PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Colonel Gaddafi was rumoured to have fled Libya, a day after American bombers operating from British bases had attacked Tripoli and Benghazi in reprisal for the recent terrorist bombing of a nightclub in West Berlin. This was itself a Libyan reprisal for the last American attacks launched from aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Sine, which were meant to teach Col- onel Gaddafi that terrorism does not pay. Mr Gorbachev, Mr Terry Waite and other distinguished statesmen had earlier con- demned the latest American raid. The French, whose proxies are still fighting a desultory war against the Libyans in Chad, refused to allow the American bombers to use their airspace. By pure coincidence, the French Embassy in Beirut was among the civilian buildings damaged in the raid, which was aimed at the 'terrorist infra- structure'. About 100 casualties were re- ported. Earlier still, a British engineer in Tripoli had been sentenced to life impris- onment for `spying'; the city's Roman Catholic archbishop was briefly kidnap- ped, but reappeared. The Pope visited a synagogue in Rome. Two more foreign teachers were kidnapped in Beirut, joining 36 other foreign hostages there. Miss Be- nazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, where she hopes to emulate the success of Mrs Cory Aquino in the Philippines. She was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. Mrs Winnie Mandela, though still banned, made a speech in which she appeared to predict that the blacks could overthrow apartheid within a year if they could only manage to burn enough people to death with petrol-soaked tyres. Thirty-two char- red bodies were found in a township grave. Mr Bob Cryer, a Labour MEP, managed to change the official name of a variety of cabbage from `Niggerhead' to 'Red Dan- ish'. Jean Genet, Lady Betjeman and Simone de Beauvoir died. Dr Kurt Wald- heim was attacked for suppressing his war record by Dr Kreisky. Dr Waldheim's posters no longer call him 'The man the world trusted'. Clint Eastwood was elected Mayor of Carmel, California.
MRS Jennifer Guinness, the wife of a Dublin merchant banker with substantial liquid assets, was kidnapped from her home in Howth by armed men who deman- ded a ransom of 2,000,000 punts. The Irish police freed her on Wednesday morning. Loyalist attacks on the police continued in Ulster; Mrs Thatcher received Lords Moyola and Brookeborough, who urged on her the iniquity of the Hillsborough agreement; Keith White, a Protestant youth struck by a plastic bullet during rioting in Portadown two weeks ago, died in a Belfast hospital. His death was com- memorated by a 20-minute general strike. Four burglars raided a Dublin undertaker's in search of £800; when the alarm went off, one was so shocked he shot himself in the head. At the Fulham by-election Scream- ing Lord Sutch polled 134 votes, the racist candidate 226. Labour won with a majority of 3,503 over the Conservatives, and the Alliance candidate was soundly beaten into third place. An unholy alliance of Con- servatives, Ulster Unionists and socialists defeated the Shops Bill which would have legalised Sunday trading, despite a three- line Conservative whip. It will remain legal to buy the Koran on Sundays in Bayswater. A Muslim primary school in Brent applied for voluntary-aided status. The BMA cal- led for all drinkers to halve their consump- tion, the RSPCA announced a campaign against the import of frog's legs, and Mr William Thompson, one of the three Brent social workers sacked after the murder of Jasmine Beckford last year, was reinstated. He told a tribunal that he had only been following normal policy. Mr Justice Roche, 51, fell 20 feet from a tree and broke his leg while trying to rescue a cat in Haverford- west. The cat climbed down safely. A schoolboy fell 700 feet down the side of Mount Snowdon, but survived with bruises after landing in soft snow. ACB
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