A Scottish court sitting in Holland found Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al
Megrahi, a Libyan, guilty of the murder of 270 people through the bombing of an aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988. His co-defendant, Al Amin Ithalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty by the three judges hearing the case. A report on the practices of the Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool found that its taking and storing of children's organs was unethical and illegal. A separate audit found that NHS hospitals had more than 105,000 such organs in store. The row over the resignation of Mr Peter Mande!son, over passport applications by the brothers Hinduja, reached realms of unreality. 'I am not a liar. I did not lie,' Mr Mandelson said; he suggested that he might not have resigned if he had had more time to consider: 'The fight suddenly went out of me.' Mr Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press secretary, said: 'There were things that Peter cannot explain, and cannot explain to himself. I think he has been slightly detached.' Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, emerged as someone who had pointed the finger of guilt at Mr Mande!son, Sir Anthony Hammond, QC, a former Treasury solicitor, was asked by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister. to produce a report about the passport request. Labour politicians used the inquiry as a pretext for not answering questions on the matter, but the Speaker ruled that there was no reason to regard the matter as inviolately sub judice. Mr John Reid, a Catholic by upbringing, became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Mr Bob Kiley, the American appointed transport commissioner for London, said that the government's determination to go ahead with a so-called private-public partnership to run the Underground was 'a prescription for potential disaster'. The Right Reverend Eric Kemp retired after 26 years as Bishop of Chichester, aged 85; bishops appointed more recently than he are obliged to retire at 70. BT said revenue from telephone boxes had fallen by 37 per cent in two years. A survey found that 77 per cent of children aged from 14 to 16 had a mobile telephone. John Prebble, the historian and author of the screenplay of Zulu, died, aged 88. An eight-year-old boy was dragged into a tunnel of the Newcastle Metro after his hand became trapped in a door.
IN India an earthquake with its centre at Bhuj, a city of 150,000 in Gujarat, killed tens of thousands, certainly more than 20,000. Mr Franz Fischler, the agriculture commissioner of the European Union, spoke of its reaching the limit of its budget, what with a mountain of unsold beef and the scare about bovine spongiform
encephalopathy on the Continent of Europe; sales in Germany have halved. DaimlerChrysler, the unhappy GermanAmerican group, sacked 26,000, a fifth of its Chrysler workforce. A judge in Chile ordered the house arrest of General Augusto Pinochet and the prosecution of charges against him of murder and kidnap during his dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. President Sam Nujoma of Namibia spoke of recruiting more soldiers so that, with its allies Angola and Zimbabwe, it might prevail in the war in the Congo against Uganda and Rwanda. In Zimbabwe an explosion destroyed the Harare printing press of the Daily News, which has criticised the government of Mr Robert Mugabe. Police and soldiers clashed with supporters of opposition groups in Zanzibar, leaving more than 30 dead and arresting hundreds. Mr Genri Kuprashvili, the chief spokesman for the security service of Georgia, took 92 minutes to swim two kilometres in a pool in Tbilisi with his arms and legs tied; his next target is the Dardanelles. To general surprise, the Pope announced another seven cardinals, bringing the number to be appointed on 21 February to 44. Queen Maria Jose of Italy, who reigned for less than a month, in 1946, as the wife of the late Umberto II, died, aged 94.
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