PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mandelson's serenade
The Queen is heading a committee to consider if the civil list should continue and whether Catholics and first-born females should succeed to the throne; the other members of the committee are the Duke of Edinburgh, their children, the Earl of Air- lie, Sir Robert Fellowes, Mr Robert Janvrin and Commander Richard Aylard. The Gov- ernment introduced measures for a volun- tary identity card, for which bearers will have to pay. Plans to feature the Union flag on it annoyed Irish nationalists; plans to have the stars of the European Community instead angered anti-federationists. Six Conservative, six Labour and two Liberal Democrat peers were created, including Mr Maurice Saatchi, the advertising man, Mr Peter Gummer, the brother of the Secre- tary of State for the Environment, Sir Rich- ard Rogers, the architect, Mr John Taylor, the unsuccessful Conservative candidate for Cheltenham, who is black, and Mr Swraj Paul, a rich Indian. Mr Roy Hattersley, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, advised Mr Tony Blair to rein in his spin doctors: 'The obvious example is Peter Mandelson who seems to be in the paper far too often, who seems to be on television far too often, who seems to take himself, and be taken, far more seriously than I
think is appropriate,' he said on a television programme. Geoffrey Dearmer, the first world war poet, died, aged 103. Rabbi Hugo Gryn died, aged 66. A pensioner walking her dog on Clacton seafront was hit and badly injured by a crashlanding Tiger Moth. Safeway introduced its own brand of bananas, grown in Ecuador.
AN UNOFFICIAL cease-fire brought a pause in the fighting in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya; civilians were told a Russian assault would start in 48 hours. General Alexander Lebed, who has been given responsibility for Chechnya by President Boris Yeltsin, blamed Mr Anatoly Kulikov, the minister of the interior, for fighting in which hundreds were killed; he said either Kulikov or he must go. The United Nations Implementation Force in Bosnia moved to destroy an unregistered dump of Bosnian Serb armaments found in a school grounds. Australia was said to be preparing to sell uranium to Taiwan. Two Kurdish factions fought one another in an enclave in north- ern Iraq. Hundreds were arrested in Jordan during riots against a rise in the price of bread; Mr Abdul-Karim Kabariti, the prime minister, was blamed for the decision, which was intended to meet demands by
the International Monetary Fund. Voting began in the Lebanese general elections, which will last a month. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe married his former secretary, by whom he has two children. Belgian police searched 11 houses after the bodies of two little girls were found; a paederast ring was feared to be at work. Police stormed a university building in Seoul and arrested thousands of students who had demanded the reunification of Korea. Mr Goh Chok Tong, the prime min- ister of Singapore, urged his people to take better care of public lavatories and to appreciate music more as part of a cam- paign called Our Social Habits Reflect Our Progress Towards a Gracious Society; any- one caught leaving a lavatory unflushed would be fined $150. Mr Alan Bond, the Australian financier, was jailed for three years for fraud. There was an outbreak of cholera in Mongolia. Dried tuna flakes were blamed for a new outbreak of food poisoning affecting more than 400 people in the city of Gifuin, Japan; a previous out- break was blamed on radish sprouts. In Peru, 35 people were electrocuted when a cable brought down by fireworks fell on a crowd celebrating the 456th anniversary of
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