PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
THE Conservative Party attempted to dampen speculation that a general election might be held in November. Polls con- tinued to show a Conservative lead. Nissan in Sunderland announced the recruitment of 1,000 more workers. Keith Prowse Holdings Ltd., the largest entertainment booking office in Britain, employing 650, collapsed owing around £7 million. At the Liberal Democrat conference Paddy Ashdown proposed raising income taxes. Leyla Gordievsky was reunited in Britain with her husband, a KGB defector, after six years apart. The court martial began of a soldier charged with desertion during the Gulf war. A man was jailed for six years for attacking with a hammer and acid a child molester whom he believed had assaulted his daughter. Two of the 'Guild- ford Four' were conditionally discharged after pleading guilty to possession of drugs. Lynne Rogers, 17, vanished after arrang- ing to meet a man for a job interview: her body was later found in East Sussex. Fires, looting and joy-riding brought out police in riot gear to an estate in North Shields. A leading nuclear scientist and his wife were hacked to death in a Gloucestershire cot- Possible punishment for hotters: the clamp tage. A TUC motion criticising 'Japanese countries for taking an alien approach to unions in Britain was denounced as rascist by Gavin Laird, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. The Princess Royal made the first visit to Ireland by a member of her family since Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA. The Archdeacon of York, the Ven. George Austin, said the Church of Eng- land was on the verge of collapse, but the Archbishop of York, John Habgood, said the Archdeacon reminded him of the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers who wanted to make people's flesh creep.
THE UNION of Soviet Socialist Republics was formerly ended: a new Union of Sovereign States is due to replace it. President Gorbachev asked the West for emergency aid in order to survive the winter. France refused to allow Polish beef into the EEC because it wishes to protect its own farmers. Lithuania celebrated inde- pendence by pardoning its war criminals and collaborators. Serbian forces drove deeper into Croatia to seize territory while Lard Carrington chaired the latest doomed peace talks. Macedonia voted overwhel- mingly for independence from Yugoslavia. Peace talks continued between black par- ties in South Africa despite the killing of 39 after gunmen murdered 18 Zulu Inkatha supporters near Johannesburg. In response to John Major's pleas China freed a Hong Kong businessman who helped leaders of the pre-democracy movement. Foreign ministers met in Moscow for a conference on human rights. The Sri Lankan govern- ment claimed that more than 200 Tamil rebels had been killed, and 13 of their soldiers. The former head of the Treasury Department at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was arrested in France, and 20 more employees were detained by police in Abu Dhabi. US federal agencies were criticised for failing to move earlier against the bank after more than 100 drug case investigations were found to have involved the bank. Japanese feminists denounced Sumo wrestling as sexist. A Benedictine monk aged 78 con- fessed in public that he had fathered four children, the youngest of whom is aged 15.
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