PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr David Trimble, MP for Upper Bann, was elected the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. In Dunloy, County Antrim, there were riots when 200 Orange- men on their way back from church, were attacked with hurley sticks by 300 national- ists on their way back from a Gaelic foot- ball match. Mr Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, and Mr Michael Ancram, the Northern Ireland Minister, went on sepa- rate visits to Washington to explain to Pres- ident Clinton what had gone wrong with the Northern Ireland peace process. Mr John Monks, the General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, warned 'greedy' employers that workers would become more militant when economic conditions improved. Someone in the Labour Party leaked an internal memorandum meant for Mr Tony Blair, the Labour Leader, saying that Labour was not yet ready for govern- ment and needed more central control. Mr Douglas Hurd, who left the Government as Foreign Secretary in July, faced criticism from Labour for announcing he is to take a directorship of National Westminster Bank. Heavy rain caused flash-floods, but York- shire Water authority continued to impose water restrictions because `the rain fell in the wrong place'. A man died when he
jumped from a burning InterCity train and was hit by an oncoming train: 20 more peo- ple were hurt. The body of an 18-year-old student was found in undergrowth in Nor- folk. Mr Salman Rushdie, the novelist, made his first pre-announced public appearance since the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him in 1989. Mr Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank, appeared on television pleading to be tried in Britain rather than Singapore. Prince William spent his first day at Eton. A secre- tary, who was told by her boss not to wear stiletto shoes because they wrecked the car- pet, lost her claim for unfair dismissal. A six- foot grey seal took a wrong turning, swam up the Thames and died.
THE FOREIGN ministers of Serbia, Croa- tia and Bosnia met in Geneva and agreed the principles of a settlement to divide Bosnia in two, giving 49 per cent of territo- ry to the Bosnian Serbs and 51 per cent to the Muslim-Croat federation. Nato bom- bardment of Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo continued. Russia accused Nato of threatening genocide on a generation of Serbs. Mr Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, said, 'Nato has declared war on the Serbs.' Some Russian troops began pulling out of Chechnya. In Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, demonstrators rioted, looted and burned the airport in protest at French nuclear detonation in the Mururoa atoll. France described the nuclear test as 'a message of peace' and brought in Foreign Legionnaires and paratroopers to quell the rioting. A Greenpeace yacht with 19 people on it, including two Australian MPs, was seized by the French Navy after it penetrat- ed the exclusion zone around Mururoa. The Worldwide Fund for Nature said that tigers would become extinct within ten years if current decimation continued. The United Nations Conference on Women in Peking ended with delegates making an official protest about Chinese government harassment. A military transport plane crashed in Sri Lanka killing 81 people. Five people died when a car bomb exploded in Maryland, USA. A land mine killed 12 peo- ple in Northern Uganda. The Italian Mafia went into the red because of the high cost of legal fees for employees. Nepal's com- munist Prime Minister resigned. A Brazil- ian government expedition in the Amazon discovered two members of an unknown Indian tribe. A 3001b python squeezed a man to death on a Malaysian rubber plan-
Previous page
