PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Your cut-out-and-keep guide to the millennium celebrations
The Northern Ireland executive sat for the first time, although its two Democrat- ic Unionist ministers did not take their seats. Mr Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Mr David Andrew, the Foreign Minister of Ireland, signed a treaty declaring that the Republic's constitutional claim to sovereignty over Northern Ireland was at an end. The Irish Republican Army appointed a secret 'interlocutor' with General John de Chastelain, the Canadi- an monitor of arms decommissioning. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew to Chester and made a brief tour of the North of England in an attempt to counter 'stereotypes of the downtrodden North and the prosperous South'. He then tussled with the European Union over a tax which would take 20 per cent of sav- ings income at source from overseas investors, thus crippling the City of Lon- don. The government was said to be con- sidering plans to make men-only clubs illegal. Mrs Teresa Gorman was surprised not to be included on the shortlist of pos= sible Conservative candidates for Mayor of London; Mr Steven Norris was includ- ed. Alder Hey, Liverpool, the biggest chil- dren's hospital in Europe, admitted that it had removed and kept 2,000 babies'
hearts over the past few years, as had many other hospitals, without parents being aware of it. Supporters of Susan Deacon, the health minister in the Scot- tish Parliament, said she had been threat- ened with death by opponents of abortion; opposition MSPs said this was by no means the case. The Queen is to visit the Pope at the Vatican when she makes a state visit to Italy next October. A service of thanksgiving at St Paul's for the Queen Mother's 100th birthday has been set for next July.
RUSSIAN air attacks continued on Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, leaving thousands of civilians trapped and without food, too fearful to leave before a dead- line of 11 December when Russia would regard them as a legitimate target. Mexi- can police found mass graves at Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the United States, where a drugs cartel is thought to have buried its enemies, killed with the help of the Mexican police. The value of a euro fell below that of an American dollar. The World Trade Organisation did not even let as far as setting an agenda for its next round of talks when its summit broke up in disarray after a week disrupted by rioting and violent police response in Seat- tle. The Mars Polar Lander, which was meant to explore the surface of the planet, stopped sending back signals before it was due to land. Edmond Safra, a billionaire banker, died, aged 67, in a fire before dawn in his penthouse flat in Monaco; a male nurse was said by police to have con- fessed to arson. Eleven died when a four- storey block of flats in Dijon collapsed after an explosion. Ten died when a block of flats, weakened by melting snow, col- lapsed at Zernograd, in southern Russia. Five were crushed to death when a crowd leaving a snowboarding event at Innsbruck stampeded in icy conditions. Five women were found shot dead in a house in Balti- more. A man who had moved seven years ago from Laos to Sacramento, California, shot dead five of his children, then him- self; two more of his children escaped through a bathroom window. Muslim vil- lagers attacked a Christian settlement, killing 31, on Seram, one of the Spice Islands, Indonesia, where 700 have died in sectarian violence this year. China denied it was building submarines armed with nuclear missiles capable of hitting New York. Mr Roger Clinton, a singer who is the brother of the President of the United States, gave a concert in North Korea.
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