PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Traffic was blocked for a few hours on the autobahns through East Germany to Berlin, where the West German Federal elections are being held, while NATO strategists began ex- huming their plans for a graduated response. General de Gaulle ordered a total French boy- cott of everything connected• with Western European Union, after Britain had called an emergency meeting of the WEU to discuss the situation in the Middle East. Three yachts from the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and their crews were seized by Chinese patrol vessels. Nothing was known of the fate of the fifteen people on board, who included four children.
In Ulster, Mr William Morgan, the former Minister of Health, attacked Captain Tedtence O'Neill on class grounds. An Arab terrorist was shot dead, and four others, includ- ing a woman, arrested after an El Al Boeing was attacked at Zurich airport. Fire was leturned by an Israeli plain-clothes security
guard inside the plane. He was later arrested, too. It was widely reported that Stansted would not appear in the short list of sites for London's third airport. The Pope firmly re- jected suggestions that priests should be allowed to marry and discouraged them further from wearing ordinary clothes.
St Valentine's Day was celebrated in Cam- bridge with the impregnation of human ova by male spermatozoa in a test-tube, to the ap- plause of Lady Summerskill. Raymond Leslie Morris, found guilty at Stafford Assizes of murdering seven-year-old Christine Darby. at Cannock Chase, was sentenced to life im- prisonment. Mr Heath pointed out that the question of capital punishment will come up for review next year. Proposals for a lottery to raise funds for the Greater London Council were defeated in the Lords. Kingsley Martin died in Cairn at seventy-one, Robert Pitman in London at forty-four. Kenneth Horne and Stephen Swingler, MP, also died.
Westminster Abbey agreed to allow a commemorative monument to Lord Byron in Poets' Corner, after three refusals on moral grounds in 145 years. The Federal government rejected proposals for peace put forward by Dr Azikiwe, the former Nigerian president. The army banned Marks and Spencer and other Zionist labels on the civilian clothing of troops stationed in the Middle East. January's trade figures, with the visible deficit reduced to LIO million, were the best for two years. The New York docks strike ended, but there was fresh trouble at London docks and a strike was threatened at Ford's.
High-pressure gas, accidentally released into houses at Witham, Essex, blew up many of them. The El million computer which looks after all RAF records at Innsworth, in Glouces- ter, discharged an airman as pregnant and awarded a carpenter a flying badge.
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