19 DECEMBER 1992, Page 6

PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

Mr Major struck a sort of deal at the EEC summit in Edinburgh, by which Britain and the other contributing countries would pay more than they wanted to the poorer nations, while Denmark would be ceded a guarantee of its own identity and a second referendum. This was called a tri- umph for the Prime Minister by his sup- porters. The Prime Minister told the Com- mons that the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales had no constitutional sig- nificance, and she would be able to be crowned queen. The Princess Royal, aged 42, was married to Commander Tim Lau- rence, aged 37, in Craithie Church of Scot- land church near Balmoral. She wore a short silk dress and a fur hat with flowers in it. MPs heard that telephones in the Palace of Westminster have been disabled from connecting with sex lines. Headline infla- tion for November fell to 3 per cent from 3.6 in October. Mr Tiny Rowland sold nearly half his stake in Lonrho, grossing him about £50 million. Post Office profits doubled. Mr Conrad Black won substantial damages against the Independent on Sunday newspaper for erroneous claims it made just before the share launch of the Tele- graph group. The three surviving Beatles said they would reassemble to take part in a ten-part television series. Thresher's sacked the manager of an off-licence in Padding- ton who claimed that Mr Norman Lamont, the Chancellor, had bought some cham- pagne and a packet of Raffles cigarettes one Sunday. Dr Peter Ball, the Bishop of Gloucester, took leave from his duties while police investigated allegations of indecent behaviour. Dan Maskell the tennis commentator died aged 84. Michael Rob- bins, the actor whose talents deserved bet- ter exposure than On the Buses, died aged 62. The British boxer Lennox Lewis was made heavyweight champion of the world by the World Boxing Council without hav- ing to fight, after the reigning champion Riddick Bowe threw his WBC belt in a dustbin.

RUSSIA appointed a Prime Minister that President Yeltsin did not want. The old communist-dominated Congress of Peo- ples' Deputies elected Mr Viktor Cher- nomyrdin to replace Mr Yegor Gaidar. Mr Yeltsin had also failed to get the Congress to agree to a referendum of confidence in him. Mr Major arranged a meeting with President Bush at Camp David to work out some way of stopping the conflict in Bosnia. But he resisted suggestions from Mr Boutros Boutros Ghali, the secretary general of the United Nations, to enforce a no-fly ban on Serbian aircraft over Bosnia. Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of violating US sanctions by

playing Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia last August. There were protests in Greece against moves to recognise the indepen- dence of Macedonia, part of the former Yugoslavia. As Somalia receiVed thousands of American troops sent to secure humani- tarian aid, some French troops on the same mission shot dead two men and wounded seven others who opposed them. Storms beat the north-east coast of the United States. The northern Italian nationalist Lombardy League made great gains in local elections. India's central government dis- missed three state governments dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party following Hindu fundamentalist violence connected with the destruction of a mosque in Ayod- hya in Uttar Pradesh. Hundreds of Pales- tinians were arrested and a curfew was imposed on the occupied territories after a Palestinian Islamic group, Hamas, kid- napped and killed an Israeli soldier. Some 1,200 people were killed in an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Flores. The Getty Museum in California paid £4.95 mil- lion for a Goya painting of a bullfight. William Shawn, the former editor of the New Yorker, died aged 85. Sir Robert Rex, the Prime Minister of Niue, an island in the south Pacific, died aged 83. Two elderly sis- ters lay dead in their Vienna flat for seven years, neighbours thinking that they had gone to an old people's home in 1985. CSH