr Peter Kilfoyle suddenly resigned as a junior defence minister; he was succeeded by Dr Lewis Moonie, a psy- chiatrist. Mr Michael Portillo was made shadow chancellor 68 days after his re-elec- tion to Parliament; Mr John Redwood was cast out on to the back benches. A 71-year- old woman was kept waiting on a trolley for nearly 41 hours before receiving treatment at the Northwick Park Hospital, west Lon- don. A judge rejected an application for an appeal against the decision by Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, to disallow the extradition of General Augusto Pinochet on health grounds; but a renewed applica- tion is to be heard by the Divisional Court on 7 February. The Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland entered a bid- ding competition to gain control of the National Westminster Bank. The New Mil- lennium Experience Company will open the Dome at Greenwich on Friday and Satur- day evenings; it is expected to get a £60 mil- lion loan from the Millennium Commission, drawn from lottery revenues. A mining company in search of gold is to continue exploratory drillings in the Crediton Trough basaltic region of Devon. Mike Tyson (who was paid £5 million) beat Julius Francis, the British heavyweight champion (who was paid £350,000), in four minutes three sec- onds at a boxing arena in Manchester.
MR Jorg Haider, the leader of Austria's Freedom party, formed a coalition govern- ment with the People's party, after each party won 52 seats in the 183-seat parlia- ment. The European Union threatened to break off relations with Austria. The Dominica Labour party is to form a coali- tion with its former rivals, the conservative Dominica Freedom party, after overturning the rule of the United Workers' party in an election fought partly on Labour's promise to abandon the sale of Dominican pass- ports to foreigners. Russian troops secured most of the ruins of Grozny. Mr Wim Duisenberg, the president of the European Central Bank, said it would not be possible for Britain to join the single currency for 'some time, to say the least'. The euro reached its lowest rate against the dollar (below parity) and the pound (at 60p). Petrol stations ran out of diesel in Zimbabwe, where the state-run oil company is in a financial crisis. A Kenya Airways Airbus 310 crashed into the sea off the Ivory Coast, killing 169; 10 were rescued alive. An Alaska Airlines flight with 88 aboard crashed into the sea off California. A dele- gation from Norwich took part in a ceremo- ny to mark the rebuilding, expected to take a year, of a bridge over the Danube at Novi Sad, destroyed last year by bombers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Thirteen pirates sang football songs on their way to execution in China. Hundreds of women attempted to register as voters in Kuwait, where only men have the vote. Mr Andrzej Lepper, a radical farmers' political leader, faces prosecution by state officials for call- ing Poland's President a 'sluggard'.
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