PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Peter Mandelson has visited Disneyland to get ideas for his Dome ler Scottish newspapers decided that the law in that country allowed them to publish the name of Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, as the father of the 17-year-old who had been arrested on suspicion of sell- ing a little bit of cannabis (in a set-up by the Mirror), an injunction preventing the English press following suit was withdrawn. Protestant paramilitaries in the Maze prison voted to discontinue support for the peace negotiations arranged by Dr Mar- jorie Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; their action followed the murder of Billy Wright, the Loyalist Volun- teer Force leader, in the prison and the subsequent retaliatory murder of two republicans outside. Police made safe a 3001b car bomb left at Banbridge, Co. Down. Mr Chris Patten and 11 other Tory Europhiles, including Lord Howe, Mr Ken- neth Clarke and Mr Michael Heseltine, wrote a joint letter to the Independent criti- cising the opposition to early Economic and Monetary Union expressed by Mr William Hague, the leader of the opposition. Between 18 December and 2 January, Essex police tested 11,448 drivers for alco- hol consumption; of those only 342 were over the legal limit; in Scotland 200,000 were tested in five weeks, of whom only about 1,000 had exceeded the limit. The government proposed lowering the limit to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, from 80 mg. Mr Peter Mandelson, the Min- ister without Portfolio, visited Disney World in Florida to get ideas for the Mil- lennium Dome and showed enthusiasm for what he saw; but he also claimed that 'the impact of Christianity on Western civilisa- tion will be central to the Millennium Expe- rience', as he likes to call it. Britain was found to have 27 per cent of all Europe's wrens. Westland sold an order for 15 heli- copters to Canada for £200 million. The Ladbroke Group bought the 891 Coral's betting shops from Bass for £376 million. Frank Muir, the broadcaster and scriptwrit- er, died, aged 77. Some 150,000 tickets to view, from the far shore, the island grave of Diana, Princess of Wales, at Althorp sold at £9.50 a head.
THE MURDER of villagers by presumed Islamic extremists in Algeria proceeded apace, with 400 in one week and perhaps 300 the next; 117 died in the village of Mek- nasse alone. A French spokesman suggest- ed that the Algerian government ought to find a way to stop the murders, which have totalled perhaps 75,000 since January 1992. President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya was elected for a fifth term after elections noted for irregularities. Mr Kenneth Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, was put under house arrest over supposed links with a coup attempt by drunken officers last Octo- ber. Mr P.W. Botha, the former president of South Africa, is to be prosecuted for refusing to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mr Valdas Adamkus, aged 71, who has spent most of his working life in America, was elected President of Lithuania. America's National Space Agency sent a spacecraft called Prospector to the Moon, where it will stay in orbit for a year surveying the surface and looking to see if there is any ice there before crash-landing; on board was an ounce of the ashes of Eugene Shoemaker, the discoverer of 32 comets. Sonny Bono, half of the 1960s duo Sonny and Cher, died in a skiing accident, aged 62. Helen Wills Moody, eight times women's singles cham- pion at Wimbledon, died, aged 91. A 60- year-old football fan from St Louis, Mis- souri, shot dead his 26-year-old son for standing in front of the television when there was a game on. Vandals sawed the head off the Little Mermaid statue at Copenhagen; it had last been beheaded in 1964. Sox, the White House cat, spat at Buddy, Mr Bill Clinton's new labrador.
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