30 OCTOBER 1959, Page 3

—Portrait of the Week— THE QUEEN'S SPEECH promised that the

Govern- ment would deal with local unemployment, 'amend and modernise' the betting laws, be stricter with building societies, and extend the principle of indeterminate sentences to young offenders. It made no reference to the licensing laws, and only a passing reference to 'the improving of relations between East and West.' The Soviet Finance Minister presented his Budget to the Supreme Soviet and explained that although military expen- diture remained the same, it was a smaller propor- tion of a higher total, and that spending on science would go up. Soviet photographs of the other side of the moon were released. Mr. Nehru said that the Chinese had deliberately planned the killing of Indian troops in Southern Ladakh, and the Chinese Government offered to let him have the bodies back.

HALF A MILLION striking American steelworkers were given permission by a Federal Appeals Court to stay out on strike while they appealed to the Supreme Court against an order sending them back to work. The French Ministry of Justice decided to charge M. Mitterrand, a former French Minister of Justice, with telling fibs about having been fired at. The last volume of General de Gaulle's war- time memoirs was published, in which he recalled that Heinrich Himmler, of the Gestapo, had warned him against the Anglo-Saxons, who would 'deprive him of his honour,' and the Russians, who would liquidate him, and observed that there were 'elements of truth' in Himinler's advice that France's only way to greatness and'independence was through an understanding with Germany. President de Gaulle sent a message to the authori- ties in Algeria asking for their support; and also intimated that he would be pleased to attend a Western Summit conference.

GALES. SWEEPING BRITAIN, drenched many people, delayed others, and brought water-rationing to an end. In an article in the Lancet, the Medical Officer of Health for Caernarvonshire associated a rising incidence of leukaemia with radioactive fall-out in certain parts of the country, and a new - oral penicillin called Broxil, twice as effective as any other, was made available to British hospitals. Restaurant-car staffs of British Railways came out on unofficial strike against the introduction of new Pullman car services. The executive council of the Amalgamated Engineering Union forbade its mem- bers to take part in an engineering shop stewards' conference called for December 6 in Sheffield. Two hunared members of the National Union of Stove, Grates, and General Metal Workers came out on strike against the employment of Sohan Lal, a Punjabi, and six other coloured workers; thirty members of the Transport and General Workers' Union came out on strike in order that Mohammed Ghulam, a Pakistani, should continue to be employed, Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice, announced that he was a believer in corporal punishment, and the Catholic Women's League objected, on religious grounds, to the National Council of Women's proposal that abor- tion should be made legal for the pregnant victims of rape.

ANGLIA TELEVISION opened its station and began its programmes. The Nobel Prize for literature, awarded last year to Boris Pasternak, a Soviet citizen whose work had offended Russian Com- munists, was awarded this year to Salvatore Quasimodo, a Sicilian•whose work had offended Italian Roman Catholics. A Chelsea writer and artist won £260,104 in a football pool, and pro- posed to begin work on a novel that would explain 'how the problems of man should be solved'— other, presumably, than by winning £260,104 in a football pool. It was decided not to allow television in South Africa; because there Is no practicable method of enforcing State control on what viewers view.