PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr Jonathan Aitken, the Chief Secre- tary to the Treasury, said that the Guardian had published 'wicked lies' about his busi- ness interests and friendships with Arabs; he also lambasted Granada Television for screening a World in Action programme about him, most of which showed scenes performed by actors. Mr Richard Spring, an MP not widely known, resigned as the Parliamentary Private Secretary of Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, after newspaper stories about his private life. Mr Ken Follett, a novelist, resigned as the chairman of a fundraising group for the Labour Party. After the local elections in Scotland the Conservative Party were left in control of no authority, taking only 81 out of the 1,161 contested seats; Labour won 614; the Scot- tish National Party 181; and the Liberal Democrats 123. Unemployment fell by 21,000 to 2,346,200. Eurotunnel announced losses of £387 million for 1994, and its chairman, Sir Alastair Morton, said that, with debts of £8,000 million, the company was at risk. A supporter of Crystal Palace football team was killed during fights with Manchester United supporters. Hairs, and cells from the inside of the mouth may now be analysed for their deoxyribonucleic-acid characteristics, and those results that per- tain to convicted criminals kept on file, under the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Dr David Hope, the Bishop of London, is to be the next Archbishop of York. Royal Athlete won the Grand National at 40-1. A man who filled in the same lottery numbers each week, but forgot to renew his entry, killed himself after the numbers came up and he missed winning £2 million.
FIGHTING in Bosnia grew even fiercer. The Bosnian government claimed to have taken the strategically important Mount Vlasic; Bosnian Serbs shelled Sarajevo and Gorazde. Turkish forces continued to kill Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq. The United Nations asked Iraq questions about its capacity to produce biological weapons and examined allegations about its nuclear weapons plans. The Rwandan government blocked food aid to more than a million refugees in camps just within Zaire, where Hutu militias exercise powerful influence. Two suicide bombers killed six Israeli sol- diers in the Gaza Strip; the Palestinian police force then arrested suspected sup- porters of the extremist Muslim move- ments, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mr Alber- to Fujimori easily beat Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar in the Peruvian presidential elec- tions. Zanu PF won the Zimbabwean elec- tions hands down, but a third of the seats were uncontested, since opposition parties boycotted the elections in protest against the powers wielded by Mr Robert Mugabe, the Prime Minister. The dollar hit a new low against the yen, at one stage falling to 80.15; the Bank of Japan repeatedly inter- vened. In China, 29 schoolchildren died when their picnic was overtaken by a forest fire. The centre of Athens below the Acropolis was closed to traffic to reduce pollution. Britain stood moderately firm in vetoing European Community hectoring of Canada after alleged attempts to cut the nets of Spanish fishing vessels. The Irish navy arrested several Spanish boats. There was an outbreak of Canadian flag-flying in Cornwall. Morarji Desai, the Prime Minis- ter of India between 1977 and 1979, most famous for drinking his own urine each morning, died, aged 99. CSH
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