PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
A recent portrait of Slobodan Milosevic Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said that the Labour party sought the votes of 'a middle class that will include millions of people who see themselves as working- class but whose ambitions are far broader than those of their parents'. Seven law lords sat to decide whether proceedings should go ahead to extradite to Spain General Augusto Pinochet, the former head of the state of Chile. The Government announced its intention to create so-called 'people's peers' nominated by the public to seats in a reformed upper house; Lord Wakeham is to chair a royal commission on the reforms. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, warned that republi- cans were planning attacks. There was a gun and then a petrol-bomb attack on Wood- bourne Royal Ulster Constabulary post in west Belfast; two heavy machine-guns capable of shooting down helicopters were found in working order near Carrick- macross, Co Monaghan, in the Republic of Ireland. GEC is to sell its defence electron- ics business Marconi to British Aerospace for £7.7 billion; the new company will be the world's third largest aerospace business. Vodafone agreed a £67 billion merger with AirTouch Communications of the United States. Regional Independent Media, the publisher of the Yorkshire Post, proposed a £913 million takeover of the Mirror Group. A way of testing for Creutzfeldt-Jakob dis- ease from tonsil swabs was published; at the same time it was pointed out that the dis- ease could be spread by surgical instru- ments. George ‘Dadie' Rylands, fellow of King's College, Cambridge and promoter of theatricals, died, aged 96. The late Lord Goodman was said to have stolen £1 mil- lion from Lord Portman, partly to fund Harold Wilson's office. Mr Jonathan Aitken pleaded guilty to the jury when he answered charges at the Old Bailey arising from his failed libel action last year; he is to be sentenced in June. England was expelled from the Five Nations rugby championships in an argument over television rights, but reinstated the next day.
THE bodies of 45 Albanian-speaking civil- ians were found in a ditch at Racak in Kosovo; Serbian militarised police were blamed. The 41 bodies laid out in the local mosque were taken away by Serb armed police; the attack on the village then con- tinued as part of the offensive by the feder- al Republic of Yugoslavia against forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Mrs Madeleine Albright, the United States Sec- retary of State, said that NATO might make air strikes if Mr Milosevic did not cooperate. President Boris Yeltsin of Rus- sia was taken to hospital with a bleeding stomach ulcer. The trial of President Bill Clinton of the United States by the Senate continued with arguments about which wit- nesses ought to be called. King Hussein returned to Jordan after six months receiv- ing treatment for cancer in the United States. To mark the end of Ramadan, Pres- ident Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian entity released dozens of prisoners held without trial. The Reverend Canaan Banana, the former president of Zimbabwe, was sen- tenced to a year in prison for sodomy, pro- vided he pays about £4,000 compensation to a policeman he was convicted of assault- ing; he is appealing. Forces of the Econom- ic Community of West African States Mon- itoring Group, principally Nigerian, recap- tured Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, from rebel forces of the Revolution- ary United Front; in the countryside con- trol is split and thousands face starvation. A mob of militant Hindus ransacked the headquarters of the Board of Control for Cricket in India in Bombay in protest at the forthcoming tour by Pakistan. CSH ❑ The heading 'Media Studies' appeared last week over a feature article instead of in its usual place above Stephen Glover's col- umn. This was because of an error, not of the editorial staff, but of the printers, who apologise.
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