PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'Any point in the last two of us going on strike?'
More than 30,000 jobs are to be lost in the closure of 31 coal-mines, announced by British Coal. Mr Norman Lamont, the Chancellor, told the Commons Treasury select committee that he has 'yet to have it demonstrated to me by you or anyone else what judgment was wrong during the week leading up to Black Wednesday'. When Mr Giles Radice put it to him that the best ser- vice he could give to the economy would be to resign, he replied, 'I do not agree with that, thank you very much.' The Chancellor had announced a target of between 1 and 4 per cent for inflation in a speech towards the end of the Conservative party confer- ence. A man was killed and four were hurt by an IRA bomb in a pub in St Martin's Lane, London. It was the eighth bomb in six days. Commander George Churchill- Coleman, the head of Scotland yard's anti- terrorist branch, said, 'Do not be deterred from going about your lawful business,' while the police sealed off half the West End. The BBC refused to bow to protests against its plans to abolish Radio 4 on long wave; the Prince of Wales has written for an explanation of the changes. More than 9,350 tons of cauliflowers have been bought in for destruction at up to 167 a ton under EEC agricultural policy. The keeping of canaries without a licence and the shooting of crows were also threatened by EEC bureaucrats. British Rail proposed fare
rises of more than 7 per cent in the new year, more than twice the rate of inflation. Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) and Barry Unsworth (Sacred Hunger) shared the Booker Prize. Lady Ewart Biggs, widow of the ambassador to Dublin who was mur- dered by the IRA in 1976, died aged 63. A five-year-old boy escaped with cuts and bruises when his mother, parking her car, inadvertently ran over him and then reversed over his body. Mr Charles Moore, sometime editor of The Spectator, became editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
HUNDREDS were killed in Cairo by an earthquake. Kuwait placed a £800 million order for American M1A2 Abrams tanks in preference to the British Challenger. Mr Bill Clinton stayed ahead in opinion polls after a television debate with Mr George Bush and Mr Ross Perot, the other presi- dential candidates. An American was cap- tured by Iraqi forces on the border with Kuwait and released three days later after American pressure. Two Britons captured in separate incidents remained in detention in Iraq. Bosnian Serbs carried out further air raids, circumventing a United Nations ban on armed flights. Mr Radovan Karadz- ic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, later promised, following threats from Lord Owen, to put his aircraft in locations under UN supervision. China was promised a
'socialist market economy' by the Commu- nist Party's 14th national congress. I vi,.r Eduard Shevardnadze was elected by 9) per cent of those who voted as parliamen- tary chairman of Georgia; he was the only candidate. Mr Mikhail Gorbachev had his offices in Moscow seized by police and was prohibited from travelling abroad; the ban was later lifted by a Russian court. Mr Shin, Kanemaru, reputed as a 'king-maker or Japanese prime ministers, resigned after a scandal involving undeclared gifts of more than £2 million. Italian Americans celebrat- ing Columbus Day in San Francisco fought with some of 4,000 protesters, including American Indians and the pressure group Queers for Cuba, who disapprove of Columbus's voyage. Mr Derek Walcott, the St Lucian poet, won the Nobel prize for lit- erature; two American scientists, Dr Edwin Krebs and Dr Edmond Fischer (who Was born in China) shared the prize for medicine for their work in the 1950s on chemical messengers to cells in the body. A woman in Los Angeles who was given a pig's liver as a 'temporary measure' has since died. Willy Brandt, the former West German Chancellor, died, aged 78. A small monkey with some stripes and furry. ears was discovered in Amazonian Brazil.. A Tanzanian farmer strangled a lion whien
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