PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`The kiddy was all right when I last looked at him — he must have fallen down the stairs playing.'
Sit Alan Green, QC, Director of Public Prosecutions, resigned after police saw him talking to two prostitutes near King's Cross station in London. Neil Kinnock gave a well-received speech at the Labour Party conference, and his party's chances of winning the next election improved. The Conservative Party conference opened in Blackpool amid Tory infighting over plans for a federal Europe. Record shortfalls in tax receipts were prodicted by the Treas- ury, reducing the Conservative Party's room for governmental manoeuvre and its chances of winning the next election. Both parties accused each other of having un- suitable paymasters. John Major denied that the Government intended to privatise the health service, and defended a senior civil servant who agreed with him. Mrs Thatcher denied that she was seeking to be created an hereditary Countess, though she might accept if she were asked. A leaked letter revealed that some Iraqi nuclear waste may be brought to Scotland to be re-processed. Mr Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, said he believed that decisions on the referral of criminal cases to the Court of Appeal should be made by an independent body, not the Home Secretary, who is subject to political press- ures. A single Lloyd's underwriter was blamed for causing losses of £260 million to a syndicate. Two men were shot and seriously wounded in a Belfast bar. Police searched for gold bullion in the grounds of Heath House, the former home of Baro- ness Susan de Stempel, imprisoned for conspiring to defraud her aunt of her fortune. The Marquess of Blandford, whose family motto is 'Faithful though Unfortunate', began a second prison sent- ence in five years for driving while disqual- ified. The Duchess of York revealed to David Frost on TVam her dislike of publicity. Larry Adler accepted undis- closed libel damages after a book described him as a 'ghastly little man who played the mouth organ'.
THE Yugoslav army launched a major offensive against Croatian forces bombing targets, cutting off Dubrovnik, its capital, and causing a flood of Croatian refugees. Rockets narrowly missed killing Yugos- lav's Croatian prime minister, Ante Mar- kovic, in his palace in Zagreb: he accused the army of attempted murder. The EEC threatened a trade embargo unless the war stopped. US marines were put on standby in case Americans living in Haiti were endangered in the aftermath of the coun- try's latest coup. Hanoi agreed in principle to accept any Vietnamese boat people who have been refused refugee status. The KGB warned that economic hardship could lead to civil war and fascism in the Soviet Union. Two Lebanese children were severely burnt by a petrol bomb hurled into an immigrant hotel in lower Rhineland as German thugs made a series of attacks on foreign workers. The Mu- jahedin in Afghanistan came under heavy bombardment near Gardez. Eighteen were shot dead in a township near Johannes- burg: Nelson Mandela blamed South Afri- ca's government. The International Ato- mic Energy Agency claimed Iraq was two months away from making a nuclear weapon when the Gulf war started. South African courts let a farmer who tortured a black boy by welding him to a stable and setting him on fire, walk free with a suspended two-year sentence, but sent- enced the boy to five years in gaol for stealing a television set. Elizabeth Taylor, 59, married for the eighth time, choosing a 39-year-old construction worker with a history of alcohol abuse on whom to pin her latest hopes for happiness. SB
Previous page
