Portrait of the week
At the postponed European Community summit meeting in Stuttgart, the Prime Minister expressed satisfaction at the agree- ment to give Britain a refund of £450 million on its 1983 budget contribution. A much larger repayment had been demand- ed, France said that £250 million was quite enough, and Mrs Thatcher said she was not expecting anything. The sum accepted represented a smaller proportion of the contribution than in previous years, and was said to depend on reaching agreement on other matters. The EEC also pronounc- ed on Central America in terms which did not appear to support US policy towards the region. West Germany's proposal that the entry of Spain and Portugal into the EEC should be agreed next year was resisted by France. In Lebanon, after three Israeli soldiers had been killed outside Deir Qanoun, the village was surrounded by Israeli forces, and the Red Cross and UN peacekeeping troops were refused access while 78 inhabitants were removed to Tyre for interrogation. The death of Israel's deputy prime minister, Simcha Ehrlich, put Mr Begin's coalition government in jeopar- dy, and Al Fateh's Revolutionary Council met in Damascus to consider the rebellion against the leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat. Mr Y. K. Andropov was 'elected' president of the Soviet Union, Mr Li Xian- nian president of China. In Poland, Lech Walesa was allowed to go to Cracow to meet the Pope, who upset his hosts by speaking of the 'God-given' right of his countrymen to form independent trade unions and encouraging them to maintain solidarity under the burden of martial law. In Italy, over 500 people — including a nun, a prison chaplain, a television com- pere and the chairman of a football club — were arrested on suspicion of working for the Camorra, the Neapolitan branch of the Mafia. Three US journalists were killed by Nicaraguans firing across the border with Honduras. The Duchess of Windsor was said to have celebrated her 87th birthday at her house outside Paris, though no one seems to have seen her for several months.
The annual rate of inflation fell to 3.7 per cent for May, the first time for 15 years that it has been below 4 per cent. The Government decided to abolish its 'think tank' (the Central Policy Review Staff) which was set up by Mr Heath in 1971, and the Liberal/SDP Alliance decided to re- main closely allied but not to merge under one leader. The Queen Mother, at 82, paid a visit to the Territorial Army in Northern Ireland. Jewellery valued at about £5 million was stolen from a shop in the West End of London, and in the City £780,000 worth of Krugerrands were stolen from two bullion brokers by means of an elaborate confidence trick. In Lowestoft a man was accused of stealing a radio distress beacon from an offshore oil rig: it was found in a cupboard in his house, but only after its mayday signal, picked up by a Russian satellite, had prompted an extensive search of the North Sea. Dr Sally Ride became the first American woman astronaut, aboard the space shuttle Challenger, 20 years after a Russian woman, Valentina Tereshkova, first went into orbit. The National Council for Civil Liberties said that working men's clubs should not discriminate against work- ing women, but that homosexual clubs should be permitted to exclude members of the opposite sex. In Belfast, Mrs Maureen Rice gave birth to a baby outside her womb.
Adispute with BBC television techni' cians over expenses interrupted coverage of Royal Ascot and the World Cup cricket series, but the matter was settled without the televising of Wimbledon being affected. A man called Andrew Neil was appointed to replace Frank Giles as editor of the Sunday Times. Three people died, while taking part in so-called `fun runs during a spell of mild weather. Sir Clive Sinclair, the immensely rich inventor of the pocket calculator, acquired an option t° purchase most of the assets of the Pe Lorean car plant in Northern Ireland, to order to develop his plans to produce elee; tric cars and motor cycles. The last naval vessel, HMS Hermione, left Chatham dockyard before its conversion to a com- mercial port. A homing pigeon turned up on the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, having been last seen four years ag° in Belgium; and in south Wales sheep were observed rolling across cattle grids. SP ' peouo be `People who to bring back hanging so
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