PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`That's funny, my Prime Minister always does what I tell him.'
The nation felt obliged to discuss the private life of the Prince of Wales after a journalist wrote a book about him, with his co-operation, which was extracted in a Sun- day newspaper. The extracts showed the prince as unhappy in childhood, shamed by his father and bullied by his schoolfellows; later persuaded by the Duke of Edinburgh to many the Princess of Wales, whom he did not love. Some Tory MPs took it upon themselves to discuss divorce plans, the existence of which were denied by the cou- ple. The Duke of Edinburgh gave his views the next day to the Daily Telegraph: 'I've never discussed private matters and I don't think the Queen has either. Very few mem- bers of the family have.' The Queen and the Duke then flew to Moscow, where the Prime Minister of Russia, Mr Viktor Cher- nomyrdin, was unable to greet her, because he was on holiday; but President Boris Yeltsin bowed to them at St George's Hall in the Kremlin. Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, made a little joke at the Conser- vative Party conference: 'Buying Tory poli- cies from Labour is like buying a Rolex on the street corner. It may bear the name but you know it's not real.' The cheapest return rail fare to Paris through the Channel Tun- nel will be £95 (first class: £195); services begin on 14 November. A former presenter of Blue Peter is to present the drawing of
National Lottery winners on BBC televi- sion, beginning on 19 November. Treasury Civil Servants were heavily pruned as the first step in reducing public employment by many thousands. Samsung, the South Kore- an electronics company, is to invest £600 million in the north-east, bringing perhaps 3,000 jobs; it was influenced by a British grant of £80 million, about which Mr Michael Portillo (now the Secretary of State for Employment and formerly the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) had criti- cised Mr Michael Heseltine (the President of the Board of Trade). Rover is to take on 1,450 extra workers because it is selling so many cars at home and abroad. The direc- tor-general of the Health and Safety Execu- tive, which is responsible for inspecting licensed atomic weapons establishments, said that if they had been under civil administration they would not be allowed to operate, because of safety failings. Peter, an 18-year-old retired pit pony, one of the last left in Britain, strayed onto a railway track and was killed by a train.
ISRAEL sealed off the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after a bomb in Tel Aviv killed 16 and injured more than 40. Israeli troops had stormed a hideout north of Jerusalem where guerrillas belonging to the Islamic extremist group, Hamas, were holding a 19-
year-old Israeli soldier they had kidnapped; he was shot dead, as were three guerrillas and another Israeli. Mr Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, had told Mr Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Libera- tion Organisation, that he would be held responsible if the soldier died, but in the event, since the hostage was not being held on territory under Mr Arafat's control, Mr Rabin later admitted his stipulation had been 'invalid'. Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty which was denounced by the PLO and Syria. The United States conclud- ed a deal to control North Korea's nuclear plants. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti returned to Port au Prince after three years in exile. Mr Helmut Kohl, the Chan- cellor of Germany since 1982, narrowly won another term for his Christian Demo- crat coalition, with a majority of ten seats (secured by 143,000 votes out of 60 million voters). A fourth dissident in Shanghai in recent weeks was sentenced to three years detention in a re-education camp. There were small outbreaks of plagues in Mata- beleland, Malawi and Mozambique. pit- cairn Island, which has a population of 55,, challenged the sacking by New Zealand or a typist employed by its governor, appealing to Britain, its colonial ruler. An Indian cou- ple were jailed for a year in the United Arab emirates for kissing in public. CS14
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