The Deer Hunter made Michael Cimino a superstar

The Deer Hunter made Michael Cimino a superstar.One of the hardest things to do on film is to make an intimate epic, and the film is an epic in every sense of the word - in scope, in length, in tension, in emotion. First, they prepared 'faecal slurries' from human volunteers and demonstrated that when they incubated these in the presence of inulin or oligofructose the bifidobacteria in the samples grew vigorously, while other bacteria, including those capable of causing disease, remained at low levels. They lie eighth in the table when they could so easily have been second, but they can't complain.Tottenham, in the middle of a poor run of results, nevertheless fought their way back into the game with intelligence and flair, overcoming a series of setbacks along the way, a missed penalty being not the least of them.Both sides were missing key players: Ray Wilkins for QPR, Teddy Sheringham and Gary Mabbutt for Tottenham, and much of the contest was a matter of which team could cope the better. A SENIOR health authority executive was sacked and then prohibited from working in the National Health Service for two years in what she views as an attempt to buy her silence over a mismanaged computer scheme which lost as much as pounds 63m. With two minor parties holding the balance of power on election-night figures, and thousands of absentee votes to be counted, it may be at least 10 days before it is clear who will form the next administration.In a simultaneous referendum yesterday, voters chose to ditch the Westminster system of voting that New Zealand has followed for 140 years in favour of a form of proportional representation.This will give minority parties more members in parliament and every prospect of participating in coalitions.

Jah Screechy walked through the heat haze, cool as an ice-box A man leant from a passing car and shouted, 'Yo, Screech' Screechy nodded without breaking stride. Children are expected to be able to swim 25 metres by the age of 11, and 'demonstrate an understanding of water safety'.The order making swimming lessons compulsory was delayed for two years to give schools time to ensure they had access to facilities. Blackburn played a blinder to see off Villa, and although Palace did, too, United journeyed back to Manchester last night on Cloud Nine, four points clear at the top of the Premier League with only two games to play.Palace, still not safe from relegation, went about their work like men inspired, creating nearly all the chances, but Mark Hughes's 100th League goal and a second from Paul Ince, so late it was almost an afterthought, tipped the balance to such a degree that the championship could be decided on 2 May, if Villa fail to beat Oldham at home.Even a victory for Ron Atkinson and his team might prolong the contest by no more than 24 hours. The owner of a dating agency was jailed for 10 years after being found guilty of raping and buggering a woman client. Helen Storey is also considering a move abroad.The statistics starkly illustrate the decline of London Fashion Week.

Amounts exceeding that could be deposited in exchange for payment slips.The announcement, which came just over a month after the political division of the old Czechoslovakia, had been inevitable considering the different pace of economic development in the two new republics, Ivan Kocarnik, the Czech Finance Minister, said.Speculation that the Czechoslovak koruna was on its last legs had been growing, although the plan was to keep it in circulation for at least six months as part of an extensive customs and monetary union between the two states.While banks in both countries have been stamping banknotes with distinctive new markings, Slovaks in particular have been apprehensive about the split, which is likely to see a devaluation of the Slovak koruna against its stronger Czech counterpart.Since early January, queues have been forming outside Slovak banks as people rushed to exchange Czechoslovak koruna for hard currency.In the Czech Republic, although the run on hard currency has not been so pronounced, foreign currency reserves of the Czech central bank fell from dollars 847m to dollars 482m in the first three weeks of the year.Internal anxieties have been echoed abroad, with German, Austrian and Hungarian banks suspending purchases of koruna.'People in both the Czech and Slovak republics and abroad no longer trust our currency,' Julius Toth, the Slovak Finance Minister, said last week.Analysts attribute the collapse of the common currency to the growing divergence of the two economies and the fact that, whereas the Czechs want to proceed quickly towards free market policies, the Slovaks want a slower transformation.. He replaces Martin Dunn, who is to take up the editorship of the Boston Herald on 3 March.. If he wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behaviour.' It was a surprisingly moderate stance on a day when most US politicians were making bellicose noises. Graeme Souness, the Liverpool manager, said after last night's game against Southampton that he had accepted the Villa offer and it was now up to the player.Villa went two months without scoring last season, and are currently averaging only a goal per game in the Premier League. When Wild came to Durham in 1951 there were many formidable problems of a practical kind to be found. Beethoven had openly begun to talk of composing 'for a future age'.So, when his dubious entrepreneurial friend, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, patented in 1815 the first commercial metronome (the device was actually pinched from a fellow inventor), it was hardly surprising Beethoven hailed it as 'assuring the performance of my compositions everywhere in the tempi conceived by me which, to my regret, have so often been misunderstood' - and forthwith added metronome marks to his first eight symphonies. A surgical team also made it from neighbouring Burundi to Kabgayi, 28 miles south-west of the capital.In Kabgayi, dead bodies lie unburied at the centre of a camp.

But with cinema I don't see how you can tell audiences what to like: that's life. Winners will be notified in mid-January 1994.All prizewinners' trips will be taken in the first half of 1994 and cannot be taken at any other time or be exchanged for any other prize.(Photograph omitted). Mr Balladur has threatened to resign before he allows the franc to be devalued.The Belgian franc, Danish krone, Spanish peseta and Portuguese escudo all hit or came close to their ERM floors. Setting a course just below maximum dimensions, he aimed to have six to eight clear rounds for the jump off. .And so the argument could go forever, like 'Michael Finnegan' - except that eventually even the Serbs might sicken of their diet of slaughter.Is this too hard on the Serbs? After all, the Croats are joining in the butchery and the dispossessed Muslim army in central Bosnia hardly plays by the Queensberry rules. The team looked at the 26 types of surgical gloves and concluded that in 95 per cent of cases they could be replaced by cheaper alternatives.