PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
More than a quarter of a million peo- ple joined a 'Countryside March' through London, protesting against a proposed crim- inalisation of hunting foxes with hounds and about the government's general antipathy to country life. Mr Michael Meacher, a minis- ter in the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, went as far as to walk with the marchers and later make it clear that Mr Michael Foster's private mem- ber's Bill to ban hunting would not reach the statute book. Two men, one Catholic, one Protestant, were murdered by loyalist gunmen in the Railway Bar, Poyntzpass, Co. Armagh. Mr Rupert Murdoch was blamed for stopping the publication by Harper- Collins, which he controls, of a book by Mr Chris Patten about his time as governor of Hong Kong, which made remarks critical of China, where Mr Murdoch hopes to expand his business interests. The Queen agreed to allow the first-born child, even if female, to succeed to the throne, if the government wanted to change the law. The will of Diana, Princess of Wales was published; it named her mother, Mrs Frances Shand Kydd, and her brother, Earl Spencer, as guardians if her sons should be entirely orphaned; £21,468,352 (£12,966,020 after tax) was left, principally to Princes William and Harry. Mr Trevor Rees-Jones, the bodyguard who survived the crash in which the Princess died, said in an interview with the editor of the Daily Mirror during which his employer, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, was present, that he now remembered a car and two motorcy- cles chasing her car. Mr Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, voluntarily visited a police sta- tion and was arrested in connection with alleged thefts from a safe-deposit box hired by his business rival Mr Tiny Rowland and looked after by the store; he was released on bail. A piece of gilded plaster fell from the ceiling of the ballroom at Buckingham Palace while the Queen was investing some of her subjects with honours; Mr Nicholas Howell, aged 28, who had come to see his father receive the OBE, was hit on the head and received nine stitches. Winds also brought down small debris in the Royal Courts of Justice; Lord Bingham, the Lord Chief Justice, asked the clerk: 'Could you inform the powers-that-be that the ceiling is falling apart?' A circus animal keeper had his lower arm bitten off and swallowed by a tiger. The government increased prescrip- tion charges from April by 15p to £5.80. The Financial Times-Stock Exchange share index closed above 5,800 for the first time. The old large 50p piece ceased to be legal tender, THE SECURITY Council of the United Nations passed a resolution warning Iraq of the 'severest consequences' if it violates its new agreement to allow weapons inspectors unrestricted access to suspected production sites. Serbian police clashed with 30,000 demonstrators in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, after 16 ethnically Albanian people were killed by the security forces there. Algerian troops were said to have killed 100 Muslim rebels in a mountainous area 250 miles west of Algiers. Mr Gerhard Schroder received 48 per cent of the vote for the gov- ernorship of Lower Saxony and was nomi- nated to stand as the Social Democrat chal- lenger to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the German elections next September. Bom- bardier, the Canadian engineers, won an £850 million contract to supply tilting trains to Virgin Rail, Mr Richard Branson's train- operating company. The chief abbot of the World Benedictine Confederation was sent by Rome to investigate allegations of sexual abuse of young people that had been made against Cardinal Hans Groer, who resigned as archbishop of Vienna in 1995. Dermot Morgan, who played the comic character Father Ted on television, died, aged 45. Thirty tons of maize were dropped by inter- national relief agencies to help hundreds of thousands in northern Kenya cut off by floods. Declining worldwide oil prices led to petrol being sold for 88 cents a gallon in the
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