Portrait of the Week – 21 August 2004

Eight men, arrested two weeks ago, were charged with planning to commit murder and to launch radiological, chemical, gas or bomb attacks. A-level candidates did better than ever; Mr David Miliband, the schools minister, said evidence from reports he had seen did not suggest ‘dumbing-down’. Mr Richard Thomas, the independent Information Commissioner, criticised the Home Office’s plans for identity cards, saying, ‘My anxiety is that we don’t sleepwalk into a surveillance society.’ Mr Peter Mandelson was made trade commissioner by Mr José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission. A sudden flood washed through Boscastle, Cornwall, destroying several houses and carrying away 50 cars; dozens of people trapped in houses were rescued by helicopter. Police found two men they suspected of separate murders hiding in the same square mile of woodland near Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire; one had been there about a month, the other for about a fortnight. More than 500 revellers in 200 cars arrived at an all-night rave in a clearing in woodland on the Sandringham estate, Norfolk; police monitored the party, but no arrests were made.