PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew to New York for a day to tell the Unit- ed Nations about how Britain might use her armed forces in future and what might replace the Bretton Woods agreement. He went on to join President Bill Clinton of the United States in a seminar on 'strengthening democracy in the global economy'. Since that was the day the President's videotaped evidence to the grand jury was being broad- cast, few people took much notice. Mr Blair also published his thoughts on the 'Third Way' as a Fabian Society pamphlet. The Liberal Democrats, meeting at Brighton, contemplated discontinuing their collabora- tion with the Labour government unless it were more sympathetic to proportional rep- resentation. The European Central Bank prohibited Britain from putting the Queen's head on euro notes, if it ever issues them. The Royal Ulster Constabulary arrested six men and the Irish police arrested four men in the course of investigating the bombing at Omagh on 15 August, which killed 29. More than £76,000 of government money was paid to Irish Republican Army terrorists whose property had been 'lost, damaged or confis- cated' in a search at the Maze prison at the time of an attempted mass escape. Two British aid workers kidnapped in Chechnya on 4 July 1997 were released. The govern- ment announced that passports would be issued for dogs and cats, combined with implanted computer chips, as an alternative to quarantine against rabies. Patricia Hayes, the actress, died, aged 88. Susan Barrantes, the mother of the Duchess of York, died in a motor crash in Argentina, aged 61. Father Francis Bown, Vicar of St Stephen's church, Hull, announced he was joining the Roman Catholic Church since 'the proper course for faithful Anglicans is not to go on attempting to revive the corpse of the Church of Eng- land'. Madonna, the scandalous pop star, put her two-year-old daughter Lourdes down for Cheltenham Ladies' College.
PRESIDENT Clinton's videotaped evi- dence to the grand jury in the matter of Monica Lewinsky was broadcast for more than four hours. There were few surprises. Mr Clinton said his 'inappropriate intimate contact' with her was not sexual intercourse or 'sexual relations'. He was asked if Miss Lewinsky would be lying if she said he kissed her breast, touched her genitalia, used a cigar as a sexual aid and had telephone sex with her; he answered by referring back to his denial of sexual relations. When asked if his attorney's statement was true in saying `there was absolutely no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form', Mr Clinton pointed out that his attorney's word was 'is', not 'was', and, 'It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" means. If "is" means is, and never has been, that's one thing. If it means, there is none, that was a completely true statement.' During the broadcast, Mr Clinton was addressing the UN, where he was given a standing ovation. The Queen visited Malaysia and closed the Commonwealth Games there; near her lodgings 40,000 people demonstrated against the government of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, which arrested Mr Anwar Ibrahim, the dismissed deputy prime minis- ter. Mr Robin Cook stayed on with the Queen as a deterrent to troublemakers. Three South African soldiers were killed when a force of a few hundred intervened in Lesotho to restore the position of the ruling government against opposition protesters. The Basque terrorists Euzkadi ta Azkata- suna announced an indefinite ceasefire. Five survivors of a Burmese Myanmar Airways aeroplane crash were said to have been raped, tortured and killed by Shan villagers. Swedish opponents of the European Union ensured that its Prime Minister, Mr Goran Persson, and the Social Democratic party, in power for 56 of the past 67 years, had to recruit the support of the Eurosceptical for- mer communist Left party to form a govern- ment. Mr Yevgeny Primakov, the new Prime Minister of Russia, sought to reim- pose the state monopoly on vodka. Florence Griffith-Joyner, the champion sprinter reputed to have benefited from drugs, died of a heart attack, aged 38. CSH
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