PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The age of consent.
Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, flew to Pittsburgh to find his roots and to speak to Mr Bill Clinton, the President of the United States. Among the subjects of their conversation were Ireland, Bosnia and world trade. The Attorney-General, Sir Nicholas Lyell, contradicted evidence given by Mr Michael Heseltine, the President of the Board of Trade, to the Scott Inquiry into the supply of arms to Iraq. Mr Hesel- tine had said that Sir Nicholas's advice to him had varied at different times about what evidence should be withheld for rea- sons of security; Sir Nicholas said it had been consistent. Nine men died in a fire at a pornographic cinema at Smithfield; a man was arrested after walking into a police station in Walthamstow. British com- panies put full-page advertisements in broadsheet newspapers in an attempt to placate the eccentric Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr Muhamad Mahathir, who had threatened to break off contracts with British companies carrying out jobs for his government because British newspapers had accused him of corruption. A parlia- mentary select committee on Northern Ire- land is soon to be set up. Mr John Gum- mer, the Environment Secretary, became a Catholic. A thief got into the Prince of
Wales's rooms in St James's Palace and stole some of his cufflinks and things. Sir Harold Acton, the aesthete, died, aged 89. J. L. Carr, the novelist, died, aged 81. Tom Skeffington-Lodge, the former Labour member for Bedford, who once pressed Sir Stafford Cripps on the availability of bathing trunks, died, aged 89.
AMERICAN fighters shot down four Ser- bian aircraft which had been bombing Novi Travnik in Bosnia. In Washington, Croats and Muslims signed an accord to form a federation based on cantons in Bosnia. Meanwhile, Serb infantry advanced on Maglaj, where 19,000 Muslims are crammed into an area of five square miles. An Israeli extremist settler shot dead more than 40 Palestinians at worship in a mosque in Hebron. Middle Eastern peace talks col- lapsed. More than 20 more Palestinians died in the following days as unrest spread through the occupied territories and Israel itself. The Israeli government released 800 Palestinian prisoners and promised to restrict the most militant Jewish settlers. A bomb in a Catholic Maronite church in Junieh, Lebanon, killed 10 people as they were receiving Communion. The Russian
parliament voted to pardon the perpetra- tors of the plot to overthrow President Yeltsin's rule last year; Mr Yeltsin sacked the head of the Russian Federal Counter- Intelligence Service (the successor body to the KGB). Moscow expelled the station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency in retaliation for the expulsion of a Russian intelligence officer from Washington fol- lowing the discovery of Russia's payments to a spy within the CIA. The Russians also arrested a Russian for spying for Britain. Sir Leon Brittan, the European Communi- ty's trade commissioner, told China that it should not use trade as a weapon in its dis- pute with Britain over Hong Kong. Sweden, Finland and Austria agreed on terms for joining the EC; Norway didn't quite make it. Mr Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, talked to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Party, but with no great cordiality; Inkatha said that it might after all take part in the forthcoming elections. Uruguay agreed to the extradition to France of Jacques Medecins, the former mayor of Nice, wanted on corruption charges. French paratroops were sent to Cameroon
after a dispute on the Nigerian border.
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