PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Households will be taxed on the amount of rubbish they put out The government is to go ahead with abolishing seats for hereditary peers with- out waiting for agreement on further reforms of the House of Lords. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said that the nuclear reprocessing plant at Dounreay would be taken out of operation; a few pounds of uranium from Georgia accepted in April by the government would first be treated at the plant. Decommissioning is expected to last until 2006 and dismantle- ment of reactors to be undertaken in 100 years' time. Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, warned President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia that the European Union would not permit a repetition of the ethnic cleansing seen in Bosnia; but his fel- low EU foreign ministers agreed only to economic sanctions against Serbia. 'The only question that matters', Mr Blair said of the atrocities reported from Kosovo, 'is whether you are prepared to use force. And we have to be.' At home, the government considered proposals to levy tax on rubbish; Mr Michael Meacher, the Minister for the Environment, said it would not really be a tax, as long as you did not have much rub- bish. The Rolling Stones cancelled a tour of Britain because of tax changes made last year by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Timothy Kitson, a former Tory whip, wrote to Lord Parkin- son, the party chairman, asking him to refer the record of Lord Archer, a presumed candidate for the new position of mayor of London, to the party's new ethics and integrity committee. Vickers shareholders approved the sale of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars to Volkswagen for £430 million, instead of a bid from BMW. A judge told a jury who had found not guilty a policeman who had sprayed CS gas in a pensioner's face: 'You will perhaps reflect that in the future, if old age pensioners are gassed and assaulted by the police, they may indeed have this particular case in mind.' The Prince of Wales wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph saying that genetic modifi- cation of plants and animals for food 'takes mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone'. Several large 'by appointment' signs were 'temporarily removed for refurbishment' from the out- side of Harrods, according to a spokesman for its owner, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed.
MANY THOUSANDS of ethnic Albanians fled the Yugoslav province of Kosovo for Albania as Serbian shelling and night raids left hundreds dead or missing. The Kosovo Liberation Army appealed for ethnic Alba- nians to join them and 'fight for freedom' from the Serbian forces. Mr Richard Hol- brooke, the American negotiator in the region, said violence in Kosovo could be even more dangerous than the previous wai" Bosnia, because it could unravel the in international boundaries in the area The Pope appealed for international intervee. Lion. Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the fetA; mer Vatican secretary of state, died, age" 83. Hundreds of Westerners were evacuat,.; ed from Eritrea as Ethiopia bombe" Asmara and the two countries stood on the brink of war. General Sani Abacha, the di tator of Nigeria who could never quite return the country to civilian rule, died of 3 heart attack, aged 54. General Abdusalri Abubakar was sworn in to replace Ugandan rebels massacred 40 schoolell dren and burnt a school at Fort Portai Government troops in Guinea B1ss at fought mutinous soldiers at two barracks , Bra, a suburb of Bissau, the capital. A high a speed train crashed at Eschede, northern 0 Germany, killing 96. A bomb on a tram of southern Pakistan, 120 miles north 0: Karachi, killed 26 people and wounded 45i The numbers left dead in India's worst hem° wave in 50 years rose to more than 2,6u; and temperatures reached 120F. The 0.°i) of the space station Mir pumped a gee, fluorescent gas into its damaged laborall module in an effort to locate leaks Cause by last year's collision.
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