Portrait of the Week— THE SPACESHIP continued to be the
safest method of travel known to man with a casualty list of nil. At the weekend the Soviet Union put first one, and then a second spaceman safely into orbit. Lieut.-Colonel Pavel Romanovich Popovich in Vostok 1V sped round the earth in identical orbit with Major Andrian Grigorievich Nikolaev in Vostok III, at one stage only about seventy-five mites behind him, and they both returned to earth at the same spot. Their journey was almost im- mediately hailed by a Russian Government an- nouncement as illustrating the triumph of Com- munism. The main purposes of the flight were to observe the physical effects of weightlessness Upon the twO men, and to gain experience of the Possibility of contact between vehicles in space. President Kennedy agreed to Mr. Khrushchev's request not to carry out any high-altitude nuclear tests while the flights were in progress. He admitted that the Russians were probably ahead in the space race, but was anxious to deny that this had any military implication. Meanwhile the third research balloon launched into outer space by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration with a crew of monkeys, ham- sters, insects and vegetables was reported to have escaped from tracking aircraft in a storm over Manitoba. Canada. The bodies from the first balloon were parachuted back to earth; from the second the hamsters survived landing but died on their way back to base. In Britain a new-style lovat green walking-out uniform was announced to smarten up the Royal Marines, together with an all-purpose khaki shirt, and Dr. Soblen gained another delay.
THE, BERLIN WALL had its first birthday. Though commentators were agog with the expectation of news, nothing much happened. The East German authorities sought to drown the effects of the West's three-minute silence by the playing of a massed military band, but the West's protest de- generated into the prolonged sounding of motor horns. Herr Ulbricht's withdrawal to Kiev is still thought to indicate that news is an the way. Church and State clashed in two places. In Ghana the Anglican Bishop of Accra and the Arch- bishop of West Africa were ordered to leave the country for a mild criticism of the cult of Nkrumah the Messiah. Against the evidence of his recent escape from assassination the Bishop had been foolish enough to deny the President's Immortality. In Poland through the Office of Religious Cults the Government began to imple- ment its plans for the State take-over of all schools and orphanages now run by monks and nuns. Choosing his words with obvious care. Cardinal Wyszynski said that in any cases of tactlessness, which he had in any case asked the Government to guard against, the officials were, as often as not, provoked by the nuns. The econo- mic committee of the TUC accepted an invitation to visit Sweden. Holland reached agreement with Indonesia over the cession of West New Guinea to the latter.
TFra 'GLORIOUS 1WELFT14' opened on the thir- teenth. Mr. Macmillan, in old tweeds and looking very much his age, had a 'reasonably good' first day when his party bagged ninety-eight brace. Ex-President Eisenhower went golfing at Went- worth and went round the course in a special little Caddy car. The BBC announced that Network Three is to he gradually extended to start at 7 am.; it will have a new name—the Third Programme—and will play mainly 'good music.' Western Australia placed a special order with Britain for a load of birch twigs to punish a nineteen-year-old sex offender (any other wood would be illegal), and gnawing its way even farther into the summer the soccer season Opened with Tottenham Hotspur beating Ipswich Town 5—f. With a proliferation of mediocre talent and further featherbedding for players, the British challenge for the World Cup of 1966 has beg on.
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