The week that was

Elsewhere in Asia: after being given notice to quit its base in Uzbekistan the United States reached an agreement with Kirgizstan giving it continued use of a base for operations in Afghanistan; North Korea celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of its ruling Workers' Party and warned that it would “mercilessly crush” American and Japanese forces if they were to threaten it. The people of Liberia voted in the first round of a general election, the first to be held since the end of the civil war in 2002. The International Criminal Court in The Hague named Joseph Kony and four other leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda as the world's most wanted men for crimes against humanity. Milton Obote, who achieved independence for Uganda but was later deposed by Idi Amin, died, aged about 80. In Britain the new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, said, “Occasionally one does feel that an individual politician is trying to browbeat the judiciary”.

Mr David Blunkett, minister for Work and Pensions, said he was considering using lie detectors to catch people fraudulently applying for benefits. Mr Blunkett was impersonated by an actor in a TV satire about his affair with Mrs Kimberly Quinn which was shown on the opening night of a new TV channel, 4More. Balfour Beatty was fined 10 million pounds and Network Rail, the successor of Railtrack, 3.5 million pounds for their parts in the Hatfield rail crash of 2000. In the High Court private shareholders of Railtrack lost their case that the then Transport minister, Stephen Byers, had pushed the company into administration to avoid having to compensate shareholders whose spokesman called the outcome a “whitewash” to match Lord Hutton's report on the dispute between the government and the BBC over the Iraq war.

The Queen and Prince Philip were among those who accepted invitations to Margaret Thatcher's 80th birthday party; Mr Tony Blair and Lord and Lady Archer were also among those present.