PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
At least now we can lob teargas at him.'
he Lords defeated by a majority of 154 an amendment to the Human Fertilisa- tion and Embryology Bill brought by the Duke of Norfolk to make illegal all experi- ments on human embyros. The Govern- ment announced that it is to allow rises to water rates of up to 25 per cent imposed by the newly privatised water companies. The trial began of four businessmen involved in the Guinness affair: Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Anthony Parnes and Sir Jack Lyon's. It was expeeted to last six months. The Foreign Office said that it will be sending one million clean hypodermic syringes to Rumania, where scores of young children have contracted the HIV virus in state hospitals. Timothy Eggar, the employment minister, was told by a judge that he had acted in a 'stupid, idiotic and provocative' manner when he had marched a six-year-old girl into his living room in order to reprimand her for picking his flowers. The girl's father, who had head- butted Mr Eggar for what he had done, was given a 21-day jail sentence, sus- pended for a year. The Labour Party revealed plans to replace the poll tax with a new, local tax based upon the capital value of people's homes but linked to their income. An army helicopter was shot down in Northern Ireland, injuring three sol- diers. The Savoy Theatre in the Strand was destroyed by fire. The Scout Association announced that it is to introduce scouting for girls. The Girl Guides Association was reported as being angered by the decision. Charles Moore announced his resignation as editor of The Spectator from April. He will be succeeded by Dominic Lawson. Harold McCusker, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, died, aged 50.
THE leader of the newly unbanned Afri- can National Congress, Nelson Mandela, was released from jail after 27 years. Addressing a crowd in Cape Town he maintained that the armed struggle' must continue and the worldwide sanctions against South Africa 'should not yet be lifted. A number of people took the opportunity of gathering to loot shops, for which they were fired upon with plastic bullets by the police. Two were killed and dozens injured. The Soviet Communist Party voted almost unanimously to surren- der its monopoly of power. There were serious riots in Dushanbe, the capital of Soviet Tajikistan. Mr Gorbachev told Chancellor Kohl of West Germany that re-unification should be left to East Ger- man self-determination. Chancellor Kohl's government called for its counterpart in the East to begin talks on the possible introduction of the deutschmark in East Germany. Mr Gorbachev agreed to Amer- ica's retaining 195,000 troops in Central Europe and 30,000 more on the periphery. The Soviet Union would cut theirs from 560,000 to 195,000. Drexel Burnham Lam- bert, the American bank which pioneered junk bonds, filed for bankruptcy. In Mos- cow, the Academy of Sciences announced that it is to make a chernical study of the brain belonging to the late Andrei Sakhar- ov. Two Japanese scientists who claim to have discovered that the forde of gravity can be partially undone by violent gyratory activity were accused by Western scientists of using faulty equipment. Traces of the carcinogen benzine were found in bottles of Perrier water in America. Del Shannon, the rock star, shot himself dead at the age
Previous page
