Portrait' of the Week— ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON the Western delegates
at Geneva agreed on the new American disarma- ment plan to be presented to the conference. On Sunday evening Mr. David Ormsby-Gore said that suggestions that the conference was breaking down were unfounded; and on Monday morning it broke down, the representatives of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Poland walking out of the meeting, which was adjourned indefinitely. The delicate balance of power between Communist east and non-Com- munist west remained, fortunately, unaffected by the creation of the independent republic of the Congo—Mr. Lumumba. its first prime minister, announcing that his government would assume 'a neutral position between the two blocs which divide the world.' In Washington, fourteen out of seventeen members of the Senate Foreign Rela- tions Committee criticised the Eisenhower Ad- ministration's handling of the U2 plane incident.
RANK RATE WENT UP and gilt-edged came down. The Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer tame in for a lot of Tory criticism; but the Labour Party leader was given a 179 to 7 vote of confidence by the Parliamentary Labour Party. There was quite a lot of talk about quite a lot of steel when the Commons debated the Government's intention to return the firm of Richard Thomas and Bald- wins to private enterprise—the biggest carve-up of public assets, said a Labour Member, since the dissolution of the monasteries. The Merseyside dock strike came to an end. Four hundred thou- sand railway workers were awarded wage in- creases backdated to last January. Forty-five miners were killed in an explosion in a South Wales coalmine.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN Minister Of 'Justice' an- nounced that the state of emergency would be brought gradually to an end, and that 1,200 out of 1,600 South Africans detained without trial for unspecified crimes not known to have been committed would graciously be released. Pre- liminary talks continued at Melon between repre- sentatives of the Algerian rebels and of the French Government. and allegations continued to be made that les paras were torturing their prisoners, male and female. The Chinese Com- munist Army went into action against Tibetan rebels in the demilitarised zone on the Sino- Nepalese frontier: a hundred thousand primitive Tibetan tribesmen trekked westward to avoid being civilised by the Chinese.
GENERAL SIR HUGH STOCKWELL was appointed NATO's Deputy Supreme Commander for Europe, his handling of the Anglo-French land forces in the Suez campaign having apparently been considered as qualifying him to equip, train, and mobilise troops whose only possible enemy might be considered a little more formidable than the Egyptians. Mr. Harry PoHitt, long the secre- tary and more recently the chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain, died at sea, of a stroke. Mr. Geoffrey Griffin, the South African last bowler, took three wickets in three balls at Lord's; was no-balled four times out of five other balls, for throwing; took to bowling underarm and was no-balled again; and isn't going to bowl or throw, underarm or overarm, any more over here.
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MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB claimed £250,000 damages from BEA for the loss of eight of their players and three officials in the Munich air crash of 1958. The firm of Heinz gave £25,000 to the Tate Gallery, which may now have the answer to the question, how many beans make twenty-five thousand?
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