PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Big Bang
resident Samora Machel of Mozambi- que, and senior members of his govern- Ment, were killed when their aircraft crashed into a remote hillside just within South African territory. Opposition groups inside South Africa blamed Pretoria for the crash, although the South Africans im- mediately invited international aviation experts to visit the crash site. The foreign minister, Mr Pik Botha, whose govern- ment had two weeks before announced the expulsion of 60,000 Mozambican workers, praised Mr Ivlachel for his understanding of southern Africa's economic interdepend- ence.. Two of the largest foreign companies operating in South Africa, General Motors and IBM, announced they were to with- draw. Both companies blamed a combina- tion of economic and political difficulties for their withdrawal. The royal tour of China was slightly marred by comments made by the Duke of Edinburgh, who told a student from Leamington Spa that Pek- ing was 'ghastly', and warned him not to linger too long in China lest he became `slitty-eyed'. The United States expelled 55 Soviet diplomatic staff in retaliation for the Soviet expulsion of five American diplo- mats from Moscow, which had been ordered in retaliation for the earlier US expulsions of 25 members of the Soviet mission to the United Nations. One man was killed and 69 injured when two gre- nades were lobbed at Israeli soldiers leav- ing a ceremony at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Wole Soyinka from Nigeria won the Nobel prize for Literature.
THE BBC made an unreserved apology to two Conservative MPs whom they had called 'racist, anti-semite, Nazis, and fas- cist' in a documentary examining alleged rightwing infiltration of the Conservative Party. The two MPs, Mr Neil Hamilton and Mr Gerald Howarth, were awarded damages of £20,000 each, and costs which are thought to amount to a further £400,000. The chairman of the Billericay Conservative constituency party resigned over allegations that his MP, Mr Harvey Proctor, had indulged in spanking sessions with young men: Mr Proctor denied the allegations. Protesters at Bristol university forced Mr Enoch Powell to abandon a speech to undergraduates. He was escorted from the building by members of the university rugby club but recovered suffi- ciently to claim in a speech two days later that Mr Airey Neave had been murdered not by the Irish National Liberation Army, but by `M16 and its friends'. The English hockey team lost 2-1 to Australia in the final of the World Cup. William Quinn, a 38-year-old American accused of IRA bombing offences and the murder of a British policeman, lost his five year battle against extradition and was flown to Lon- don to face charges. A woman who had been in a coma for over five weeks gave birth to a daughter in Middlesbrough; she died shortly afterwards when doctors switched off her life-support machine. There was another train crash, this time in north London, in which 24 people were
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