PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Manufacturing output fell in the first two quarters of the year, the technical indicator of a recession. The Irish Republican Army put proposals on decommissioning its arms (without saying when) to the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, headed by General John de Chastelain, which responded by declaring: 'We believe that this proposal initiates a process that will put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use.. A few days previously an 881b car bomb had been set off by the Real IRA in Ealing, a suburb in west London, at midnight outside pubs and clubs still thronged with people; seven were injured. The British and Irish governments gave 6 August as a deadline for a package of measures to be accepted by parties which support the Belfast agreement; it was rejected by the Ulster Unionists. A Kurdish refugee from Turkey was stabbed to death on the Sighthill estate, Glasgow, which has 1,500 asylum seekers out of 4,500 residents. The government continued its assault on British farmers by suggesting through Lord Whitty that public funds would not be used to compensate them for slaughtered cattle in the event of a future epidemic of foot-and-mouth. Notice was brought to 37 farmers who had been awarded more than £1 million in compensation. After 24 weeks of the current epidemic there had been 1,928 outbreaks with
3,686,000 livestock slaughtered. Lord Haskins was brought to the fore as 'rural recovery coordinator'; two weeks earlier he had said he expected 'there would be half the number of farmers in 20 years'. The Prince of Wales fell off his horse while playing polo, was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital. The Queen Mother celebrated her 101st birthday two days after undergoing a blood transfusion in hospital because of anaemia. Princess Margaret was seen to be in ill health at a gathering for the birthday, sitting in a wheelchair, with dark glasses, a swollen face, a blanket about her and an arm in a sling. Lord Longford, the politician, anti-pornography campaigner and friend of prisoners, died, aged 95. Larry Adler, the harmonica player, died, aged 87. Passengers were delayed in the hot sun for more than four hours in a train from London bound for York when the electricity failed, preventing the air-conditioning from working and the lavatories from flushing; the windows would not open and staff would not allow doors to be opened.
A PALESTINIAN wounded eight Israeli soldiers and two civilians with an assault rifle in Tel Aviv; he was fatally wounded in turn by an Israeli policeman. In a helicopter strike Israeli forces killed a Hamas guerrilla in the West Bank; about 50 chosen guerrillas have been killed in a similar way, and Israel this week published the names of seven more that it wanted the Palestinian administration to arrest. The Taliban Islamic extremist government of Afghanistan arrested eight foreigners and 16 Afghans working for an aid agency called Shelter Now International, and accused them of attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity. A peace agreement in Macedonia was shelved and five Albanianspeaking guerrillas were shot dead in the capital. Skopje. A farmer at Kwekwe, 150 miles south-west of Harare, died after being attacked with an axe, the ninth white farmer to be killed since March last year. Checks by British officials at Prague airport aimed at reducing the numbers seeking asylum in Britain were suspended after the weekly applications declined from 204 to 12. Fire killed 25 patients who were chained to their beds in a private mental home in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Mr Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea, enjoyed a nine-day train journey through Siberia, during which he ate his favourite meal of donkey meat, before visiting Lenin's tomb and meeting President Vladimir Putin of Russia. A pensioner whose house stands 17 feet from the Osaka railway line in Japan was arrested after 2,300 cases of pebbles being fired at trains had been reported; police found a catapult and a train timetable.
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