PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Police investigating the Brighton bomb- ing arrested five people in Glasgow; this led to the discovery of a time bomb in a tourist hotel near Buckingham Palace, meant to explode next month, and a further eleven arrests. Captured documents suggested That the IRA had been planning a bombing campaign at 12 seaside resorts, though the police do not believe that any of those bombs have been planted yet. A new extradition treaty was signed with Amer- ica, which will stop IRA suspects from pleading that their crimes are politically motivated. Sir Kenneth Newman, the Met- ropolitan Police Commissioner and former head of the RUC: was appointed to co- ordinate the police operation. The Chan- cellor of the Exchequer described the lending which had led to the collapse and forced nationalisation of Johnson Matthey bankers as 'appalling' and criticised the Bank of England for failing to foresee the emergency. He then announced that the Bank's regulatory powers would be in- creased. Mrs Thatcher told Welsh Con- servatives (a much sought-after people in the electioneering at Brecon and Radnor) that more tax cuts were desirable. The Cabinet held a special Sunday meeting to decide how these might be achieved. Keith Castle, who had had a heart transplant in 1979, died, as did Tage Erlander, formerly Prime Minister of Sweden. The board of governors of Drummond Middle School in Bradford recommended the reinstatement of Ray Honeyford as headmaster after a four-day inquiry. The final decision rests with the director of education. The early days of the Wimbledon tennis tournament were largely rained off. The press building was struck by lightning and a senior umpire was suspended for demanding tighter disci- pline. Mrs Christine Pearson, a Tory coun- cillor in Margate, told the Sun that she had been working as a prostitute (charging between f15 and £20) for the last four years. A 70-year-old Salvationist who also sits in the Conservative interest on the council said she had proved to be a good Tory.
AN INDIAN airliner blew up en route from Canada to Heathrow, and fell into the Atlantic south of Cork. All 329 people on board were killed. An hour later, two baggage handlers were killed and four injured in Tokyo by a bomb contained in the cargo of another flight from Canada, which had landed ahead of schedule. Two Sikhs are sought by Canadian police. The hostage crisis in Beirut continued. Thirty- nine Americans are still captive there. They are being guarded by the Shi'ite militia of the minister of justice, Nabih Berri, who offered to transfer them to any Western embassy in Beirut. Peace was imposed on the refugee camps south of Beirut. The Israelis released 31 of their 766 Lebanese detainees, one of the TWA hos- tages was subsequently released. Two more Shi'ites whose release has been demanded by the hijackers were sentenced to 25 years each in Spain. President Reagan's epony- mous spokesperson, Speakes, announced that the Americans were considering ways of shutting Beirut airport and blockading the ports of Lebanon. The President then gave diplomacy a few more days. Seven- teen doctors decided that the exhumed corpse of a man who drowned in Brazil in 1979 had once been Dr Josef Mengele. Arne Treholt, a Norwegian diplomat, was jailed for 20 years for spying for the Russians and the Iraqis. The space shuttle Discovery returned to Earth after a suc- cessful mission in which it had carried a nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, and been hit at the second attempt by a laser testing Star Wars technology. Mehmet All Agca announced that if only the Vatican would acknowledge him to be Christ, he would bring back to life a scientifically
Previous page
