PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The Greenbury committee on board- room pay recommended that: listed com- panies should follow a new code of best practice and announce each year if they had done so; they should disclose execu- tives' pay; the exercise of share options should be taxable as income. Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, immediately imposed the tax and every- one suddenly realised it would affect hun- dreds of thousands of people who exer- cised modest levels of options. A Bank of England report on the collapse of Barings Bank found that it was caused by 'a failure of controls of management and other internal controls of the most basic kind'; this came as no surprise. Mr Tony Blair, the leader of the Labour Party, flew to Australia to talk to Mr Rupert Murdoch, the owner of newspapers and television stations, and his minions. Mrs Peter Bot- tomley, the Secretary of State for National Heritage, said that newspapers must regu- late themselves far more strictly. Express Newspapers said it would cut 220 jobs; Reed Elsevier said it would sell off many of its newspapers and publishing concerns. An 84-year-old man from Banstead in Surrey was charged with the murder of four Jews in Byelorussia in 1941 and 1942, under the War Crimes Act of 1991. Mr Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, announced some wheezes for spotting illegal immi- grants when they apply for state benefits. Cardinal Basil Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, ordained 12 former Angli- can clergymen as deacons. There was another one-day strike by engine-drivers. Unemployment fell by 4,200 to 2,313,200. Sir Stephen Spender, the poet, died, aged 86. A lorryload of bananas caught fire near Peterborough.
THOUSANDS of Bosnian men disap- peared after the fall of Srebrenica, the so- called safe area guaranteed by the United Nations. Some men managed to walk through Bosnian Serb lines 60 miles to Tuzla, where thousands of homeless women and little children were suffering in appalling conditions, having had all their possessions stolen by the Bosnian Serbs. The Bosnian government took captive some Ukrainian UN troops in the next target area of the Bosnian Serb army — the small enclave of Zepa — in an apparent attempt to stop them withdrawing. The Bosnian Serbs threatened to kill UN troops. Mr Muhamed Sacirbey, the Bosnian foreign minister, said that the UN mission in his country was now at an end. Bosnian gov- ernment soldiers seized UN military equip- ment in Gorazde. Nigeria made threaten- ing noises at British oil companies on the grounds of Britain's criticism of its military regime. The Iraqi defence minister was sacked. A woman was found alive after 16 days in the ruins of a department store that collapsed in Seoul, in South Korea, killing more than 400. The Ukrainian Patriarch Volodymyr of Kiev was buried under the pavement outside the Cathedral of St Sofia in the city after state and rival ecclesiastical authorities refused burial inside the cathe- dral. Locusts swarmed in Ukraine. Juan Manuel Fangio, the Argentine racing driver, died, aged 84. European Commis- sion agriculture ministers failed to agree on an increase in banana imports from Latin America.
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