PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Meanwhile in Lenin's tomb The government pushed a Bill through Parliament designed to deal with terrorists whether Irish or Islamic. Mr Tony Blair had described the measures, not published until just before the reassembling of a diminished Commons, as 'draconian% Labour backbenchers, particularly Mr Kevin McNamara, a former front-bench spokesman on Northern Ireland, said that the legislation was unjust and would be counterproductive in Northern Ireland. Mr Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, issued a statement, agreed before- hand with London and Washington, saying: `Sinn Fein believe the violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past — over, done with, and gone.' Presi- dent Bill Clinton of the United States then flew in. Two Scots Guardsmen convicted of murder in Northern Ireland were released. Many terrorists also began to be released. Labour published a list of 97 party support- ers who had donated more than £5,000; it did not escape the Opposition's attention that many of them had recently been enno- bled or received honours. A hunt began through millions of preserved human appendixes to discover if any showed signs of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In the first six months of 1998, 19,236 businesses in Britain went under, 3.6 per cent fewer than a year before, but the rate of failure increased sharply between April and June to a rate of 4.3 per cent higher than a year before. Prince William passed another nine GCSEs, making a total of 12. Mr Michael Birkett resigned as British vice-consul in Ibiza because of the behaviour of young British holidaymakers in night-spots on the island. Lord Rothermere, the proprietor of the Daily Mail, died, aged 73. Bob Arnold, who played Tom Forrest in The Archers for 47 years, died, aged 87. Ruud Gullit sud- denly took over at Newcastle in place of Kenny Dalglish; the next game gave the result: Newcastle 1, Liverpool 4.
MR CLINTON visited Moscow and experi- mented with the elasticity of the ceremonial bread presented to him but otherwise gave little comfort while shares plunged around the world as Russia's economic disaster got worse. People with roubles in the bank des- perately tried to withdraw them. President Boris Yeltsin of Russia said that he was going to continue in office to the end of his term in 2000. A deal had been struck to allow the Communist-dominated Duma to act unhampered by the President's decrees in return for confirmation in office of his choice for Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin. But then Mr Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist leader, rejected the accommodation: let Yeltsin's family convince him to resign,' he said, 'and not to drag the entire country into the grave by his bony hand.' In Bangladesh, 20 million peo- ple were left homeless by floods and many died. In India more than a million villagers in Uttar Pradesh were marooned by flood- waters. In China, floods in the Yangtze basin have now destroyed five million hous- es. President Laurent Kabila of the Demo- cratic Republic of Congo visited Zimbabwe to thank President Robert Mugabe for sending troops to resist rebels intent on overthrowing his rule. Mr Kjell Magne Bondevik, the Prime Minister of Norway, took a week off because he was suffering from depression. North Korea tested a new missile, the Daepodong 1, with a range of 1,000 miles, by firing it into the Sea of Japan. A bomb exploded in a marketplace at Bab-el-Oued, a hardline Muslim neigh- bourhood in Algiers, killing ten. Aus- tralians are to go to the polls on 3 October. A 240 foot-high weather balloon broke free in Saskatchewan and drifted into the Atlantic air corridors despite efforts by the Canadian Air Force to shoot it down. In Ecuador 16 prisoners sewed their lips together in protest at conditions. cs1-1
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