25 SEPTEMBER 1959, Page 3

Portrait of the Week— AT THE UNITED NATIONS, Mr. Khrushchev

proposed a four-year Programme of total disarmament, and in Des Moines he recommended a couple of summit meetings a year. Apart from that, he continued to shoulder his chip across the United States, and sundry American trade union bosses and municipal politicians did their damnedest to knock it off. But a sunny San Francisco welcome warmed the cockles of his Communist heart before he went off to a luxurious log-cabin in Maryland, for his talks with President Eisenhower. Mean- while, the General Assembly of the United Nations, faced with the question of a seat for Communist China, shelved it—for the ninth time.

PARLIAMENT WAS DISSOLVED. One Mr. Morrison accepted a ticket to the House of Lords, where he can expect to be joined by another Mr. Morri- son, the sometime Speaker, who will find his former deputy there—Sir Charles MacAndrew- along With Mr. James Stuart and Dame Florence Horsbrugh. The election campaign warmed up, and Mr. Mark Arnold-Forster, of the Observer, discovered and revealed that four of the five public-opinion polls—those published by the News Chronicle, the Daily Mail, the Daily Tele- graph, and the London Evening News—all bought their figures at the same. shop: Social Surveys (( lollop Poll) Ltd. The News Chronicle, which is the only one of them entitled to use the title 'Gallup Poll,' and not to do its own interpretation, said this was 'a most misleading statement,' and a reporter from the Daily Express, which con- ducts a poll.of its own, calling to interview Dr. Durant, head of Social Surveys, etc., etc., was confronted with a tape-recorder and a request that he should submit to an elaborate set of con- ditions before an interview could be granted.

RAIN I I I. ON LONDON for the first time in thirty nine days, a dry and dusty record, but the capital's water supply was reported safe, unlike that of Lancashire, where the Irwell Valley Water Board, observing that the situation was the worst it had ever faced, asked people not to clean their win- dows or take baths. A jury found Guenther Fritz Podola sane and fit to be tried on a charge of capital murder, and his trial duly began. Forty-six Miners, trapped by flames, smoke, fumes and gas, died in Auchengeich Colliery, near Glasgow. .

I IIIR DIEN IRAQI ARMY OFFICERS and four civilians were executed in Baghdad for their part in the revolt against the Kassem regime in March, or for 'previous 'plotting against the State.' There were anti-Iraqi demonstrations, as a result, in Damascus and Cairo. Mr, James Swinburn. was released from prison in Cairo, and arrived in England, leaving behind him Mr. James Zarb, also convicted of being a British spy, and not yet qualified for an amnesty.

'DIE COUNCIL of the London Stock Exchange sus- pended dealings in the shares of fifteen companies controlled by a Mr. H. 0. Jasper, who asked a firm of accountants to investigate and report on his companies' affairs. Dr. Klaus Fuchs announced his marriage, in East Berlin, to an old Com- munist chum. The French Government lifted the ban imposed in I956—and not too noticeably enforced—On the Paris-published English- language edition of Lolita. A lot of boys went back to school, but only two of them—Timothy Fearon, aged eight, and Patrick Fearon, aged twelve—climbed the 12,000 ft. high Wetterhorn first. The International College of Surgeons in Chicago was advised of a new complaint, 'tele- vision bottom.'