Portrait of the week
Mrs Kim Cotton gave birth to a daugh- ter, conceived by artificial insemina- tion, which she planned to hand over to the American father. He had paid an agency £15,000 for this: the agency paid Mrs Cotton £6,500, and the Star newspaper gave her a further £20,000. The baby was taken into care by Barnet Council, then made a ward of court while the prospective parents were investigated. Hackney Coun- cil announced a policy of positive discrim- ination towards homosexuals who wished to work with, foster, or adopt children. 'Animal Liberation' fanatics fire-bombed several homes, including that of a Nobel Prize winner. Mr Neil Kinnock symbolicat- ly stood for a while, on a picket line. The Coal Board first predicted, then pro- claimed, a major return to work after 1,100 miners gave up their strike. Bad weather may have heartened Mr Scargill: nearly an inch of ice was recorded on the pavement in Doughty Street, and elsewhere in the country conditions were even worse. Prin- cess Margaret was admitted to hospital with suspected lung cancer, but an opera- tion on her left lung revealed only 'inno- cent' tissue. Several papers used the occa- sion to indulge in anti-smoking propagan- da; an American survey showed that nico- tine allows a smoker to 'fine-tune' the way his or her brain reacts, increasing tolerance of pain, improving long-term memory, and either arousing or soothing the mind according to the length of puffs taken. The Times, newspaper, already famous for its bingo game, celebrated its bicentennial by publishing a free, glossy magazine.
Mr Gromyko and Mr Schultz met in Geneva to discuss arms limitation talks in great secrecy, attended by numer- ous journalists. They agreed to decide within a month the time and place for full negotiations on intermediate and long- range nuclear weapons, and on space weapons, and said they wanted eventually to eliminate all nuclear weapons. The Russians were thought to have demons- trated a co-operative spirit when they apologised for the accidental flight of one of their cruise missiles over Norwegian and Finnish Lapland. This is believed to have been a target drone that went out of control: the Russian apology, which in- cluded denial of the presence of both 'explosive and toxic substances', was taken as confirmation that some of their cruise missiles are already equipped with chemic- al warheads. The Swedish and Finnish Prime Ministers jointly appealed for a ban on all cruise missiles. Mr Robert Welch (no relation), the founder of the John Birch Society, died at the age of 85. He was famous for calling the late President Eisenhower 'a dedicated, conscious agent of the international communist conspiracy'.
Mr John Zaccaro pleaded guilty to charges of fraud in New York. His wife ran under her maiden name for the vice- Presidency of the USA last autumn. At about the same time the last of the Falashas, a tribe of Ethiopian Jews, to arrive in Israel reached the promised land; 17,000 had been flown out by the Israeli government, with the help of intermed- iaries, before the operation was announced. The Ethiopian government, which has for a long time been buying arms from Israel, objected to the publicity. The fate of the remaining 7,000 Falashas re- mains unclear. The Vietnamese army con- tinued its annual offensive along the Thai- Cambodian border by attacking the head- quarters of a large guerilla group at Ampil, with apparent success. The Libyan people, practising their unique form of democracy, gathered in Basic People's assemblies to tell Colonel Gaddafi to release the four British hostages taken by his government after the murder of WPC Fletcher in St James's Square last spring. The indepen- dent Libyan judiciary sentenced one of these unhappy men to three years and three months in jail for spying for the BBC.
Major General Brian Horrocks died, aged 89; while the first memorable story of the year was supplied by a French student who smuggled her pet rat 'Ted' into the country. She claimed she was unaware that the rabies laws also applied to rats. She was so attached to the animal that she released it in a London pub, where the customers took fright, and one of them kicked it to death. The student attempted suicide as a result, and, when she had recovered, was fined £400 for smuggling.
ACB
125 unless you want a baby, then it's f15,000.'
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