PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Frederick West hanged himself in his cell at Winson Green prison when he should have been eating chicken soup and a pork chop; he had been charged with 12 murders, including those of his first wife and their daughter. Prisoners rioted for two days at Everthorpe prison in North Humberside and three others escaped from Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight. Scot- land Yard decided to stop inquiries into supposed war criminals living in Britain; police had already spent £5 million on their investigations. Among the New Year honours were life peerages for Mrs Dou- glas Hogg, a former policy adviser at No. 10 Downing Street, and for Mrs John Smith, the widow of the former Labour leader; among the knights were Mr Rocco Forte, a hotelier, and Mr Gavin Laird, the general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union; Prebendary Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans and Mr Michael Bentine, a comedian, became CBEs; Delia Smith, a television cook, became an OBE; various crossing-sweep- ers and dinner-ladies became MBEs, except in the Empire, such as the Cook
Islands, where the BEM is still awarded. Mr David Blunkett, Labour's education spokesman, said that his party had not ruled out the possibility of imposing Value Added Tax on private schooling if it got the chance; a couple of hours later he said that his party had now ruled it out. Fanny Cradock, a television cook, died, aged 85. Tower Colliery in Mid Glamor- gan has been re-opened after being bought by 239 miners who plan to pro- duce 500,000 tons of coal a year. Pension funds in the United Kingdom lost 4 per cent of their value in 1994. Managers on National Health trust funds averaged 6.6 per cent pay rises in 1994. Leigh Bowery, the grotesque performer, died, aged 38. Part of the old Stormont parliament building near Belfast, including the debat- ing chamber, burnt down. A lavatory at Frogmore House in the grounds of Wind- sor Castle burnt down.
RUSSIAN soldiers engaged in street fighting in Grozny, the capital of the secessionist region of Chechnya. Chechen
resistance destroyed several Russian armoured vehicles; hundreds were killed on both sides. In Tajikistan six Russian soldiers died after drinking champagne poisoned with cyanide. Bosnian Croats joined the Bosnian government and Bosnian Serb forces in formalising a four- month ceasefire. A hotel in Sarajevo came under rocket attack. Fighting increased in the streets of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, in preparation for the withdraw- al of United Nations forces. Mohamed Siad Barre, the President of Somalia for 21 years until 1991, died in Nigeria; his age was unknown. The Israeli cabinet pro- hibited Jewish settlers from building a new settlement in the West Bank near Bethlehem. Israeli forces killed six Pales- tinians, including three policemen, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Eight police- men were shot dead in one day in Egypt. Food prices in Austria fell by a quarter after its accession to the European Com- munity. Brigitte Bardot called for pigeons to be fed contraceptive corn rather than being shot.
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