PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Amazing scenes at Brighton: blue whale washed up.
Athe Labour party conference in Brighton, Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minis- ter, promised 'compassion with a hard edge'. Mr Peter Mandelson, the Minister without Portfolio, was beaten for a place on the National Executive Committee by Mr Ken Livingstone, a left-wing candidate; Mr Mandelson said, 'A taste of humility is good for everyone, particularly a politician.' Mr Frank Dobson, the Secretary of State for Health, decided not to announce at the conference that members of governing boards of hospitals would be sacked if they used private health care. Mr William Hague, the Leader of the Opposition, had his position as leader of the parliamentary Conservative party confirmed by a vote among members of local parties. He had earlier undertaken to re-examine the future existence of hereditary peers. Mr Nicholas Winterton characterised Mr Hague's other plans for centralising party reform as 'Stal- inist'. Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secre- tary, prohibited the export to Indonesia of six Land Rovers fitted with light armour, as part of his so-called 'ethical' foreign policy. There were negotiations between Deborah Parry (a British nurse accused of murder in Saudi Arabia), the family of her alleged vic- tim in Australia, Mr Cook and the Saudi foreign minister, to reprieve her from beheading in return for thousands of pounds' compensation. On suspecting that the government meant to join in with Euro- pean monetary union as soon as it could after 1999, investors bought shares, sending the Financial Times-Stock Exchange index to a record high of 5226. Asda and Safeway ruled out a £9 billion merger which would have created Britain's biggest supermarket chain. The Queen acquiesced with govern- ment plans neither to refit nor build a replacement for the royal yacht Britannia. Squadron-Leader Andrew Green broke the land speed record at the wheel of a jet-pow- ered car called ThrustSSC, which he drove in two runs across the Nevada desert at an average of more than 714 mph.
AN AEROPLANE crashed in Sumatra, killing 232; the accident appeared to have been caused by a confusion between 'left' and 'right' in a conversation between the pilot and air-traffic controllers, and not by the smog from forest fires which continued to blight Indonesia and Malaysia. The fires had in many cases been started by farmers clearing land as part of Indonesia's attempt to become the world's largest producer of palm-oil; much of the investment for the clearances came from Malaysian investors. An earthquake on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi killed 14. An earthquake in Umbria killed 10 and brought down some of the vaulting of the basilica at Assisi, destroying frescoes by Cimabue and the school of Giotto. A court in Diisseldorf sentenced Nikola Jorgic, a Bosnian Serb, to life imprisonment for genocide, homicide, kidnapping and assault against Muslims in Bosnia in 1992. The Algerian army killed 30 members of the Armed Islamic Group and moved in on Ouled Allel, a town which the guerrillas took over when its 12,000 inhabitants fled three years ago. A massed attack by the Taleban militia against Mazir- i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan was repulsed after heavy fighting. John Aquino, a Filipino sentenced to death in the United Arab Emirates, wrote to the family of his alleged victim, a Sikh, some of whom live in Britain, asking them for clemency in return for thousands of pounds' compensation. A ship carrying 1,833 Indians and Pakistanis who had been expelled from Saudi Arabia was able to dock after 12 days at Karachi, where 733 Pakistanis disembarked; three died during the voyage. The space shuttle Atlantis docked with the space station Mir and delivered a new computer to replace the one that has continually broken down. Roy Lichtenstein, the Pop Artist, died, aged 73. The Swiss voted in a referendum not to do away with a government scheme that supplies heroin to addicts. CSH
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