The proud owner could now boast an elegant, award-winning, trend-setting machine that every PC manufacturer was rushing to imitate. She was in the White House to the very end but does not want to talk about it Nor about the fancy car The deputy from Dagestan hugs her. This usually comes to light when renewing a policy or shopping around for the cheapest quotation. Must the remorseless annual competition to obtain a university place, preferably in a prestigious institution, continue for more and more of our 18- year-olds? Could we operate a free market in university places for everyone who achieves, say, three A-levels at grade D or above? Or rather, a free market in as many subjects as possible, barring those like medicine or dentistry that must remain selective? Impossible, people would say: some universities would be swamped; some, perhaps, left high and dry Very true And yet. While they dallied Everton took the plunge.Spurs' search for a new striker to enhance their line-up before today's visit of Manchester United has foundered because their chairman, Alan Sugar, refuses to finance another major purchase.

Single parents, the self-employed, trainees and those on fixed-term contracts were particularly affected by policy conditions on redundancy and unemployment.'Problems with credit protection insurance dominate the evidence as usual,' the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux said last month in its report on finance cases referred to it by bureaux. I was elected at the last election with the largest vote any party or any party leader has ever had and I was elected to remain Prime Minister of this country at least until the next election and beyond it if I win the next election. It is particularly fitting that the Bank's increase in power should become evident in its tercentenary year and the newly powerful, if not quite independent, Bank may serve the country well over the years. The pact focuses on services to big multinational business, international calling card services for travellers and operator-to-operator services, all of which are contested markets.Sprint's chief executive, William Esry, said the transatlantic deal did not preclude talks with EDS about providing corporate clients with computer as well as communications services. But there are some engineering drawbacks: the four-wheel drive can't be selected when the car is on the move; the gearing is such that even the basement-level ratios don't decelerate this hefty car as much as they might when descending steep inclines; and the gearshift is rather truck-like.Other negatives include a dated fascia and switchgear, with a temperature knob like one on a junk-shop electric iron, and a cabin as grey as an October day.

Roaming the streets and front lawns are a wide variety of leafy apparitions, including giraffes, Texas longhorns, flamingos, reindeers, monkeys, rabbits, pigs and armadillos.Fire engines are a favourite fetish of the Republican Party. Green politics, like green campaigning, has always depended on the media finding the cause compelling, and often allowing people working for green issues a softer ride than they accord people with opinions on, say, education or health.This is beginning to change, even for the most glamorous green organisation of all. Sergio Moroni, 46, a Socialist member of parliament from Milan, was one of scores of Italian politicians currently under investigation for allegedly demanding bribes in return for a public contract He had not even been charged, much less convicted. And it would be an offence to prejudice investigations by tipping off others - including newspapers - to the fact that a money-laundering investigation is under way Newspapers would be caught if they published information. In France, radio is taken about as seriously as the promises of the politicians. The first part of any strategy to reduce unemployment must therefore be to stabilise and then to revive output.