PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK M r David Blunkett resigned as the
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after it was revealed that he had taken a directorship in a DNA-testing company called DNA Bioscience, after resigning from his previous Cabinet post, without consulting the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, as the ministerial code of practice stipulates. He had sold some shares he’d bought in the company, saying he wanted ‘to protect family and friends from further intrusion’. After a delay caused by a rift in the Cabinet, the government announced a Bill to criminalise tobaccosmoking in enclosed public spaces, apart from pubs not selling food and private clubs. Mrs Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, said it would be ‘only a matter of time’ before a complete ban on smoking was enforced. The government then threatened to make illegal the consumption of alcohol on buses and trains. O2, the mobile telephone company, agreed to a takeover by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica for £17.7 billion. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall flew off on an eight-day tour of the United States, beginning with the laying of flowers to commemorate the 67 Britons who died in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Five teenagers, two of them girls, died when a stolen car they were in crashed into a wall at St Leonards on Sea, Sussex, as it was being followed by police; a 15year-old convicted of muggings, burglary and theft was said to have been at the wheel. Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, began to pay for a pagan minister to act as a chaplain to three life prisoners who said they had converted to his religion. Best Mate, the treble winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, collapsed and died during the 2.40 at Exeter on 1 November.
Three bombs in two markets and a bus in New Delhi killed 59; Islamist extremists supporting an independent Kashmir were blamed. Thousands of survivors of the earthquake in Kashmir continued to have a hard time of it, with injuries, lack of food, clean water and shelter and winter coming on. In Basra, Iraq, a roadside bomb killed 20 and injured 70. The United Nations Security Council told Syria to co-operate with inquiries into the murder in February of Mr Rafic Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon; among those whom investigators want to interview are President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law, Mr Assef Shawkat, the chief of military intelligence, and his brother Mr Maher Assad. Iran dismissed or moved more than 20 high-ranking diplomats deemed too liberal. Mr Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, the chief-of-staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney of the United States, resigned when he was indicted on charges of perjury and obstructing justice arising from investigations of the public exposure of Miss Valerie Plame as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003, at a time when her husband, Mr Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, was denying the President’s claim that Iraq had obtained nuclear material from Niger. Many people played the game of spotting the issue in the thickets of the affair. President George Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito to the vacancy in the Supreme Court for which he had previously nominated Miss Harriet Miers, who had never been a judge, was criticised by the Senate and withdrew her candidature. France saw four nights of riots in the Paris suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois, where dozens of cars were set alight, and Monfermeil, where tear gas was fired into a crowded mosque. Mr Amani Abeid Karume of the socialist Chama Cha Mapinduzi party was re-elected as President of Zanzibar; police clashed with supporters of the opposition amid accusations of electoral fraud. Canada, which will accept 245,000 immigrants this year, announced plans to take 300,000 annually within five years. A large crater on Mars was officially named Tooting, after the London suburb. CSH
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