PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr Major urged the resumption of all- party talks on the future of Northern Ire- land during a visit to the province. Prince Philip represented the royal family at the memorial service for the two boys mur- dered by the IRA in Warrington; President Robinson of Ireland also attended. The Princess of Wales did not, having been refused permission by Buckingham Palace. She rang up two of the parents, instead. The running of the Grand National was declared void after two false starts. On the second occasion the starting tape was wrapped around a jockey's neck, but all save nine of the runners failed to see the starter's upraised red flag summoning them back; six finished. Bookmakers gave back stakes and the Jockey Club instigated an inquiry. Peter Scudamore, the champion jockey, retired, aged 34. A 15-year-old hunt saboteur died under the wheels of a horse- box in Cambridgeshire. The French trawler, La Calypso, was arrested off Guernsey six days after three Navy fishery protection officers were abducted in it. A French trawlerman, M. Mesnage, was fined £3,750 for fishing illegally off Alderney. The Brent oilfield, in the North Sea, is to be extended, with the gain of 3,000 jobs. The drug AZT, sold by Wellcome as Retrovir, was found in tests to do nothing to prevent the onset of Aids among HIV carriers. Wellcome's
share price slumped. Mr Kenny Everett, the television broadcaster, announced he was carrying HIV. Lord Flowers, the chair- man of a committee which recommended reducing university degree courses to two years, said that the response of Oxford had been `Sod off' and that of Cambridge, `Sod off, please.' Lord Zuckerman, the zoologist and scientific adviser to governments, notably in wartime, died, aged 88. Hun- dreds of protesters marched on Broadcast- ing House to express opposition to BBC plans to switch Radio 4 to FM. A mother whose personal income amounted to £9.65 family allowance, was fined £200 under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act for not returning two library books. An unem- ployed man in Wales was fined £1,200 for dropping litter. A man fell 200 feet from a block of flats in Salford onto a car, which was crushed; he walked away saying he felt 'fine'. Another man fell 50 feet head-first into a rubbish bin in Prittlewell, Essex, sus- taining slight injuries.
THE United States promised Russia some $1 billion of aid when President Yeltsin met President Clinton in Vancouver; the package includes direct food aid and farm credits for the purchase of grain. Some of the amounts announced had already been pledged by President Bush. United Nations relief forces attempted 'with little hope of success' to evacuate 15,000 people from the besieged Muslim town of Srebrenica in Bosnia. The UN Security Council voted to enforce an air-exclusion zone for Serbian aircraft over Bosnia, though this was reck- oned to make little difference. An explo- sion at a nuclear testing plant at Tomsh-7 in western Siberia spread a radioactive cloud over hundreds of square yards. At least 43 cracked pressure-vessel mountings on French nuclear power plants were admitted to be cracked. Students in Mali rioted over the level of their grants. Abi- mael Guzman, the convicted leader of the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas in Peru, was transferred in a cage welded onto the deck of a naval vessel to a purpose-built prison where he is meant to spend the rest of his days. The Archbishop of Santa Fe resigned after allegations of sexual misdemeanours with women. The three children of Princess Caroline of Monaco were declared legiti- mate by the Pope. The Count of Barcelona, son of King Alfonso XIII and father of King Juan Carlos of Spain, though never king himself, died, aged 79. A 17-year-old contestant in a Czech-television beauty contest declared that her ambition was to become a public prosecutor in order to cleanse her home town of dark-skinned
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