The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 10 September 2005

A speedy round-up of the week's news

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew off to China and appeared at a press conference with the Chinese leader, Mr Wen Jiabao, where it was said that there had been a resolution of the dispute over European Union import quotas, which had seen 80 million items of clothing of Chinese manufacture piling up at docks. Mr Wen said that Mr Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, had spent a ‘sleepless’ night on the matter; next year’s quotas are to be cannibalised, although this requires agreement from each EU country. Petrol rose above £1 a litre. Twenty-four new companies were given licences to explore for oil off the coast of Britain. The search for a new leader of the Conservative party became bogged down in a ballot on the method to use, while Mr Kenneth Clarke, a declared candidate, beamed at an ICM poll commissioned by BBC2 that found 40 per cent of respondents said they favoured him. A government consultation document on possible legislation to prohibit forced marriages noted that it would ‘disproportionately impact on black and minority ethnic communities and might be misinterpreted as an attack on those communities’. Two British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, bringing the total number of British deaths there since March 2003 to 94, 55 of them in action. Shares in PartyGaming, the online poker group, fell by a third after three months of buoyant trading. Tests carried out at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that while some plug-in anti-mosquito vapours were effective, some which emitted a high-pitched buzz did not offer any protection at all. Smiling is to be banned on British passport photographs from next week.

No one could tell how many had died in the floods following Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans; 10,000 was one figure given, but not on any rigorous basis.

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