For all the improvements it has made over the past decade, the Post Office could give consumers a sharply better service for the same price. But it probably has as much to do with the curious psychology of crowds.The London stock market has fallen by 18 per cent since the FT- SE index of the top 100 stocks peaked at 3,520.3 on 2 February, cutting the total value of shares quoted on the market by pounds 140bn.Gilts - the interest-bearing IOUs the Government sells to meet the shortfall between what it spends and what it raises from taxes - have fallen, too, reflecting a rise in the rate of return that investors demand. Just by his visit, they hope that the President will put their countries 'on the map' for international companies.Unlike the Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians, the Poles are no strangers to US presidential visits, having twice received George Bush during his term of office. The result is some very good looking if fairly predictable dance where a lot of Balanchine-derived groupings are punctuated by a few very striking images - a ripple of lovely, limpid bourrees to what I remember as rocking piano arpeggios and a whole string of lifts where the women sky-dive ecstatically on the shoulders of their men.

Between two and five every afternoon, she gets ravished by a selection of beery industrialists and Sumo hopefuls, then clips her clothes back on and returns to normality.This being Bunuel, however, nothing is normal - or rather everything conforms to a new average, a higher standard of weirdness. A new song, 'The Eagle Has Landed', is introduced as being 'for all you bootleggers out there', the group failing to be 'arsed' enough to put it out. This would be breaking the guidelines required by the International Monetary Fund for Western credits to Russia, he said.Once stridently opposed to any credits for the ailing industries, the Gaidar team has accepted, under pressure from conservatives, that some of the industries should be bailed out to avoid massive unemployment. It's because market researchers have discovered that clarity is one of the things people like in politicians.'And all of us owe the same debt of gratitude to Glenys .' John Smith, Tuesday. Christine Edginton, 42, an events manager in London, has always been single. In particular, make sure that the URL you typed is all in lower case.

Prospective parents' mornings will take place on 16 January and 6 February The Arts Festival will be held on 5 February. According to legal textbooks, the public should only be barred in exceptional circumstances.. THE US cigarette 'war' cast a cloud over shares yesterday, wiping pounds 5.94bn from stock market values as the FT-SE 100 index slumped 31.1 points to 2,838.8, its lowest for six weeks. A Berlin court has formally closed its manslaughter case against Erich Honecker, the former East German Communist leader set free in January because of his terminal liver cancer, Reuter reports from Berlin.. They pointed out that an established company would have much more difficulty showing strong natural growth than a firm that was just starting out This time, they are vindicated.

DEFORMITIES in a baby girl whose father was a 'Thalidomide baby' are unlikely to have been caused by the drug, medical experts said last night. We very often played against other thespian XIs, including the Back Stage Boys, the Friends of Noel Coward, the ex-Friends of Laurence Olivier, the Critics XI (always a needle match, that]) and the Twelfth Men, which was a team restricted entirely to understudies. We are confident that it can be resolved, and our accountants are working hard to sort out the balance sheet. Meanwhile, we seek uses, in this age of the tea-bag, for tea strainers. But last night it was confirmed that he had been invited 'in his private capacity'.The disclosure could intensify the pressure for Mr Mellor to resign, but his office said the Foreign Office and the Home Office had both known about the visit.Mr Mellor said last night: 'I had a series of meetings with (Sheikh Zayed) and with other senior ministers. It was acquired in 1987 by Swedish Match, which itself was taken over a year later by Stora, the pulp and paper giant.In 1989, Wilkinson became the subject of a leveraged buyout backed by a group of Scandinavian institutions, JP Morgan, the UK investment bank, and Gillette, which owns 22 per cent.The lighters and matches business was sold off separately in 1990, leaving Wilkinson's present owners with the razor business.Mike Dowdell, chairman of Wilkinson's holding company, Eemland, said that it was being sold because its present owners could not provide new funds for its expansion.Wilkinson's bank debts are believed to amount to dollars 100m, but it needs more financial backing to build on the success of its new shaving product, Protector.The company said that the product's launch has enabled it to win significant market share from rivals.