R ail strikes continued and fares rose as Mr Tony Blair,
the Prime Minister, asked Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC, to draw up a report on transport. Mr Robin Cook, the Leader of the House, and Mr Peter Hain, the minister for Europe, both said that a decision about whether Britain should enter the eurozone would have political elements to it. Mr Hain continued to speak keenly in favour of joining. But in an interview with La Repubblica, Mr Blair said: 'I am convinced that Great Britain can be a leading partner. . . . But entrance to the euro is a separate question.' Lord Wakeham, who headed a Royal Commission recommending radical reform of the Lords, opposed plans for the government to appoint a majority of the House in future since it would look like 'cronyism'. Mr Blair dropped in to visit British troops for a few hours at Bagram airport, near Kabul. Jennifer Brown, the prematurely born daughter of Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife Sarah, suffered a brain haemorrhage, was baptised in hospital by a minister of the Church of Scotland, and died aged ten days. A nineyear-old boy sitting on his father's shoulders spoke to would-be rescuers on a mobile telephone as the tide came in to drown them after they became lost in fog
in Morecambe Bay. A Home Office report found that in London, where 8 per cent of the population over the age of 10 are black, 70 per cent of mobile telephone thefts were made by blacks; nationally about 700,000 such thefts take place a year. Prince William, as he returned from hunting, was said to have ridden up to a freelance photographer and shouted: 'Fucking piss off, Postlethwaite.' The Most Reverend George Carey announced that he would resign as Archbishop of Canterbury on 31 October, a fortnight before his 67th birthday, three years before the maximum age allowed.
MR BLAIR visited India and Pakistan, both countries with nuclear weapons, which were on the brink of war and exchanging rocket, mortar and artillery fire across the line separating them in the disputed territory of Kashmir. 'We do not have an empire. 'We are not a superpower,' Mr Blair said in a speech, but he thought Britain could be a 'pivotal player' and a 'force for good' in the world. At the summit for south Asian leaders in Nepal, General Pervaiz Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, put forward his hand, which was taken by Mr Atal 13ihari Vajpayee, the Prime Minister of India, who later remarked, 'My hand is still intact.' Mr Sil vio Berslusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, assumed the office of foreign minister too, after the resignation of Mr Renato Ruggiero in response to remarks of cabinet colleagues critical of the introduction of the euro. Argentina stopped pegging the peso to the US dollar, setting an exchange rate instead of 1.40 pesos to the dollar. Singapore arrested 15 people it suspected of having links to the al-Qa'eda terrorist group and planning to attack the American embassy in Singapore. Lieutenant-Colonel Martha McSally, the senior female fighter pilot in the United States air force, is suing the Pentagon for requiring her to wear a robe and headscarf when going off-base in Saudi Arabia. A 15-year-old boy flew a light aircraft into the 28th floor of the Bank of America building in Tampa, Florida, killing himself but causing limited damage. Bush fires burnt along a front of 1,000 miles in an arc around Sydney, having ravaged more than two million acres, although rain saved some houses from destruction. President Idriss Deby of Chad surprised people by signing an agreement mediated by Libya that would end a civil war with the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad by granting it a share in the government and fusing the guerrillas with the national army.
CSH
Previous page
