series of outbreaks of foot-andmouth disease struck in Allendale in
Northumberland. After 27 weeks of the epidemic there had been 1,987 outbreaks with 3,768,000 livestock slaughtered. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs imposed new restrictions throughout the country, keeping livestock markets closed and allowing movement of animals only in counties that have been free from the disease for some time. The postal election of a new leader for the Conservative party entered an uncertain phase when an opinion poll found that about 40 per cent of members had voted in the first week, by a proportion of two for Mr fain Duncan Smith to one for Mr Kenneth Clarke. Army explosives experts defused a large blast incendiary bomb in a car at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, where huge crowds had gathered for the annual Auld Lammas Fair. A sapper was killed when someone threw a piece of concrete through the windscreen of his Land Rover as he took part in an operation by troops of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to collect weapons from Albanian-speaking rebels in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. A bombardier of the Royal Horse Artillery was killed when his vehicle was hit by a shell during a live-firing exercise in Canada. The shortage of teachers in England is the worst for 35 years, with 40 per cent of new teachers leaving within three years, according to Mr Mike Tomlinson, the head of Ofsted. Government figures showed that last year of 43,000 asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected, only 3,000 were deported and a similar number left voluntarily. In July this year there were 3,748 muggings and 1,679 nonviolent snatches of personal property in London, the worst figures being for the borough of Lambeth; a total of 34,815 street offences from January to July this year was 20 per cent higher than for the same period last year. Police and customs officers seized a million Ecstasy tablets (notionally valued at £12 million) at a warehouse in Upper Rissington. a Cotswold village in Gloucestershire. Police said they had dropped their investigation into an allegation that Mr and Mrs Neil Hamilton had taken part in a serious sexual assault; the Hamiltons had already begun a civil action against the complainant. Woolworths was floated on the stock market by its parent company Kingfisher after 19 years; the shares opened at 24V2p and closed at the end of the first day at 33p.
MUSTAFA ZIBRI, known as Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a branch of the
Palestine Liberation Organisation, was killed in his office in Ramallah by missiles from an Israeli helicopter. Israeli tanks occupied Beit Jala, a Palestinian Christian town on a hilltop next to Bethlehem. A grand jury in New York indicted a Londonbased Algerian, Dr Haydar Abu Doha, alleging that he had plotted to bomb Los Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium. A bomb was detonated at Madrid airport by the Basque nationalist terrorists Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna; police arrested 15 suspected Eta members in Catalonia and the Basque country. Australian special forces boarded the Norwegian-registered freighter Tampa, carrying 430 Afghan refugees as it approached Australian territory; in the previous ten days, 1,500 refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran had arrived in Australia in craft from Indonesia. An eruption of Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma in the Canaries could send a wave 300ft high on to the coast of the western Sahara and one 130ft high on to the coast of Brazil; big waves could be expected on the Atlantic coast of Britain too; the volcano last erupted in 1949, with less spectacular effect. A man arrested in Malaysia for not having his identity card convinced the court of his nationality by singing the national anthem `Negara Ku' (My Country).
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