UFO Info Week-End

FREETOWN Sierra Leone’s capital slid into anarchy as Nigerian-led troops battling the

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone’s capital, slid into anarchy as Nigerian-led troops battling the ruling junta closed in on the city centre. Residents said junta soldiers and former rebels allied to them ditched their uniforms as the army’s command and control appeared to break down. Civilians were reportedly beheaded at road blocks mounted by pro-junta youths. There has been no official word for days from the Armed Forces Ruling Council led by Lieutenant-Colonel Johnny Paul Koroma, whose whereabouts remains unclear

– Reuters, Freetown. Last week’s agreement, which was to have passed into law in next month’s National Assembly, was to have removed this protection, in return for greater union freedom. “If the tax laws were simplified the whole process would be made much easier to use,” he said.Launching the annual report, Sir Philip Dowson, the RA’s president, thanked the “herculean efforts” of staff for the turnaround and said: “The last year is really a very considerable achievement.”Three exhibitions – Giacometti, Braque and Living Bridges, which was sponsored by The Independent – attracted more than 100,000 visitors as well as receiving critical acclaim.

Critics had feared that the need for an Inland Revenue assessment of the household’s income would make joint taxation inevitable.Chris Giles, an expert at the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “It looks like the Government is rebadging family credit, and paying it through the pay packet They have ended up with something reasonably sensible.”. It would also have had a damaging effect on the Government’s plans to expand “no-win, no-fee” agreements.At present, 43 smokers have issued writs, but more are expected to follow suit. The youngest plaintiff, a 49-year-old mother, died in December.A spokesman for the anti-smoking pressure group Ash called on other living victims of lung cancer from cigarette smoking who wish to join the action to contact Ash.One of the plaintiffs, 76-year-old Ernest Jones, from Croydon, south London, was in the High Court for the ruling. He had started smoking when he was 13, in 1934; his father had told him that smoking would help him to grow. For 52 years he smoked between 20 and 40 a day.He stopped six months before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in November 1986; doctors gave him just 12 months to live.

He is now clear of cancer but has endured 35 operations, including having half a lung removed. “I’m trying to keep afloat – that’s all I can say,” he said.. Violet Rumsey’s story is one that the tobacco manufacturers tried to keep under wraps, writes Clare Garner. But yesterday, following the lifting of the gagging order, she seized her first opportunity to describe the addiction which is killing her. Nothing could make Mrs Rumsey give up smoking, not even having half a lung removed. When at the age of 55 she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she vowed she would never smoke again. What she had not realised was that she was suffering from an addiction that even a close brush with death could not cure.
“I stopped in hospital – it would be difficult not to – but when you come out you just automatically go for one, I’m afraid,” said Mrs Rumsey, a 68-year-old mother of two “It’s addictive, you see You can’t give up.