News In Brief

Tony Blair was left without a chair at the opening session of the G7 summit in Denver. When Mr Blair first arrived in the chamber of the Denver Library where the summit was taking place on Saturday morning, he found that there was no chair for him. Staff dashed off to find him a seat, but instead of bringing him a padded high-backed chair, he was brought a small chair which left him looking smaller than his summit colleagues. The Prime Minister had to make do without as the first session got under way. When asked how he felt when he had to wait for his chair to be brought in, Mr balir replied, "I yielded up my chair to one of my elders sitting round the table, which was not difficult to find!"

A Home Office check on gun crime has found that 129 victims out of 196 were killed by illegally held weapons. A check on murders between 1992 to 1994 investigated 196 shootings in England and Wales. Home Office Minister Alun Michael said in a Commons written reply that it was not possible to identify incidents where non-fatal injuries were caused but police figures showed that the largest number of shootings with such weapons took place in London where there were 42 murders. Thirty three shootings involved handguns and seven out of nine shotgun killings involved twelve bore shotguns.