PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mrs Thatcher claimed in the Ameri- can magazine, Newsweek, that she, her col- leagues and her policies won the general election for the Conservative Party and warned the Prime Minister, Mr John Major, not to 'undo what I have done'. The hard left of the Labour Party announced that Mr Ken Livingstone, with Mr Bernie Grant as his deputy, would enter the con- test for the Labour leadership. The leaked minutes of a meeting of the Metropolitan Police policy committee were published in an Irish newspaper and revealed that the force has 'little' intelligence on IRA active service units operating in mainland Britain. The National Union of Teachers withdrew from a proposed boycott of the Govern- ment's scheme for regular reviews of teach- ers' individual performances. The smallest monthly rise for almost two years in the number of people out of work and signs that the two-year decline in car sales may be ending were welcomed as an indication that the worst of the recession may be over. Mr Chris Patten, who lost his parliamentary seat in Bath in the general election, was offered the governorship of Hong Kong. Six sailors were injured when a Royal Navy Sea Harrier accidently bombed the carrier Ark Royal during an exercise in the eastern Atlantic. A man was charged with the mur-
der of a four-year-old boy, who was found dead in his bedroom at his parents' Ply- mouth boarding house. International rock and pop stars met at Wembley Stadium in a tribute concert to Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, who died last year of Aids. Two comedians, Frankie Howerd, master of the double entendre, and Benny Hill, world famous for his saucy humour, died, aged 70 and 67. Andrew Lloyd Web- ber, the composer paid a record £10 million for a Canaletto painting of Horse Guards, to ensure that the painting remains in Britain. A secretary who was left 'looking like a hedgehog' after a visit to the hair- dresser was Aarded damages and said, 'It shows the British legal system works'.
SERBIAN forces using mortars and machine guns attacked Sarajevo in an effort to partition the capital of Bosnia-Hercegov- ina, the former Yugoslav republic. Earlier the United States had threatened to cut diplomatic and financial links with Yugoslavia in a bid to stop the Serbian onslaught. President Yeltsin offered to step down as Russia's Prime Minister in three months time as a concession to parliamen- tarians in the Congress of People's Deputies. President Najibullah of Afghanistan, who was installed by Moscow
six years ago was deposed by a coalition of generals and a rebel commander, when guerrillas closed in on the capital, Kabul. A killer was executed in the gas chamber in California, after spending 14 years on Death Row and despite four attempts dur- ing his last night to reprieve him by appeal court judges. A man was charged with the murder of a British tourist who was shot dead on the first day of her holiday in New Orleans when she and her boyfriend refused any money to a mugger. Italian experts came closer to stemming the flow of lava from Sicily's Mount Etna. Five white South African MPs of the liberal Demo- cratic Party announced they had joined the African National Congress Party. The Peruvian Congress swore in First Vice- President, Maximo San Roman, as Presi- dent in defiance of the military take-over by the elected Pesident Fujimori. Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich Romanov, who claimed to be the successor to the Russian throne, as his father was a cousin of the last czar, Nicholas II, died in Florida. The hus- band of Leona 'Queen Meanie' Helmsley, the self-styled American hotel queen, extinguished the lights of the Empire State Building as a 'symbolic gesture' to mark his sorrow at her imprisonment for tax evasion.
KLE
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