PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
7f you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'
Lady Thatcher, the former Prime Minis- ter, made a speech at the Conservative Party conference and embraced and kissed Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, on stage. On the eve of the conference, Lord McAlpine, the former party treasurer, gave his backing to Sir James Goldsmith's Refer- endum Party. Mr Major described as `deeply offensive' a speech at a summit of European Community leaders by the Ger- man President of the European Parliament, Klaus Hansch, who had said, 'I fail to see why 14 governments should always have to sacrifice their vision of Europe and their principles to keep on board a government which may jump ship in any case.' Mr Tony Blair, the leader of the Labour Party, sacked Lady Turner as a front-bench spokesman in the Lords because she is on the board of a company run by Mr Ian Greer, who has paid MPs for helping him in his profession of lobbying. Mr Greer later resigned from the chairmanship of his own company. Two bombs planted by the Irish Republican Army at the Army head- quarters at Lisburn, Co. Antrim, injured more than 30 people. Hyundai, the South Korean electronics company, is to build a £960 million plant at Dunfermline. Euro- tunnel unveiled a refinancing plan for its £9 billion debt that will leave existing share- holders with 54.5 per cent of the company. Seven policemen were injured after being called to a disturbance outside Aphrodite's restaurant in Runcorn, Cheshire. Unruly children should be given a 'sound thrash- ing' according to Mrs Eileen Heseltine, the mother of Mr Michael Heseltine, the First Secretary of State. The house in Gloucester where the serial murderer, Fred West, buried victims is being demolished and its bricks are to be ground to dust. The Sun published some lewd pictures which it said for some reason were of Diana, Princess of Wales and Captain James Hewitt; they were not, they were a hoax. Lord Colnbrook, Humphrey Atkins, the former deputy Foreign Secretary, died, aged 74. Yorkshire is to leave Headingley for a new cricket ground in Wakefield.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton of the United States held a televised debate with his chal- lenger for the presidency, Mr Bob Dole; a poll found that 50 per cent of viewers thought he won and 30 per cent thought Mr Dole did. General Anatoly Kulikov, the Russian interior minister, accused General Alexander Lebed of exaggerating Russian losses in Chechnya and of trying to provoke domestic riots. The foreign minister of Zaire said his country would use all avail- able means to expel a million Rwandan refugees. The Prime Minister of Turkey travelled overland to visit Libya because flights are prohibited by international agreement on the grounds of Libya's encouragement of terrorism; when he got there he was publicly denounced by Colonel Gaddafi. Corsican separatists set off a bomb in Bordeaux city hall. In Ice- land, a volcano called Loki, under the Vat- najokull glacier, the largest in Europe, melted 1,800-ft-thick ice and built up a reservoir for a sudden flood. In Papua New Guinea 200 people were evacuated as a vol- cano erupted near Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain Island. The Nobel prize for medicine went jointly to Professor Peter Doherty, an Australian, and Professor Rolf Zinkemagel, a Swiss, for their work on cell immunity. Stock market indices in London and New.York hit new highs, with the Dow Jones breaking through 6,000. Four people in eastern China were sentenced to death for stealing £20,000-worth of goods from a train. The wheat harvest in Uzbekistan yielded only 75 per cent of the grain need- ed for self-sufficiency. King Carl Gustaf of Sweden visited Thailand to inspect the site of the next world Scouts' jamboree, to be held in 2003.
CSH
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