PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The horrors of war.
Mr John Major was still the Prime Minister after his party won a vote on the European Community (Finance) Bill by 330 votes to 303. He had previously declared it a vote of confidence, but eight MPs abstained and had the Conservative whip withdrawn; they were Sir Teddy Tay- lor, Mrs Teresa Gorman, Mr Tony Marlow, Mr John Wilkinson, Mr Nicholas Budgen, Mr Christopher Gill, Mr Richard Shepherd and Mr Michael Carttiss. A threatened challenge to Mr Major as leader of the Conservative Party did not materialise. Sir Marcus Fox was re-elected as chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee by 13 votes. In the Budget, duty on sherry, port and champagne was reduced, and there was no increase on other drinks. Cigarettes went up by a halfpenny each and petrol by about twopence halfpenny a litre. Income tax per- sonal allowance and the threshold for high rates have been increased and are to be index-linked. Mortgage interest relief was restricted from 20 per cent to 15 per cent. Public spending on motorways is to be reduced. Tessas may be reinvested for an additional five years. Lord James Douglas- Hamilton, a Scottish Office minister, said that he would renounce the Earldom of Selkirk which he was in danger of inheriting from his uncle, who has died, aged 76; this would avoid a by-election. But his cousin Alasdair, Master of Selkirk, might turn out to be the heir after all. The Earl of Carlisle died, aged 71. The Earl of Derby died, aged 76. Nearly one house in three in the Der- byshire Dales is afflicted by dangerous lev- els of naturally occurring radioactive radon gas. Buster Edwards, one of the Great Train Robbers, hanged himself at the age of 62. More than 100 people dancing in a north London flat at 3 a.m. fell through the floor into a chemist's shop below. Ian White, a 27-year-old man convicted of theft and facing 14 years in prison, won £2.25 million on the pools.
THE PEOPLE of Norway voted — for the second time — against their country joining the European Community. Bosnian Serb forces, in alliance with renegade Muslims under Mr Fikret Abdic, closed in on the Bosnian enclave of Bihac, with much loss of civilian life. The United Nations called on both sides to agree to a ceasefire, which the Bosnians did but the Serbs did not. Senator Robert Dole, the incoming majority leader in the United States Senate, attacked Britain over the Bosnian war: 'The biggest stumbling block is the British,' he said. 'They are the ones who want to do abso- lutely nothing.' Secessionist forces attacked Grozny, the capital of Chechnya; President Boris Yeltsin of Russia told both sides that if they did not stop fighting then Russia') troops would intervene. Jeffrey Dahrne who killed at least 16 young men and ate bits of them was himself killed by a fell° prisoner at the Columbia Correctionnl Institution in Wisconsin. President JO° Sanguinetti of Uruguay was narrowlY returned to power. The Pope created 30 cardinals, including Archbishop Th°ttlas Winning of Glasgow. Archbishop Arturo, Rivera y Damas of San Salvador died, aged 71. All 579 passengers were rescued fro°. the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise slur) which caught fire off the Somali coast. The ship had been captured by Palestinian ter:, rorists in 1985. More than 230 people died in a fire in a dance-hall at Fuxin, in north' east China. A volcano called Bulusan sh°%1/-
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