PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Revive your flagging position in the polls, Senator?'
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, before flying off to visit Mr Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, backed American threats to use force against Iraq. SmithKline Beecham and Wellcome announced a merger which would create the biggest drugs company in the world. The excited Stock Exchange hit its highest point ever, at 5611. Railtrack pondered how to save the high-speed rail link to the Channel Tunnel after Mr John Prescott, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, refused to bail out London & Continental Railways, the company that manages Eurostar (which has so far lost £260 million) and was meant to be building the line; indeed Mr Prescott threatened to bring the project into public ownership. Almost a million people were late filing their income tax self-assessment returns, making them liable to £100 penal- ties each. Mr Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group, won damages of £100,000 against Mr Guy Snowden, the chairman of GTech, which has a 22.5 per cent share in Camelot, the lottery opera- tors; the trial turned on whether Mr Snow- den tried to bribe Mr Branson. After the verdict, Mr Snowden resigned from the boards of Camelot and of GTech. Mr Peter Davis, the director-general of Oflot, the lot- tery regulator, resigned after being called in by Mr Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. St Barthole- mew's Hospital will not close, but will be turned into a specialist unit for cancer and heart treatment. Workmen put the cham- ber of the House of Commons in scaffold- ing and inserted 2,800 6-inch screws to pre- vent any more of the roof falling, after a 71b lump of wood fell and landed on the gov- ernment benches during the night.
MRS Madeleine Albright, the American Secretary of State, made a quick tour of Europe and the Middle East, visiting Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, among other places, in preparation for an Ameri- can attack on Iraq. Russia said it would prefer diplomacy to war, but Iraq denied that the Russians had secured any agree- ment to arrange weapon inspection by the United Nations, the casus belli. Mr Yeltsin celebrated his 67th birthday with a cabbage pie. Russia observed an increase in cases of syphilis, with 392,000 new cases last year, 50 times the figure for 1990. A European bal- loon, set on circumnavigating the world, drifted into the Iraqi `no-fly' zone without seeking permission, but was soon granted clearance by the air traffic controllers in Baghdad. Twenty people died when their cable-car plunged 250 feet in the Italian Dolomites after its cable had been cut by the tail of an American military jet. A Con- stitutional Convention was held in Aus- tralia to examine how the nation may become a republic. South Koreans have handed in gold worth more than £500 mil- lion to help swell their country's dwindling reserves. The Philippines is to borrow £1,700 million to support its own reserves. Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection in Texas for the pickaxe murders of two people; she was the first woman in that state to be executed since Chipita Rodriguez, who was hanged in 1863 for the murder of a horse dealer. In Poland 48 people have frozen to death this winter. The Prince of Wales visited Sri Lanka. An American bought a million of the new British stamps showing Diana, Princess of Wales.The West Indies vs England Test match in Kingston, Jamaica, was aban- doned after 62 balls because the pitch was unsafe; it was the first Test in 1,397 match- es to be abandoned for that reason. CSH
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