8 SEPTEMBER 2001, Page 6

M r David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, wondered what to do

about all the people coming from France into Britain and then claiming asylum; on one day, 44 refugees rushed into the Channel Tunnel after breaking through barbed-wire fencing; on another day 100 from the nearby Red Cross camp at Sangatte eluded security men to reach the railway at the French end of the tunnel. The government set about trying to recruit thousands of special constables whom it would pay £6.50 an hour, if it could get the agreement of the Police Federation. Little Catholic children were taken by parents to the Holy Cross primary school in north Belfast each morning through jeering Protestants of the Glenbryn enclave, separated from them by police in riot gear with armoured vehicles; by night there was rioting. Loyalist terrorist sympathisers blamed the Royal Ulster Constabulary for guarding the families, and active Republicans made use of the scenes of confrontation through their Own propaganda outlets. After 28 weeks of the foot-andmouth epidemic there had been 2,000 outbreaks with 3,802,000 livestock slaughtered on 9,311 farms; in the 1967 epidemic 433,987 animals had been slaughtered; in Taiwan, where an epidemic began in 1997, 4,037,014 animals, mostly pigs have

been slaughtered. Lord Hamlyn, the publisher and patron of the Labour party, died, aged 75. Sir Arthur Gilbert, the property developer and patron of the arts, died, aged 88. The chairman and chief executive of Marconi resigned after the company announced the loss of another 2,000 jobs. British Airways is to cut 1,800 jobs by the end of the year to save money. BT Wireless, the mobile telephone arm of British Telecommunications, adopted the new name of 02; it decreed that the name should be pronounced Oh-two in all countries.

AUSTRALIA succeeded in preventing 438 migrants, mostly from Afghanistan, setting foot on Australian territory; the migrants were transferred from a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, which had rescued them from their sinking craft, and sent on a troopship to New Guinea from which they would be resettled in New Zealand and the Pacific island of Nauru. The Islamic trial of eight foreign-aid workers accused of preaching Christianity was held in Afghanistan. The United States and Israel pulled out of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, because of what General Colin Powell, the United States secretary of state, called the 'hateful language' of a draft declaration which referred to 'the increase of racist practices of Zionism' and named only one country in its text, Israel. A Palestinian disguised as an observant Jew blew himself up during the morning rush-hour outside the French school in Jerusalem, wounding 15 people. Mr Mahmoud Abu Zaid, the Egyptian minister for water resources, said that when the country's population rose above 90 million, which is expected to happen in 2025, its allocation of water from the Nile would not suffice. The big electronics company Hewlett-Packard is to merge with the big computer manufacturers Compaq to make an enterprise valued at about .€17 billion. The Mexican government expropriated 27 of the country's 59 sugar plants, which had fallen badly into debt. Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon who performed the first heart transplant in 1967, died of a heart attack, aged 78. In a publicity brochure Bonn University boasted that one of its wellknown alumni was Joseph Goebbels. A performance of the composer John Cage's 'Organ2/ASLSP' began in Halberstadt, Germany; it is due to finish in 639 years' time, the first chord being completed on 5 January 2003.

CSH