PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Terry Fields, a Labour MP and Militant sympathiser, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax. The Labour Party began moves to deselect him from his seat, Liverpool Broadgreen. Bank base rates were reduced by half a point to 11 per cent. John Major ruled out any special assistance for councils who had lost money when the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was closed. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mr Robin Leigh- Pemberton, flew to Abu Dhabi for talks on the crisis with Sheikh Zayed, the Bank's controlling shareholder. Tower Hamlets and Lambeth were both, in this instance, cited as having behaved with exemplary responsibility, in contrast to Westminster, or the Western Isles, which had invested £23 million. Lord King, chairman of Brit- ish Airways, cancelled the company's donation to the Conservative Party. Infla- tion, claimed the Church of England, had forced the cost of wedding and funeral services by 15 per cent. The Government announced plans to enable leaseholders of flats to force freeholders to sell the title to them. Rosyth naval base in Scotland is to be retained, but hundreds of jobs there are to be lost. Prince Edward became unem- ployed. The National Union of Journalists hovered on the brink of collapse due to in-fighting and debts of £1.3 million. The daughter and son-in-law of Dr George Carey were appointed to jobs in the Old Palace at Canterbury. The General Synod of the Church of England called for a boycott of Nescafe because of its market- ing baby milk products in the Third World. The 'Beast of Jersey', a rapist and indecent assaulter of children, was released from prison into the arms of his third wife, Florence. John Warrington, a property developer who kidnapped a women in the hope of clearing his debts with the ransom, was jailed for 15 years. The Channel Islands of Jethou and Lihou were put up for sale. A former plumber with brain damage from a car crash was awarded £14.8 million damages. Nigel Mansell won the British Grand Prix. An underground lavatory in Leicester Square was sold by Westminster City Council for £355,000. It may be turned into a shop.
PRESIDENT Bush threatened to bomb Iraq if Saddam Hussein continued to try to build nuclear weapons. Israel warned that Saddam Hussein might have his first nuc- lear bomb within two years. Syria accepted American proposals for peace talks on the Middle East. Kurds pleaded with allied troops not to continue with their planned withdrawal. Leaders of Western Industrial nations made it clear before the G7 summit in London that President Gorbachev would have to take irreversible steps to- wards a market economy before they would consider giving him the money he wants. They also claimed that the world's economy was pulling out of recession. Battles continued between Serbs and Croats in Croatia. EEC ceasefire observers explained that they would only monitor conflicts in Slovenia, where fighting had ceased. Floods killed 1,300 in China. A Canadian DC8 crashed in Saudi Arabia killing 261 Muslim pilgrims. Mrs Winnie Mandela was given leave to appeal against her conviction and six-year jailing sentence on charges of kidnapping and assault. The South African government agreed to look after 700 ANC orphans after their school was bombed, allegedly by white terrorists. It became clear that the United States would abandon Clark Air Base in the Philippines, partly because of the damage done to it by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo nearby. The military dictatorship in Burma introduced a new decree to enable it to strip opposition members of, their seats for adultery and breaching foreign exchange controls. The new Ethio- pian government begged for £30 million to repatriate 300,000 soldiers. A Dutch court found three Irish people not guilty of IRA membership. The Japanese scholar who translated Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, was stabbed to death at his university near Tokyo. Contessa Alberica Filo della Torre was found strangled in her sheets in a locked room during a house party at her Italian villa. SB
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