PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Cleaning up the City Ernest Saunders, the former chairman of Guinness, Gerald Ronson, Anthony Parnes and Sir Jack Lyons were found guilty in the 'Guinness trial' of rigging the share market during Guinness's takeover of Distillers. Saunders was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, Ronson to one year and a £5 million fine, Parnes to two and a half years. Brian Keenan, an Irish- man, was released after four and a half years as a hostage in Beirut. He said John McCarthy, a British journalist still de- tained, was alive and well. A policeman was shot dead in Hackney, east London. The Government halted talks with Lord Hanson over the sale of the electricity company, PowerGen, and decided on a public flotation instead. A stipendiary magistrate in Birmingham ruled that four former members of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad should face charges of perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice. British Airways grounded seven Boeing aircraft after cracks were found in the wings. A sweet- smelling rose was named after Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers. Two men raped a woman after her car broke down on the M20 motorway. A woman who said she had been raped by a man who had offered to rescue her from two other rapists said she had lied. Animal Rights campaigners pro- tested over the beheading of baby walla- bies in experiments at London Zoo. Young homosexual men were reported to believe that they were safe from Aids so long as they only slept with under 23-year-olds. A lone Frenchman with a rifle attempted un- successfully to conquer Sark.
THE announcement by President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that all foreign women and children in Kuwait and Iraq could go home was received with caution. Saddam Hus- sein had earlier been shown in a propagan- da broadcast talking to hostage adults and children; and a 15-year-old schoolboy, on his own in Baghdad, was sent back to England. The United Nations voted for an armed blockade of Iraq. The Soviet Union supported the vote and was accused by Iraq of being an American puppet. The UN Secretary-General arranged to meet the Iraqi Foreign Minister in Jordan for talks. The United States rebuked Dr Wald- heim, president of Austria, for going to Baghdad for talks with Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, and returning with more than 100 Austrians and a message to other nations to talk to Saddam. The United States expelled 36 Iraqi embassy personnel and restricted the movements of the rest. A US transport plane bound for the Gulf crashed shortly after take-off in West Germany, killing at least ten crew. The flight of refugees from Iraq posed prob- lems for Egypt and Jordan, where shortage of food, water, transport and sanitation threatened the lives of those who had left. Jordan temporarily closed its border to refugees. More than 100 Tamil Tigers were killed by bombing from helicopter gunships in Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula, and government troops moved to recap- ture the fort there. East Germany's parlia- ment voted for unity with West Germany on 3 October. South African military units were sent into the townships near Johan- nesburg to end fighting between the ANC and Zulus which has killed 514 and wound- ed 2,000. Black workers held a one-day strike to protest at the violence. Uganda's pygmies were said to be under threat of extinction because of their refusal of medical help. At least 170 miners were killed in a gas blast at a mine in central Yugoslavia. The final Test between Eng- land and India was drawn, giving the series
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