PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
A street scene showing the effect of removing people with personality disorders Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, held talks with Mr Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach of Ireland, and Senator George Mitchell, the American honest broker, in an attempt to find a way leading to agree- ment in Northern Ireland. Mr David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Union- ists and First Minister-designate of the Northern Ireland Assembly, had accused Mr Blair of having driven into the wall as talks on the formation of a Northern Ire- land executive collapsed. The Unionists had declined to nominate members. Gen-, eral John de Chastelain, whose task was to report on terrorist decommissioning of arms, was appointed a Companion of Honour by the Queen, and Senator Mitchell was made an honorary knight. Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, pro- posed enacting powers to detain perhaps 600 'dangerous, severely personality-disor- dered' people even if they had committed no crime. The Child Support Agency spent £565,000 last year on 'consolatory' payments to people it had caused 'gross embarrassment, severe distress or humili- ation' by its errors. Marks & Spencer announced a halving of annual profits to £546 million; at its annual general meeting a shareholder in her mid-fifties com- plained that M&S knickers were not only not big enough but also not sexy enough. Centrica, the gas suppliers, announced the closure of all 243 of its 'energy centres' gas showrooms — with the loss of 1,445 jobs, after the company lost £25 million in six months. James Major, aged 24, son of the former prime minister, had a heart pacemaker fitted. Amnesic shellfish poi- soning toxins, which can cause numbness and loss of memory, were found in some scallops off the west coast of Scotland, leading to a ban on fishing for the bivalves in 8,000 square miles.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton of the United States and Mr Ehud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, agreed in Washington to meet every four months in an attempt to complete a peace agreement in the Middle East by the time Mr Clinton leaves office in 18 months. Iraq said that United States aeroplanes had killed 17 civilians in the southern district of Najaf; America said that it had opened fire in self- defence. Iraqi aircraft have violated the no-fly zones 190 times and made 260 other direct threats to American and British aeroplanes since December, according to Allied sources. Mr Zoran Djindjic, a leader of the Alliance for Change, and Mr Vuk Draskovic, the presi- dent of the Serbian Renewal Movement, found themselves unable to agree on how to get rid of President Slobodan Milose- vic. Damage caused by the bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation of the Zastava car and weapons factory in cen- tral Serbia was estimated at $1 billion- worth. The United States imposed 100 per cent import tariffs on $117 million-worth of European goods, including mustard, truffles and Roquefort, in response to a European ban on the import of American beef containing growth hormones. John F. Kennedy Jnr, the only son of the assassi- nated President of the United States, died, aged 38, in a crash of his light air- craft that also killed his wife and her sis- ter. In 1998, 105 million bags of coffee were produced and a record 100 million bags consumed; the first year in which more was produced than consumed since 1992, according to International Coffee Organisation figures. On the west coast.of the United States, 155 grey whales have been washed up on their way to the Bering Sea from winter quarters off Baja Califor- nia; last year only 80 were washed up. Some of Dante's ashes were found in a bag mislaid in a Florence library. Local officials in Inner Mongolia were blamed for allowing 680 square yards of the Great Wall of China to be destroyed to make room for a road bridge.
CSH
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