Portrait of the Week – 24 August 2002

Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, on being asked about British support for American action against Iraq, said: ‘There is no serious division inside the Cabinet and there are debates inside the Cabinet.’ A school caretaker, Ian Huntley, aged 28, was charged with the murder of two ten-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, whose bodies were found near Lakenheath, Suffolk, two weeks after their disappearance from their homes at Soham, Cambridgeshire. He was held at Rampton hospital and was unfit to appear before magistrates. Maxine Carr, aged 25, who lived with him, was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. The government proposed a law against using mobile phones while driving. An NOP poll found that 49 per cent of voters would vote No to the euro if the government said the five economic tests had been passed and called a referendum; 36 per cent would vote Yes; it is the highest percentage lead for opponents since the monthly poll began in January, when the Yes side had a 1 per cent lead. Harvesting began at 20 undisclosed sites of the first opium poppy crop for morphine production in Britain with Home Office approval. Michael Andreasson, aged 39, was jailed for 27 months after running up a bill of £146 for a meal at the Ristorante Italiano in London, including a large Bacardi, a bottle of Montepulciano, another eight Bacardis and a bottle of champagne; ‘I am told you are a chronic alcoholic,’ the judge said. ‘There are plenty of people who are chronic alcoholics but do not commit this type of offence.’ The price of beer in the south-east of England rose above £2 a pint for the first time; the cheapest region was the north-west where the average price was £1.69.

Abu Nidal, born Sabri Khalil al-Banna, the Palestinian international terrorist of the 1970s and 1980s, died in Baghdad, aged 65; Mr Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, said he had committed suicide.