PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mummy, when will it be safe logo out?'
Hundreds of prisoners were released earlier than they expected when the Prison Service realised the implications of a court ruling on remission for consecutive terms of imprisonment. Mr Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, then halted the releases pending more legal action, and Mr Richard Tilt, the director general of the Prison Ser- vice, apologised to him. The Department of Health obtained an injunction forbidding the sale of a video showing operations car- ried out in National Health hospitals; the video, called Everyday Operations, was to have been sold in high-street shops for 02.99. The Government considered selling off the rear part of the Treasury buildings in Whitehall, overlooking St James's Park, to be converted into flats. The Prince and Princess of Wales were granted an absolute decree of divorce. W.H. Smith announced a loss for the first time, largely because of provision for redundancies. Bass agreed to buy the brewing interests of Carlsberg- Tetley if government regulators allowed them to. Citibank, the American bank, has hired Sir Norman Foster to design a £200 million office block for it at Canary Wharf in east London. The Financial T1mes-Stock
Exchange index rose above 3900, A Sudan Air flight from Khartoum was hijacked by seven Iraqis, who flew to Stansted airport, where all 192 passengers and crew were released before the hijackers were arrested; they and their families asked for asylum. Members of the Rail, Maritime and Trans- port union working on railways went on strike for two days within a week; postmen also struck sporadically. A man in Scotland and one in England were struck dead by lightning on the same day.
THE CEASEFIRE at Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, was extended as General Alexander Lebed negotiated a peace settle- ment that appeared to cede control to the rebel forces. President Clinton of the Unit- ed States allowed nicotine to be classified as an addictive drug, thus ushering in much more litigation against tobacco companies. He then set a time limit on receipt of wel- fare benefit, in line with legislation passed by the Republican-dominated Congress, before taking a train to be adopted as the Democrat candidate for the presidency. Ukrainians rushed to sell their present cur-
rency, karbovantsy, at about 200,000 to the American dollar, before the introduction of a new currency, the lnyvna. A former presi- dent of Korea, Chun Doo-hwan, was sen- tenced to death and his successor, Roh Tae-woo, was given a 22-year prison term after being found guilty of treason. More than 160 pilgrims died when snows trapped 80,000 on their way to a shrine honouring the phallus of Shiva 13,000 feet up in the foothills of the Himalayas in Kashmir. French police violently arrested about 200 illegal immigrants who had occupied the church of St Bernard in northern Pans; some were deported to Mali, but the cases of about two thirds were being reviewed. Muslim militants killed five men who had formed a civilian patrol to counter extrem- ists in the village of Grais in southern Egypt. The Irish Navy arrested a Japanese fishing vessel using illegal nets to catch tuna in its waters; five crewmen on another Japanese vessel died from gas inhalation from a refrigeration unit. Korean crewmen of Chinese descent mutinied on a Hon- duran-registered fishing boat in the South
Pacific, killing 11. CSH
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