Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, in reaction to violence in Iraq, ‘Our response to this should not be to run away in fright or hide away, or think that we have got it all wrong. Our response on the contrary should be to hold firm, because that is what the vast majority of the Iraqi people want.’ He was speaking before a visit to the United States for talks with President George Bush. A convicted murderer, James McCormick, aged 17, was allowed to go free from Hamilton sheriff court; he was under the care of Reliance Custodial Services, which had just begun an £11 million contract to escort prisoners. At its annual general meeting in Paris, shareholders of Eurotunnel, the operators of the Channel tunnel, voted off the entire board including the British chief executive Mr Richard Shirrefs; the company lost £1.3 billion last year. The last domestic trains pulled out from the old train-shed of St Pancras station in London, where a terminal for European trains through the Channel tunnel is due to open in 2007. Marks & Spencer announced a fall in sales. Four people living in the Fairlawns Hotel on the Hagley Road, Edgbaston, which is used as a bail hostel, died in a fire regarded as arson. Lady Louise Windsor, the five-month-old daughter of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, was found to be suffering from a slight stigmatism of one eye, which squints outwards. A pig that escaped on the way to a slaughterhouse at Cinderford, Gloucestershire, in January was killed in a motor accident on a country road two miles away after living wild for 13 weeks.
President Bush broadcast on television to the American people, saying, ‘Most of Iraq is relatively stable’ but adding, ‘If additional forces are needed, I will send them.’
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