PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`10K I'll go to bed with you. But you'll have to help me with my homework first.' Electors in Northern Ireland voted for a 108-member assembly by a complicated kind of proportional representation. The age for male consent to private homosexual acts is to be reduced to 16 after a vote of 336 to 129 in the Commons, despite a warning from Dr George Carey, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, that it would send out 'the wrong messages' to the young. Mr David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that, under a new School Standards Bill, 'Education Action Zones' would be established in deprived areas, sometimes at parental instigation; in the first instance 25 such zones of 20 schools each, in some way independent of local authorities and including '24-hour classrooms', would be set up. Among a clutch of 18 new life peers were Mr Melvyn Bragg, the broadcaster, Mr Waheed Alli, who was behind the television company that makes the Big Breakfast show, Mr Tim- othy Bell, the publicist, Mr Norman Lam- ont, who was absent from Mr John Major's resignation honours, and Mr Tom Sawyer, the outgoing secretary general of the Labour party. Mr Peter Temple-Morris, who has been sitting as an Independent Conservative since last year, took the Labour whip. Lord Neill, the government standards watchdog, decided after all not to act for Lady Porter in her appeal against a £27 million surcharge from her days on Westminster Council; he said it might be a `perceived conflict' of his roles. Alliance & Leicester showed signs of wanting to merge with the Woolwich to become Britain's third largest mortgage lender. PowerGen, the fossil fuel generator, negotiated to buy East Midlands Electricity for about £2 bil- lion from the American group Dominion Resources, which took it over in 1996. Mr Richard Branson's Virgin Rail dropped plans for flotation on the stock market and sold a 49 per cent stake to Stagecoach, the transport group. Benny Green, the jazz musician and writer, died, aged 70. French police expelled some British football sup- porters hanging round the World Cup games on the grounds that they were `known hooligans'.
THE ISRAELI Cabinet approved the extension of Jerusalem's boundaries to take in an extra 30,000 people and more occu- pied territory. The Pope visited Austria and beatified Sister Restituta Kafka, a nun exe- cuted for resisting Nazism. Sober Germans rioted at Lens outside a World Cup game in France and left a French policeman in a coma. Iran knocked out the United States in the competition. The Iranian parliament forced Mr Abdollah Nouri to resign as inte- rior minister of the moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami, who responded by appointing Mr Nouri vice- president responsible for social affairs. Mr Warren Buffett, an American billionaire; said that Berkshire Hathaway, the financial group of which he is chairman, would acquire General Re, the reinsurance grouP, to make the second largest company in the world by net worth. Two British soldiers were rescued after a climbing accident that left them stranded for four days in terrible weather near the summit of Mount McKin- ley, Alaska, which, at 19,000 feet, is the highest peak in North America. The united States, Japan and member nations of the European Community withdrew their ambassadors from Belarus after they were annoyed by President Alexander Lukash- enko. A gale in Moscow sent trees toppling into the walls of the Kremlin. Old people 01 Ukraine who have not been paid their pen- sions for five months have been offered free coffins instead. Maureen O'Sullivan, Jane in many Tarzan films, died, aged 87. The 82-year-old Mr P.W. Botha, the former president of South Africa, a widower, mar- ried Miss Barbara Robertson, aged 57. csii
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