Portrait of the week
'in an imitation of previous devastating attacks on the headquarters of the American and French contingents of the Lebanese peacekeeping force, a lorry packed with explosives was blown up inside Isreal's military headquaters in Tyre, southern Lebanon, killing 39 people, ten of them Arab prisoners being held in the compound. Syrian-backed dissidents in the Palestine Liberation Organisation renewed their onslaught against forces still loyal to PLO leader Yassir Arafat, driving them back into their remaining stronghold, the Baddawi refugee camp near Tripoli. There were signs that Arafat might concede defeat rather than make a final stand in the city of Tripoli itself. Meanwhile, American naval strength off the Lebanese coast was building up amid persistent rumours of a military strike in retaliation for the deaths of more than 230 US Marines in the bombing of their headquarters: fearing that any attack might be directed against themselves, the Syrians called up the country's entire military reserves, In the Soviet Union, rumours of a fatal illness afflicting President Andropov, rather than the cold offered as an official excuse, were fuelled by the absence of the 69-year old leader from the annual parade in Red Square to mark the Bolshevik revolution. Kremlinologists were confusedly tipping Mr Mikhail Gorbachov, Mr Grigoriy Romanov or Mr Geidar Aliyev as successor to Mr Andropov, who has not made a public appearance for three months. The Turkish electorate ignored the advice of the military regime by giving a clear majority to Mr Turgud Ozal's Motherland Party: three days before polling President Evren had decribed Mr Ozal as an arrogant liar. The Motherland Party's policies seema remarkably similar to Mrs Thatcher's, including the privatisation of nationalised industries. In Argentina, the military junta agreed to hand over power to the new civilian government of Senor Raul Alfonsin in a month's time, seven weeks earlier than originally planned.
Taking a leaf from the book of Greece's Melina Mercouri and her campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles, Mrs Sheila Kaul, India's Minister of Education and Culture, has been dropping hints, on the eve of the Queen's visit to India, that the 110 carat Koh-i-Noor, now part of the Crown Jewels, should be returned to its country of origin.
Ahome, the MI5 officer, Michael Bettaney, accused last September of espionage, faced six new charges when he appeared at Horseferry Road magistrates court. In Sheffield, Arthur Hutchinson, 42, of no fixed address, was remanded in custody charged with the murder of a
solicitor, his wife and son. Dennis Nilsen, who admitted killing 15 young drifters and boiling, burning and dissecting their bodies, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder with a recommended minimum term of 25 years: the Old Bailey jury rejected psychiatrists' pleas that they should return a manslaughter verdict on the grounds of diminished responsibility. As a consequence of the reporting of lurid background material on Nilsen before the end of the trial, the Attorney-General is considering contempt charges against a number of newspapers. There were signs of a revolt by clergy against the Church of England's proposals for divorced people to re-marry in church, while in Parliament a new divorce bill aimed at making discarded wives self-supporting by ending life-long maintenance was introduced. Five North sea divers were killed when a diving bell and a decompression chamber became separated, causing an explosive change of pressure. The Fleet Street print union, Sogat 82, gave in to TUC pressure and expelled several hundred newspaper electricians improperly recruited from the electricians' union, the EETPU. Mr Sean Geraghty, the Daily Mirror electrician who led the breakaway, was barred from holding office in the EETPU for twenty years.
An Anglo-Irish summit conference, the for two years, was held at Chequers between Dr Garret FitzGerald and Mrs Thatcher: sparse reports of the encounter suggested that Mrs Thatcher had been con- tent to sit and listen to Dr FitzGerald, who described it as 'an exposition by me rather than an active discussion between us'. PJP.
'Congratulations! It's a girl and we've put her on the pill.'
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