PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK 'Why does he have to drink
like that, it's not setting us a very good example is it?'
MR WILLIAM Hague, the Leader of the Opposition, shuffled the shadow Cabinet, with Mr Francis Maude becoming shadow Chancellor instead of Mr Peter Lilley, who becomes deputy leader, Miss Ann Widde- combe taking on Health, with Mr Alan Duncan as her deputy, and Mr David Wil- letts getting Education and Employment; Mr Michael Ancram is to take over from Lord Parkinson as party chairman in the autumn. Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, were invited by Dr Mo Mowlam, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to a garden party at Hillsborough Castle which the Prince of Wales was attending; they declined to go. Protestants and policemen were attacked with bombs and stones by IRA supporters on the Garvaghy Road at Portadown and at Lurgan, Co. Armagh. The new Financial Services Authority took responsibility for being a watchdog over the City, taking over some powers previously exercised by the Bank of England. More than £7 million of public money is to go to build a high-speed rail link from London to the Channel Tun- nel. Camelot, the lottery operators, announced a 14 per cent rise in profits to £80 million; grants to good causes rose to £1.566 billion; the chief executive's pay rose to £636,000. The Low Pay Commission rec- ommended to the government a minimum wage of £3.60 an hour, with less for younger people and no minimum for those under 18. Geri Halliwell, 'Ginger Spice', left the Spice Girls. Paul Gascoigne was dropped from the England squad for the World Cup. Millions of cans of fizzy drinks were withdrawn because of contamination by benzene, which in larger quantities causes cancer. A woman taking her dogs for a walk across a field in West Sussex was trampled to death by cows.
PAKISTAN carried out two days of under- ground nuclear bomb tests in response to India's a week before. More than 700 died of heatstroke in India, where on the north- ern and eastern plains temperatures reached more than 110F for several days. Thousands were killed by an earthquake in northern Afghanistan. The Russian stock market plunged, and interest rates were put up to 150 per cent; President Boris Yeltsin sacked the head of the Russian inland rev- enue. President Bill Clinton said: 'The United States endorses additional condi- tional financial support from the interna- tional institutions as necessary to promote stability, structural reform and growth in Russia.' A reserve computer was successful- ly plugged in to replace a defective one in the space station Mir. Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate who lost badly .t0 Lyndon Johnson in the 196.4 presidential elections, died, aged 89. A coalition led by Mr Milo Djukanovic beat the followers of Mr Slobodan Milosevic in the Montenegrin parliamentary elections. Some more Alba- mans were killed in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Emperor Akihito of Japan was given a warm welcome on his arrival in Copenhagen at the beginning of a tour of Denmark. Mr Canaan Banana, the former president of Zimbabwe, went on trial on charges of sodomy. A school in the Aus- tralian outback had to close after none of its 182 pupils turned up because a curse had been put on its tuck shop during a row about Aboriginal land rights. A policeman in Madison, Wisconsin, remembered that he had hidden his revolver in the oven only when it exploded while he was cooking a turkey. A night watchman in Abidjan caught a neighbour's dog that had bitten him and ate it. A cow at Saint-Pierre- d'Argencon, in the Haute Alpes, gave birth to quadruplets. CSfl
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