—Portrait of the Week— THE GOVERNMENT DROPPED its Veto On
the Civil Service arbitration system; leaders of the Civil Service unions took the offer as a promise and, in spite of previous experience of Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, one that would be kept; and the Civil Ser- vice Clerical Association called off an imminent overtime ban and work-to-rule campaign. But it looked as if the Post Office workers would continue observing postal regulations to the letter. Another smallpox suspect died — the sixth since the outbreak began in Bradford in December—and there was more anxiety and pub- licity than over the deaths on the roads: demands for vaccination rose so rapidly (there were 10,000 vaccinations in Bradford alone) that in some places supplies of vaccine had to be reserved for children, and the Ministry of Health announced that all travellers from Pakistan without valid vaccination certificates would be isolated as well as vaccinated.
DUTCH WARSHIPS off West New Guinea engaged Indonesian motor-torpedo-boats alleged to be in Dutch waters and probably to be part of an in- vasion attempt, and sank two of them. President Balaguer of the Dominican Republic was ousted by a seven-man junta, and in Algiers and Oran thirty-one Moslems and Europeans were killed and seventy wounded, by European grenade- throwers and tommy-gunners. British Guiana was offered talks in May on independence. Mr. Dean Rusk, the United States Secretary of State, said he thought that 'something is going on' in the Krem- lin, probably to do with the tension between China and the Soviet Union, 'but we must not attempt to reach hasty conclusions as to what it all means to us.'
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MAJOR TARIFF CUTS were agreed on by the United States and the Common Market countries, and the Common Market countries also agreed at last on an agricultural policy, thus leaving the way clear to the next stage of the Rome Treaty and to the resumption of negotiations over •Britain's entry. In London, the Anti-Apartheid Movement al- leged that three arms factories were being set up in South Africa, with official British help and in association with ICI, so that the Nationalist Government could crush any African movement, and help the Portuguese to do the same. The Congolese Prime Minister, Mr. Adoula, sacked and put under house arrest his former deputy, Mr. Gizenga, and told General Lundula to Fake care lest Colonel Pakassa should come to his aid from Katanga.
THE HOME OFFICE REFUSED either to confirm or deny that it had authorised tapping the telephone or prying into the letters of the Secretary of the Colchester Group of the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, but his local (Tory) MP told him that it couldn't happen here. The local Tory MP hasn't been a Tory MP for very long. After brood- ing over it for more than a week, the Observer decided to deplore the exploitation by the Sun- (1(ri' Times of Lord Snowdon's 'unique curiosity value, especially to women.' After apparently Waiting for some such reaction by another paper that it could quote without having to commit itself to any views of its own on the subject, the Times quoted in full, on its main news page, everything that the Observer had said. The owner of the Sunday Times, Mr. Roy Thomson, said that it seemed, 'like a cry-baby protest from a frustrated opposition,' and that he would 'attend to the matter' when he got back from talking about setting up television in Jamaica.
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