PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Lord Tebbit suggested that the hopes of Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, for peace in Northern Ireland depended upon destruction of its union with Britain. The Prince of Wales complained that 'since the day I got married, people have chosen to ignore the things I continue to do day after day'; he was particularly upset about lack of recognition of his efforts to further British trade abroad. In response Downing Street lauded his role and drew attention to his planned visit to St Petersburg to discuss environmental matters. The London stock market took a blow, along with stock mar- kets worldwide, with the FT-SE 100 index falling 37.4 points in one day. Interest rates were cut to 5.5 per cent. Twelve schoolchil- dren and their teacher died in a crash on the M40 in which their minibus caught on fire. Two undercover inspectors from the Department of Transport were shot in the head at a garage in Stockport. A mongrel dog called Cujo killed a little boy in Mid- dlesbrough in the snow and was destroyed. Michael Smith was convicted of spying for the KGB and sentenced to 25 years in jail. A libel action by the retired Pakistan bowler Sarfraz Nawaz against Allan Lamb in the High Court was dropped after an out-of-court settlement; ball-tampering
allegations had been at the heart of the action. Rachel Whiteread won £20,000 with a concrete impression of the inside of a condemned house as her entry for the Turner Prize; she also accepted £40,000 from a foundation sponsored by the pop group KLF as the worst artist of the year. The Catholic bishops indicated that Angli- can clergy, including married ones, would normally be considered for ordination upon reception into the Church, and groups of Anglicans could stay together for some time after becoming Catholics. Mr Graham Taylor, the manager of England's football team resigned. Passengers on the 19.50 train from Euston to Manchester on 20 November finally got to their destination at 5.10 the next morning after a power failure.
THE MAIN parties were routed in Italian local elections, with big gains for former communists, neo-fascists, Lombard League and, in Sicily, anti-Mafia candidates. The lira fell to a record low. Mexico followed the United States in ratifying the North American Free Trade Agreement. Sir Leon Brittan, on behalf of Europe, had secret talks with Mickey Kantor, the United States negotiator, in an effort to save the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which has so far been seven years in the making. Opec attempted to reduce production to bring oil prices down to $21 a barrel, though North Sea prices have fallen to $16. The United Nations resolved to use force if necessary against local military leaders to take aid to people in the former Yugoslavia, as long as national leaders of the three warring par- ties assented. A UN envoy condemned human rights abuses in Sudan. The Iraqi treatment of marsh Arabs in the south of the country also came in for criticism. Gen- eral Sani Abacha seized power in Nigeria. A retired Israeli senior intelligence officer admitted that between ten and 15 PLO leaders had been assassinated in the 1970s on the orders of Mrs Golda Meir; an inno- cent Moroccan waiter in Norway had also been murdered in error. Nearly 200 adult and children's corpses had been used in car-crash tests at the University of Heidel- berg, a German newspaper revealed. A 100.36 carat diamond went for £8 million in Geneva. Jahangir Khan retired from squash after losing against his fellow Pakistan play- er Jansher Khan at the world champi- onships. A man who tried to smuggle a Thai parrot into Australia in his underpants was fined £10,000.
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