PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The Lords passed the third reading of the Bill to abolish the voting rights of heredi- tary peers by 221 to 81. The Earl of Burford, heir to the Duke of St Albans, leapt from the steps of the throne on to the woolsack shouting Treason!' The Prince of Wales refused an invitation to a banquet given by President Jiang Zemin of China during his state visit to Britain; he was said to have been motivated by his regard for the Dalai Lama. Police arrested demonstrators who got too close to Mr Jiang or waved Tibetan flags at him in a royal park. Senator George Mitchell extended his review of the Good Friday agreement into a sixth week. Accord- ing to the Sunday Times, Mr Geoffrey Robinson, who resigned as Paymaster-Gen- eral last Christmas, had told friends he owned photographs of a Cabinet minister in 'a compromising position' with 'a young per- son who appears to be a teenager'. Mr Gor- don Brown, the Chancellor of the Exche- quer, appointed his political special adviser, Mr Ed Balls, as chief economic adviser to the Treasury. The Prison Service resumed the running of Buckley Hall prison, Lan- cashire, after Group 4 lost its contract to administer it. The number of people seeking asylum in Britain was 7,300 last month (com- pared with 4,455 in the same month last year); the total this year is 51,000, and is expected to he 70,000 by the end of Decem-
ber. Marks and Spencer ended. a regular arrangement to buy clothing from a British supplier, William Baird, putting at risk 7,260 jobs in its 19 factories. Live TV, the cable channel launched by the Mirror Group in 1995 to bring topless darts to the nation, is to close after losing £9 million last year. The Earl of Lucan was declared dead by the High Court 25 years after he disappeared. A small earthquake vibrated beneath Brecon.
THE People's Assembly of Indonesia voted in as President an almost blind Muslim cleric, Abdurrahaman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Durr, much to the angry disappoint- ment of the supporters of Mrs Megawati, the opposition leader, though they were then mollified by her election as Vice-President. Dozens of civilians in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, were killed by Russian rockets; Russian tanks then closed the road to Inguthetia, Chechnya's western neighbour, trapping thousands of refugees wanting to join the 170,000 who had already fled. The French were found by European Union vet- erinary inspectors to have fed livestock with feed containing not only dead cows but also bovine slurry and human sewage; even so, French farmers blockaded the Channel Tunnel demanding no British beef be imported. Mr Giulio Andreotti, who has been a member of 34 Italian governments, was acquitted of criminal co-operation with the Mafia. In Argentina, Fernando de la Rua of the Centre-Left Alliance was elected Pres- ident to succeed the Peronist Carlos Menem. In the United States, Mr Pat Buchanan left the Republican party after 40 years to seek the nomination of the Reform party, found- ed by Mr Ross Perot, for the presidency of the nation; Mr Donald Trump, the property magnate, followed suit. The nationalist Swiss People's party made large gains in elections to become the second biggest in the ruling coalition. A road across Israel between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was declared a 'safe passage' to allow Palestinians to travel between the two territories. Mr J.M. Coetzee, the South African novelist, won the Booker prize for the second time with Disgrace; he won it before in 1983 with The Life and Times of Michael K. A bus full of Hindu pilgrims in Hoshiarpur in Punjab swerved to miss a cow and fell 80ft down a moun- tainside, killing 27. In a village near Cusco in Peru, 26 children died after drinking insecti- cide mixed with milk meant for poisoning stray dogs. Payne Stewart, the American golfer, died in an air crash, aged 42. A top designed by a retired professor span for 1 hour 37 minutes and 42 seconds at a park in Takamatsu, south-western Japan, setting a world record.
CSH
Previous page
