PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
P resident Reagan went into hospital for a cancer operation: a small growth was removed with a portion of his colon, but his doctors claim that he will make a full recovery. He briefly transferred the au- thority of his office to Vice-President Bush, but resumed it after the operation. It is unclear who will deal with the decision of the Senate to vote for the imposition of economic sanctions on South Africa. The Coca Cola company announced that it was bowing to public pressure and restoring to sale the beverage made according to the old formula. Unrest continued in South Africa. In southern Lebanon, two suicide car bombers killed 17 people attacking SLA check-points in the security zone set up by the retreating Israelis. The black boxes of the crashed Air India plane were raised from the Atlantic and flown to India. The latest mission of the space shuttle was aborted three seconds before take-off by a computer which had second thoughts about a fuel valve. Large quanti- ties of sweet Austrian wine were removed from sale in Germany after it was found to have had its flavour and alcohol content enhanced by the addition of anti-freeze. A charity concert held simultaneously in Lon- don and Philadelphia for 16 hours raised at least £50 million for the victims of the Ethiopian famine. Bob Geldof, the orga- niser, was variously proposed for a knight- hood, the Nobel Peace Prize, and cano- nisation. Heinrich B011 died.
FOUR Asians and three white youths were convicted on charges arising from racial fighting in Newham; the day after the verdict was announced, three small chil- dren and their pregnant mother were burned to death in an arson attack on their home in the district. Two more whites await trial on charges of assaulting Asians when armed with hammers. Twenty-three RUC men were injured by Loyalists pro- testing their loyalty to the Crown in Porta- down, after their traditional march had been diverted from the town's Catholic ghetto. The Belgian government collapsed when charged with incompetence over the massacre by British football supporters at the European Cup Final in May. Twenty thousand American lawyers descended upon London. Mrs Thatcher exhorted them to struggle against terrorism; Leon Brittan warned all Americans against giv- ing money to the IRA. Nigel Lawson predicted that inflation and unemployment would both fall next year. Lord Young was charged with the task of stimulating em- ployment by removing bureaucratic im- pediments to business. Great hopes were attached to this; more interest was aroused by the black eye worn by Norman Lamont. Mrs Sandra Peterson was granted a divorce from Doctor Edward Peterson, on the grounds that he had been born Wendy Patricia Acton, and she (as he then was) had qualified under that name as a psychiatrist. An attempt has been made by a biologist at Southampton to create a race of trout unnaturally resistant to pollution by injecting their eggs with a gene taken
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