Portrait of the week
Guerrilla attacks against towns and cities all over South Vietnam were launched by the Vietcong: on Tuesday they occupied part of the American em- bassy in Saigon, and there was fierce fighting in Da Nang. This followed a cautious move towards peace negotiations by Washington—bombing would be stopped for talks without the previous insistence on some reciprocal gesture from the communists. Meanwhile, the American military build-up in South Korea continued, along with efforts to secure the release of America's captured spyship 'Pueblo' and her crew. At home President Johnson presented a record $186,100 million budget, Senator Robert Kennedy told reporters he would not oppose the President's renomination 'under any foreseeable circumstances;' and on Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas officials investigating rumoured murders of guards and 'trusties' discovered three skeletons at their first dig, one of them headless.
In the Mediterranean the search continued for two missing submarines—the French 'Minerve,' with fifty-two men on board, and Israel's ex-T-Class 'Dakar,' with a crew of sixty-nine. Egyptian efforts to clear the Suez canal were disrupted by artillery fire from the opposite bank. Mr Brown spoke to Benelux ministers in Brussels and proposed a meet- ing to discuss wider European co-operation. Twenty- three people were killed by Swiss avalanches.
Charles Wilson, rearrested in Canada last week, was delivered to Parkhurst prison; Scotland Yard stepped up their search for Ronald Biggs and Bruce Reynolds, the other two men still wanted in connection with the Great Train Robbery. Fol- lowing Ombudsman Sir Edmund Compton's recent decision in favour of the Sachsenhausen survivors, the Foreign Office was expected to pay some £25,000 in compensation. On Monday the Court of Appeal held that the 1963 Betting and Gaming Act could, after all, be enforced to prohibit games of unequal chance, and Mr Callaghan decided to re-examine the proposed new gambling law. Twenty-four Labour MPS have been suspended for four weeks from the parliamentary party. Mr Peter Hall said he would be giving up as managing director of the RSC; Mr John Bloom was arrested on fraud charges, The Daily Mirror costs more, and so may bread.
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