PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`May I recommend a good lawyer?'
The Prime Minister, Mr John Major, said at the Lord Mayor's banquet that he would like to talk to representatives of Protestant terrorists from Northern Ireland before Christmas. South of the border there was a political crisis when the Tanaiste, Mr Richard Spring, withdrew Labour Party support from the Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds (whom he accused of complicity in the sluggishness of the Attor- ney-General in extraditing a pederast), when he (the Taoiseach) appointed him (the Attorney-General) President of the High Court. The Queen said at the Open- ing of Parliament that the Government wanted to give more money to the Euro- pean Community; the Chancellor had said it would be an extra £250 million by the year 2000, but a Treasury report suggested it would be £1 billion. Mrs Douglas Hogg resigned from the Downing Street policy unit. Mr Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secre- tary, was found to have acted unlawfully in making a £243 million grant for the con- struction of the Pergau dam in Malaysia. Mr Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, was found to have acted unlawfully in intro- ducing a new system of compensation for victims of violent crime. The Duke of York visited Argentina, the first official royal visit since the Falklands war, in which he served, he was greeted with a small riot. Mr Andrew Neil, who was editor of the Sunday Times for 11 years, is to leave Mr Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation now that his television programme in America has been dropped. Stephen Dykes Bower, the archi- tect of the baldachin in St Paul's Cathe- dral, died aged 91. Humphrey Berkeley, the former Conservative MP of an unconven- tional bent, died, aged 68. J.I.M. Stewart, the Oxford don and detective writer (Michael Innes), died, aged 88. Dame Eliz- abeth Maconchy, the composer, died, aged 87. A tiger killed a keeper at Mr John Aspinall's Howlett's Zoo: this is the third time it has happened. A wolf-husky hybrid bit a child in Pentacth, Anglesey. A 56- year-old former tramp, Chris Kitch, won a place at Oxford University. A four-stone rabbit was stolen from its hutch in Milton Keynes.
THE UNITED STATES refused to contin- ue co-operating with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in a blockade of Bosnia to prevent it importing arms. There was renewed fighting around Bihar in north-west Bosnia. President Bill Clinton of the United States said that he would reim- pose trade sanctions against China if it did not disclose details of missile sales to Pak- istan. He also tried, during an Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Indone- sia, to get nations on the rim of the Pacific to agree to a free-trade zone there by the year 2020. There were riots in Tilli, the cap- ital of east Timor, in protest against the occupation of the country by Indonesia since 1976. Auditors accused the European Commission of wasting billions of pounds of EC money through fraud and incompe- tence. The people of Sweden voted by 53 per cent to 47 in favour of joining the Euro' pean Community on 1 January. Iraq recog- nised Kuwait within the borders defined by the United Nations: the UN renewed sanc- tions against Iraq. Palestinian policemen arrested more than 150 people they thought were connected to Islamic Jihad, the extremist movement, after three Israeli soldiers were killed by a bomb. Mrs Chan- drika Kumaratunga was sworn in as Presi- dent of Sri Lanka and appointed her moth- er, Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike as Prime Minister. Taiwan 'accidentally' shelled China and injured four men. The American space shuttle Atlantis spent 11 days looking at the ozone layer, American interest rates rose by three-quarters of a percentage point. Duck-billed platypuses in Tasmania have been succumbing to a fungus, MitcOr
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