PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'President Clinton and I agree that CFCs are no threat to the world.'
The government announced a reform of the National Health Service entailing an end to general practitioners' fundholding and changes in the internal market. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said that Mr Geoffrey Robinson, the Paymaster Gener- al, was an 'extremely good minister'; Mr Robinson demanded apologies from two newspapers which had made claims about his interests in overseas trust funds. Farm- ers continued to try to blockade the impor- tation of cheap Irish beef, while Dr Jack Cunningham, the Minister of Agriculture, insisted that they should obey the law. At the same time he announced that the gov- ernment would make illegal the sale of any beef on the bone after 15 December. Mr Tiny Rowland issued a High Court writ in which Mr Mohamed Fayed is accused of having broken into a safe deposit box of his at Harrods, and also of having offered him a £10 million bribe to lie before a parlia- mentary committee in support of allega- tions against Michael Howard, the former home secretary; Mr Fayed categorically denied all the claims. The board of the Royal Opera House resigned after having been called 'incompetent' by a Commons select committee. Mr Chris Evans, the wire- less broadcaster, bought a controlling inter- est in Virgin Radio on which he has a pro- gramme. Mr Richard Branson, the other major shareholder, lost the balloon in which he intended to fly round the world in Morocco. Mr David Clark, the Public Ser- vices Minister, apologised to the Commons for the advance leaking of government pro- posals on freedom of information. Mr Nick Raynsford, the Minister for London and Construction, admitted he was entertaining a plan to ban doorsteps from new houses. The Prince of Wales met a classmate from his preparatory school selling the Big Issue. A shopper at Sainsbury's found a booby- trap in a bag she had picked up by mistake; it was labelled 'Mardi Gra', the ill-spelled nom de guerre of a would-be extortionist who in 1994 had sent bombs to Barclays Bank. Marks & Spencer hired a poet, Mr Peter Sansom, to bring out 'the creative side of our people'; an example of his work is: 'Eating a Kit-Kat in the dark I reflect/ that chocolate cannot give you spots/unless you eat it.' Billy Bremner, the footballer, died, aged 54. Lord Wyatt of Weeford, the politician, former chairman of the Horser- ace Totalisator Board and the 'Voice of Reason' in the News of the World, died, aged 79.
SWISS Bank Corporation and Union Bank of Switzerland planned a merger that would make them the second largest commercial bank in the world, with assets of more than £350 billion; the merger means the loss of 3,000 jobs in the City of London. Swiss Bank Corporation was accused quite sepa- rately by the New York State Banking Department of withholding information about assets from Jewish victims of the Nazis. Banks, telephones, post offices and airports were hit by a five-day strike by gov- ernment workers in Israel. A donation by the Pope to the Cambodian Red Cross was stolen while it was in the Cambodian Farm- ers' Bank in Phnom Penh. The Vatican waived the height requirement of 5ft 7in for Swiss Guards because of a recruiting crisis. The Bosnian Serb President, Mrs Biljana Plavsic, and Mr Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serb member of the three-man Bosnian Presidency and a supporter of Dr Radovan Karadzic, joined a 51-nation conference in Bonn on conditions in the Balkans; neither gained a majority in the Bosnian Serb elec- tions held on 22 and 23 November. Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan, the deputy prime minister of Iraq, flew to Tehran for a meet- ing of the 35-nation Organisation of Islamic Organisations. The women's league of the African National Congress dropped Mrs Winnie Mandela as its nominee for deputy leadership of the party. A Russian Antonov-124 military aeroplane crashed with 100
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