PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Mr Peter Robinson, was arrested in the village of Clontibret, Co Monaghan, after a group of loyalists daubed the police station with slogans and attacked two policemen with sticks and cudgels. He was released on £10,000 bail. His party leader, Mr Ian Paisley, cut short a visit to the United States, but denied that he felt his position was threatened by Mr Robinson. The British Government reiter- ated its commitment to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and said that further measures to strengthen the treaty would be announced shortly. British soccer suppor- ters were in disgrace once again, after 150 of them terrorised 2,000 other passengers on a Dutch ferry boat sailing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. Two days later 60 Manchester United supporters went on the rampage through Amsterdam, smashing shop windows and terrorising passers-by. It was considered unlikely that British teams would be re-admitted to competitive Euro- pean soccer tournaments. Fleet Street's tabloid newspapers became hysterical and indignant when it was disclosed that the Queen had secretly visited a London hos- pital for heart tests; she responded by climbing 152 steps to the top of a light- house on the west coast of Scotland. The price of petrol in Britain was increased by seven pence a gallon.
IN INDIA, gunmen assassinated the for- mer chief of the Indian army, General Arun Vaidya, the man who masterminded the assault on the Golden Temple at Amritsar two years ago. Several thousand climbers celebrated the 200th anniversary of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, but five of them perished in the process. One hundred and fifty-two Sri Lankans were picked up off the coast of Newfoundland after they had apparently set themselves adrift in order to gain admission to Cana- da. The Natal Supreme Court found that two important clauses in the proclamation of the state of emergency were invalid, and many thousands of South Africans could be released from detention as a result. Mrs Thatcher was awarded the freedom of Tongaat in Natal in recognition of her courageous stand against sanctions, and the British Tourist Authority appeared to take a similar position by offering South African travel agents free trips despite the ban on tourism agreed at the Common- wealth mini-summit. Gold soared to $394 an ounce, the highest level for two and a half years, because of fears that the South African government would retaliate against the imposition of sanctions by withholding bullion supplies from the West. The Stock Exchange index recorded its biggest fall in a single day, slipping to the lowest level since mid-February. Jeremy, an eight-foot-tall brown bear who once appeared in television commercials for Sugar Puffs, bit off the arm of a ten-year-old schoolboy at a wildlife park in Dundee. Ian Botham scored 175 not out in a one-day cricket match, and England lost the second Test against New Zealand. ScotlandYard detectives raided 13 Kent police stations to investigate allegations that officers had used fake confessions in order to boost their detection rates. The chairman of the Oxford Central Conserva- tive Association resigned after his commit- tee rejected membership applications from five Chinese. A one-year-old boy died of Aids in Manchester.
SJAR
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