PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
MJohn Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Envi- ronment, Transport and the Regions, relin- quished day-to-day direction of transport matters to Lord Macdonald of Tradeston. But Mr Prescott immediately announced a grand new transport strategy to show he was still in charge. London Conservatives dropped Mr Steven Norris from their short- list of possible candidates for the post of Mayor of London; Mr Norris called the deci- sion 'lunatic', blamed a 'monstrous regiment of women' in his constituency association who disapproved of his private life, and said that it seemed the party preferred a 'squeaky-clean loser' to someone like himself who might win. Soon afterwards he was rein- stated through the action of the party chair- man Mr Michael Ancram. Mr Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, complained that he had found a bugging device in a Mondeo he had driven during the recent peace talks; Dr Mo Mowlam, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland at the time, was said to have autho- rised the bugging. A copy of Gulliver's Travels with manuscript emendations by Jonathan Swift was stolen by two gunmen from Armagh public library. Miss Jill Craigie, the film director and wife of Mr Michael Foot, died, aged 85. The price of shares in Marks & Spencer rose by 14 per cent in one day as small investors speculated that someone
might buy the company. First-class letters are to go up by lp in April and letters to Europe by two pence to 36p. The headline rate of inflation rose from 1.2 per cent to 1.4 per cent; the underlying rate remained at 2.2 per cent. Those unemployed and claiming bene- fit fell by 10,600 to 1,192,400; the Interna- tional Labour Office gave a fall of 12,000 to 1,716,000. Sixteen cows were killed by a pas- senger train at a crossing near Pontrilas, Herefordshire.
RUSSIAN troops entered Grozny, the capi- tal of Chechnya, after trapped civilians suf- fered intensive bombardment. At a Euro- pean Union summit at Helsinki, Mr Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, had an argument with Mr Lionel Jospin, the Prime Minister of France, who refused to submit to EU law and admit imports of British beef. It then emerged that Mr Blair had turned down a proposal by Mr Jospin to allow the import of grass-fed Scottish beef. At the same time, Mr Blair resisted efforts by the EU to impose the so-called 'withholding tax', which would be imposed on savings held by investors from abroad and would thus damage the City of London. 'If we are isolated and we are in the right,' Mr Blair said, 'then that's the correct position.' The summit formally admitted an application by Turkey to join the EU; but Mr Ismail Cem, the Turkish foreign minister, said: 'If, in
Turkish courts, people continue to physically hit each other at every hearing and this is broadcast for everyone to see, we can't be a member of the EU.' Members of the Falun Gong sect, banned in China, were refused permission to demonstrate at ceremonies to mark the handing over of Macau from Por- tuguese to Chinese rule on 18 December. Police in Istanbul arrested 200 during a demonstration against a high court ruling that a university had the right to bar a female student for wearing the headscarf prescribed by Islam. The Yugoslav war- crimes tribunal sentenced Goran Jelisic, a Bosnian Serb, to 40 years in prison on 31 counts arising from his actions as a comman- der at Luka prison camp in northern Bosnia. French firemen threw cans and smoke- bombs at police, who replied with tear gas, during a demonstration in Paris to have the job of fireman classified as 'dangerous and unhealthy'. Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, died, aged 76. Oxfam said it was pulling out of North Korea, since it was impossible to assess the effect of aid in the country, which is ruled by a secretive Stalin- ist regime. The Maltese-registered tanker Erika, carrying 20,000 tons of oil, broke in half in high seas off Brittany. An overloaded passenger ferry capsized in the nine-mile- wide River Meghna in Bangladesh drowning more than 100.
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