PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Balmoral switchboard The Daily Mirror and the Sun published pages of intimate photographs of the Duchess of York and her financial adviser, an American businessman, Mr John Bryan, taken in secret by an Italian paparazzi while the two were on holiday at a rented villa on the French Riviera. Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying that the Queen and the Duke of York strongly disapproved of the publication of the photographs. Later the Sun published transcripts of an intimate telephone conversation allegedly held on a mobile telephone between a lady said to be the Princess of Wales and an unidentified admirer. Buckingham Palace said it was unclear whether the tape was genuine. Meanwhile the Queen and her family continued their traditional summer holiday at Balmoral although the Duchess of York returned to London. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exche- quer came back from their summer holiday to face a gathering sterling crisis. Amid fears that they might be forced to raise interest rates, the Chancellor gave an early morning statement reaffirming his determi- nation to take all action necessary to main- tain the pound within its permitted limits in the exchange rate mechanism. The eco- nomic gloom was compounded by figures showing that in July retail sales fell and the balance of payments deteriorated, although
the country's gross domestic product excluding North Sea oil managed a tiny rise in the second quarter of the year — the first since the middle of 1990. British Gas announced, for the second time this sum- mer, that it was cutting its prices; domestic gas bills are due to fall by 5 per cent from October. Problems in the property market were further highlighted by news that at present no fewer than 15 Lutyens houses are up for sale. The Lord Chancellor issued a consultation paper on whether judges and barristers should abandon their wigs and robes. An Englishman was discharged from an Edinburgh jury because he could not understand the Scottish brogue. Donald Stewart, the Scottish National Party's first MP and former leader, died aged 71.
THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr John Major, met the UN Secretary General, Dr Boutros Ghali, to finalise arrangements for this week's Yugoslav peace conference in Lon- don. On the eve of the conference Lord Carrington resigned as the European Com- munity's mediator in the conflict. In the run up to the talks fighting in Bosnia intensified and for the first time UN troops in Sarajevo came under deliberate fire; two British Royal engineers were slightly hurt and later the BBC reporter, Martin Bell, was injured during a mortar attack on a UN barracks. A
million people fled their homes in southern Florida to escape Hurricane Andrew, which caused many billions of dollars of damage and killed at least eight people. The US dollar fell to its lowest level ever against the German mark, the resulting turmoil on the foreign exchanges was later exacerbated by news of a French opinion poll showing narrow majority in favour of rejecting the Maastricht Treaty on European union. Paul Ride, an Englishman working as a chef in Kuwait, was sentenced to seven years jail for allegedly entering Iraq illegally after he had got lost in the desert. Western plans for an air exclusion zone over southern Iraq, to protect the area's Shia inhabitants from Saddam Hussein's airforce, were delayed by unease among other Arab states. A new session of the Middle East peace talks opened in Washington, with hopes for progress boosted by the recent change of government in Israel. Hundreds of neo- Nazis fought police during three nights of anti-refugee riots in the eastern German city of Rostock. Five hundred people who had booked a two-day tour billed as ' a voy- age to nowhere' were rescued when their Greek liner sank in the Straits of Malacca• A Dutch farming magazine reported that marijuana is now Holland's sixth largest hothouse crop after tomatoes.
RAE
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