— Portrait of the Week- 1 HE SOVIET GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCED that
a United States aircraft, from a British base, miss- 11g for ten days, had been shot down by a Soviet tighter over Soviet territorial waters. Mr. Khrush- Fhev put on a somewhat belated display of moral Indignation and patriotic fervour; the White House said that the aircraft had never been where the Russians said it was, but didn't explain how It knew; and Mr. Macmillan said that he was ,(911S' to consult President Eisenhower about the „tems on which the American air forces used British bases. The London correspondent of Pravda telephoned the chairman of the Witney Urban District Council to ask what the locals thought about the shooting-down of a plane from Haze Norton. The chairman lectured Pravda on international law, and asked why it had taken the Russians ten days to make an announcement, and why they had sent a ship to look for a plane that they knew they had shot down and were in Possession of. It also turned out that Brizc Norton doesn't come within the territory of the Urban District Council at ali, but within that of the Witney Rural District Council. the chairman of which is the editor of the Countryman, whereas the chairman of the Urban District Council is a lawyer, which was a bit of bad luck for Pravda.
THE GOVERNMCNI of the new Congo Republic asked for United States help to put down its mutinous troops. who had forced a withdrawal of Belgian commandos. The prime minister of the seceding Katanga province asked for Rhodesian military aid, and Sir Roy Wclensky said it was no business of Britain's whether he sent it or not. Refugees from the Congo poured into Uganda, Northern Rhodesia, Angola and the ex-French Congo Republic. In Kenya, Kikuyu suspected of reviving the Mau Mau oath were rounded up and detained. Lives were lost in fighting between Italian police and Left-wing demonstrators against Right-wing demonstrators; the Italian Minister of the Interior, appealing for order, Pointed out that the Olympic Games were coming 9P. The Democratic Party Convention took place 19 Los Angeles, blessed by a Roman Catholic Cardinal and a Methodist bishop. In Western Germany. the police arrested fourteen East Ger- man agents; in Eastern Germany, the police waved pistols at members of the British Military Mission and pinched cameras, binoculars, maps ..tnd a watch. The National Executive of the 1,abour Party decided to cling to Clause Four; Mr. Gaitskell decided not to resign.
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THREE HUNDRED SHIFT WORKERS at three London Power stations went unofficially on strike and. by forcing a cut-down of tube trains, dislocated Lon- (1°11's traffic: those who had to walk home, in consequence, or to wait for buses, were rained "a. An unofficial strike of seamen stopped pas- 4,en13er services between Scotland and Ireland, pas- Eger the parcel post between England and Northern Ireland and held up transatlantic liner railings. Everybody had thought that Mr. Harpies, the Minister of Transport, had said that the carriageways of the new Ross motorway weren't wide enough, but his Ministry said next (1,4Y that what he had meant was the har. shoulders and not the road itself. The summer session of the Church Assembly opened in West- minster and a number of gaitered legs were seen un the steps of London clubs. A palm tree was 't"len, it was alleged, from an admiral's garden 91 Hampshire and a coypu was shot in a public house in Suffolk. The Queen and Prince Philip went to the theatre, to see Ross, sat in the wrong seats and were asked to move up two places, which they did, thus sending a number of news- papers into an ecstasy of front-page admiration, and the usherette hurrying home to tell her hus- band Sid about it.
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