PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'We've got a headache.' The Soviet-US mini-summit ended in disagreement in Reykjavik over the issue of American development of the Star Wars weapon system. Mr Gorbachev, who had offered to remove all intermediate nuclear forces from Europe and substantially re- duce the number of strategic missiles in return for the scrapping of SDI, accused Mr Reagan of scuttling and frustrating the mini-summit. Mr Reagan said in turn that he preferred no agreement to a bad agree- ment. The two leaders left Reykjavik without agreeing a date for a further meeting in Washington. The Queen ar- rived in Peking, visited the Great Wall of China, and attended a state banquet where she ate a sea slug with a pair of ivory chop sticks. At least 1,000 people died in a powerful earthquake in San Salvador, and five people were killed in central Tanzania when an aircraft carrying Mother Teresa crashed on take-off and ploughed into a crowd of onlookers. South Africa announced the expulsion of 70,000 Mozambican workers from the republic, apparently in retaliation for the continued activity of ANC operatives in Mozambi- que. In Washington, the State Depart- ment's chief spokesman, Bernard Kalb, resigned after it was revealed that his department had operated a disinformation campaign to unsettle and discredit Colonel Gaddafi. Elie Wiesel, who survived his incarceration in Auschwitz and Buchen- wald concentration camps, won the Nobel Peace Prize and was immediately congratu- lated by Bob Geldof, who had been widely supported as winner by British tabloid newspapers.
FIVE Arabs and a Swede, all suspected members of an Abu Nidal terrorist hit- squad, were expelled from Britain. Shares in the TSB — which had been massively over-subscribed when offered for sale to the public — opened at a 100 per cent premium on the Stock Exchange. The print union Sogat once again rejected the latest offer of £58 million from Mr Rupert Murdoch to settle the dispute over the move of his newspapers to Wapping. Mrs Thatcher tripped over a manhole cover in Bournemouth and sprained her ankle, but recovered sufficiently to deliver her speech to the Conservative Conference, in which she attacked Labour and the Alliance for their defence policies. She received a ten- minute standing ovation, the longest ever recorded, and the bookmakers Ladbrokes shortened the odds on a Conservative victory at the next election to 13-8. Two girls aged nine and ten, were found mur- dered and sexually assaulted near their homes in Brighton. The England cricket team arrived in Australia for the winter tour. Hundreds of would-be immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India were put up overnight at Heathrow hotels be- cause immigration officers were unable to process a flood of arrivals who were beating the deadline before compulsory visas were introduced for visitors from those countries. Interest rates were in- creased by one per cent to protect sterling.
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