PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Negotiators led by Mr Averell Harriman, for the United States, and Mr Mai Van Bo, for North Vietnam, prepared for the long-awaited meeting in Paris at which terms for a peace conference are to be discussed. But in Vietnam onoe again there was no peace. United States forces were engaged in a divisional-strength battle near the demilitarised zone. In Saigon the Vietcong recrudesced, temporarily cutting off communications by sea and air. A Reuter's correspondent in the city and three other journalists, all in civilian clothes and unarmed, ran into a Vietcong patrol and were shot down.
Better news for President Johnson came from nearer home. His tax Bill, after more than a year's delay, passed the Ways and Means Committee and is now expected to go through Congress— a timely relief for the dollar, over which clouds were massing, and a disappoint- ment to speculators in gold, whose price fell 55 cents. Among the President's would-be successors, Senator Robert Kennedy defeated a favourite-son candidate in the Indiana pri- mary election, with Senator McCarthy trailing in third place. Ladbroke's made Senator Ken- nedy their 11-8 favourite for the presidency.
Electors in Britain were returning local councillors. Early results gave most pleasure to the Scottish Nationalists, who won some eighty seats and hold the balance of power in Glas- gow. A Gallup poll reported that 74 per cent of those questioned generally agreed with what Mr Enoch Powell said about immigrants.
The Spanish government closed the land frontier with Gibraltar, and elicited from Mr George Thomson, Commonwealth Secretary, a declaration that Britain stood four-square be- hind the right of the colony's people to decide their own destiny. The Postmaster-General was again threatened with a strike by counter staff at post offices, but it was called off, and doc- tors were dismayed to find that no increase in their pay is proposed this year. A heart-trans- plant operation performed in London was accompanied, as is now customary, with press and television photography, detailed accounts of the patient's conduct (at one stage he gave a thumbs-up sign) and of the donor's life and family, and a visit from the smiling Dr Christian Barnard. A longer-established though less popular sporting event was the opening first-class match of the Australian cricketers, In the shadow of the cathedral at Worcester, bui rain prevented any play on the first day.
Paris was the latest city where students rioted more fiercely in protest against the police's con duct in earlier riots. A more sinister threat t( public order was reported from Athens, where fourteen government censors have been dis missed and a newspaper proprietor, his editor and two head printers were detained for ques- tioning. The regime was disturbed by what it considered a subversive report on matchboxes Even-handed death took Mrs Lurleen Wal- lace, Governor of Alabama, and Sir John Sheppard, sometime provost of King's
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