PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'It's another one of their shocking images.'
Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, allowed Mike Tyson into Britain to fight in Manchester, despite legislation that because of the boxer's conviction for rape — permits this only on 'strong compassion- ate' grounds. Offences rose by 2.2 per cent, with robberies up by 19 per cent. The Royal Ulster Constabulary is to lose the title `Royal' among the changes to be adopted from the Patten Report. Mr Straw suggest- ed that the reason he had ruled that Gener- al Augusto Pinochet was unfit to stand trial if he were extradited to Spain was that he could no longer 'give a coherent statement of his own case'; but he insisted, in the face of requests from the Spanish investigating judge Baltasar Garzon, that the doctors' report should remain confidential. Lord Winston, the eminent gynaecologist and Labour peer, said that the National Health Service was 'gradually deteriorating' and that there had been 'deceit' in government claims to have abolished the internal mar- ket; he later glossed his remarks after talks with Mr Alastair Campbell. National Health Service nurses' pay was increased above the rate of inflation, with 60,000 staff nurses getting a 7.8 per cent rise. Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham merged to form the world's biggest drug company; the two employ 107,000, of whom it is feared 15,000 will go. The sales of Boots the Chemist were up by 4.7 per cent for the last quarter of 1999, partly because of the flu outbreak. Yorkshire Electricity is to cut 350 of its 4,500 workforce on the grounds of price reductions ordered by the industry's regulator. British Gas is to abol- ish standing charges. Mr Ken Livingstone, who wants to be mayor of London, said, in answer to a question from the Face maga- zine about the riots in the City of London last summer, that he had 'always been in favour' of direct action. Mr James Boyle retired from the BBC after three years as controller of Radio Four. Harrods is to lose its warrants from the Duke of Edin- burgh, the Queen and the Prince of Wales. The government is to give advice to par- ents on how they can smack children 'in a loving way'.
ACTING President Vladimir Putin of Rus- sia approved less restrictive terms for the country's use of nuclear weapons. Russian troops said they had reached the centre of the Chechen capital, Grozny. Zeljko Raz- natovic, known as Arkan, a mercenary leader and war criminal during the con- flicts in the former Yugoslavia, aged 47, was shot dead with two bodyguards at a Belgrade hotel. Chile elected a left-wing president, Mr Ricardo Lagos, who is expected to be unsympathetic to General Pinochet. The Pope, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Metropolitan Athana- sios, representing the Ecumenical Patri- arch Bartholomew I, kneeling at his side, opened the holy door for the jubilee year 2000 at the basilica of St Paul's outside the Walls in Rome. A raft carrying refugees trying to reach Italy capsized off Albania drowning probably 60. The 8,000-ft Pacaya volcano, 20 miles from Guatemala City, erupted forcing 1,000 to flee their homes. A Frenchman had two hands transplanted on to his arms to replace the pair lost in an accident with explosives. A 9 lb block of ice fell on a man's car at La Tocina in southern Spain, and some said that it came from a comet, others that it was frozen waste from an aeroplane's lavatory; a dozen similar incidents were soon report- ed. Diego Maradona, the Argentinian football player, went to a rehabilitation unit in Cuba to recover from his cocaine addiction. A new fashion in Peking for dishes of snake and cat is leading to cats being stolen at night and sold to restau- rants. A man herding camels froze to death when night temperatures in the. Sahara in Mauritania fell to 23°F.
CSH
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