PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, mooted a new plan for the government of Northern Ireland while he was on a trip to Japan. It would involve a 'Council of the Isles' with representatives from England, Scotland, Wales, the north of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; there would be an assembly in Northern Ireland elected by some kind of proportional representa- tion to ensure participation by the repub- lican-minded parties. Meanwhile all-party talks resumed at Stormont under the eye of Dr Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who had visited the Maze prison to talk to convicted terror- ists. A gunman shot dead the husband of a niece of Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, while he was working as a doorman at a nightclub owned by a sister-in-law of Mr David Ervine, the leader of the Progressive Unionist party, who blamed the Ulster Volunteer Force for the murder. Two private Muslim schools became the first to be given state funding. Mr Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's press secretary, denied having told Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, to announce he was leaving his wife before the News of the World had a chance to publicise an affair; Mr Cook said he would marry his mistress, who lives in his official residence in Carlton Gardens, once he was divorced. Mr Blair told him not to take her on an official ten-day world tour. Headline inflation fell by a smidgen to 3.6 per cent; even excluding mortgage pay- ments it was still at 2.7 per cent — the eighth month in a row it has exceeded the government target of 2.5 per cent. Mr Stephen Bayley, the interior designer of the Millennium Dome, resigned; Sir Ter- ence Conran, another designer consulted about the Dome, said that the millennium `is not an event that has very much to do with Christianity'. Sir Michael Tippett, the composer, died, aged 93. John Wells, the satirist and translator, died, aged 61. A small tornado struck Selsey.
THE rupiah, the currency of Indonesia, fell sensationally; the International Mone- tary Fund proposed measures for rescuing the country from economic collapse and the deputy treasury secretary of the Unit- ed States flew to Jakarta for talks. United States lawyers prepared a law suit alleging that the world silver market is being manipulated. The Hong Kong-based Pere- grine Investment Holdings went into liqui- dation. Profits at the state-owned Bank of China fell by 48 per cent in 1997. A man held an official from the treasury hostage at the Tokyo stock exchange and demand- ed to see the finance minister. Prisoners in a Colombian jail, pursuing demands for a mattress each, held 585 visitors hostage. Mr Kenneth Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, was charged with having plot- ted a coup. In two villages near Algiers 120 people were killed in one day, it was presumed by Islamic extremists. Gunmen suspected of belonging to the Sipah-e- Sahabah gang of Sunni Muslim terrorists shot dead 23 Shia Muslims during a memorial service in Lahore. Three inches of freezing rain brought down power lines in Canada, leaving three million without electricity. An earthquake near the Great Wall of China destroyed 100,000 houses leaving thousands homeless in tempera- tures far below freezing. Snow swept over Jordan and Israel. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leading Orthodox rabbi in Israel, announced on television that it is permit- ted to pick one's nose on the Sabbath.
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