PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr Michael Portillo, the Secretary of State for Employment, got into summer- time hot water in a controversy about the European Community and the disabled. He had ruled unlawful, under European legis- lation, the Priority Suppliers Scheme. This scheme gave preferential treatment to employers such as Remploy which give jobs to disabled servicemen and others. But, Mr Portillo said, the EC Consolidated Supplies Directive forbids this. It turned out that Mr Portillo had negotiated its terms. He was also accused of being motivated by one of his own rather right-wing political ideas. Mad people released under the 'Care in the Community' programme have killed 34 in 18 months, a government inquiry disclosed. The Irish Republican Army exploded a bomb in Bognor Regis in Sussex, but no one was hurt; it also left Sibs of semtex in the basket of a bicycle chained to the Palace Pier in Britain, but this was found by police before it went off. Mr Enoch Powell said in the preface to a new translation of St Matthew's Gospel that Jesus was not crucified but stoned to death by the Jewish establishment for blasphemy. Railway sig- nalmen went on strike for another two days in action already estimated somehow to
have cost £100 million. Headline inflation fell to 2.3 per cent; unemployment fell a lit- tle, to 2.63 million. The Midland Bank announced half-yearly profits of more than £443 million. Peter Cushing, the film actor,. died, aged 81. Thieves stole £6,000-worth of light-bulbs from lamp-posts in Milton Keynes.
ILLICH Ramirez Sanchez, a terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, was extradited from Khartoum in Sudan and put on trial in Paris. He had been wanted for the murder of as many as 83 people in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, London and other places; he is a Venezuelan but has two brothers called Vladimir and Lenin. Palestinian police arrested members of the militant Islamic organisation Hamas after attacks on Israelis. Iran withdrew its ambassador to Buenos Aires following a judge's direction that four Iranians should be sought for the bombing of a Jewish centre in the city. Republicans continued to obstruct Presi- dent Clinton's health reforms a week after Congress had blocked his proposals on crime. United States interest rates rose half a per cent to 4 per cent. The United States came to a limited agreement with North
Korea to help it build new nuclear power stations of a variety that could not be so easily used for producing the plutonium necessary for atomic weapons; South Korea offered money and technical assistance. South Korean police arrested more than 1,000 students after breaking up a large demonstration in Seoul calling for reunifi- cation with the North. The interim Presi- dent of Burundi made an effort to stop inter-tribal massacres of the kind that have brought Rwanda to ruin. Bosnian govern- ment forces captured from Serbs an area north of Sarajevo that commands a strate- gic road out of the city. Five hundred Cubans abandoned their attempt to sail to the United States in a hijacked oil-tanker after it was surrounded by police. A Nigeri- an court ruled that Chief Moshood Abiola, the man thought to have won last year's annulled election should continue to stand trial for treason; oil workers stepped up their strike action. The King of Lesotho suspended his government. The leader of Indonesia's largest trade union was arrest- ed in connection with violent demonstra- tions in April. Manfred Warner, the secre- tary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation, died, aged 59. CSH
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