—Portrait of the Week-
TIII UNITED STATES got an astronaut into space at last---Commander Alan Shepard, who soared 115 miles high. He did not go into orbit, as the Soviet astronaut had done, but he was in control of the capsule, whereas Major Gagarin's had been con- trolled from the ground.
'MERE WAS MUCH CRITICISM and controversy, in the House of Commons and in the press, over the trial and conviction of George Blake, and over the security services in general. It appeared from what little the Prime Minister would say on the subject that nobody was going to carry the can back for having taken Blake on, or for not having tumbled to what he was up to, and the Govern- ment and Opposition leaders then had a secret talk about it all. Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the second Lord Stansgate, was returned by the electors of Bristol South East to the House of Commons, which wouldn't let him in. The Amalgamated Engineering Union repudiated its policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament, just as the shopworkers had, and Mr. Carron, the engi- neer of victory, cautiously opined that, '1 should think that Mr. Gaitskell will be quite pleased.'
IIW FOREIGN MINISTER of the Congo, Mr. Justin tiomboko, announced that Mr. Moise Tshombe of Katanga would be prosecuted for high treason against the Congolese Republic. The Shah of Persia dissolved both Houses of Parliament after the Government had fallen over a teachers' pay strike, in the course of which students had demon- strated in favour of more pay for their teachers. "Elie new Prime Minister, Dr. Amini, a well-to-do landowner, urged Persians to tighten their belts to escape the economic whirlpool. There was a teachers' strike over pay in Glasgow, too, where Mr. John Bannerman, the Lord Rector of Aber- deen University, and chairman of the Spattish Liberal Party, said that thus the Minister of Edu- cation was being stood in the corner and given a few lines.
IT ALMOST BEGAN TO LOOK as though Britain might at any rate make cautious overtures towards the Common Market, and Tory members for agri- cultural constituencies began to get worried. The Steel Company of Wales proposed to import American coking coal, as being 16s. a ton cheaper than Welsh; Welsh coalminers said that we might lust as reasonably import cheap steel from Japan.
BOAC's reported loss of LI.7 million, which was nearly twice last year's, and brought its accumu- lated deficiencies to £17 millions, was not due to operating costs, or a fall in traffic, but to the pay- ment of interest on government loans. The British Aircraft Corporation produced a new short-range jet aircraft, intended to be a successor to the Viscount.
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TUB QUEEN GOT BACK from Italy having had, she said, a nice time, which included twelve minutes of grand opera (Lucia di Lammermoor, with Joan Sutherland) from the royal box at the Scala in Milani Tottenham Hotspur, already league cham- pions, won the FA Cup, thus bringing off a double last achieved in 1897 by Aston Villa. An American psychologist came publicly to the con- clusion that tattooing among sailors was prompted by emotional maladjustment, having tested several hundred ratings of the United States Navy with a personality inventory barometer and a Taylor manifest anxiety scale.
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