PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mrs Thatcher announced on televi- sion that she still had much to do, and that she had no intention of standing down. Lobby correspondents were told that the Budget, which they had earlier learnt would contain no tax cuts, might instead make donations to charity tax-deducti- ble; Mr Peter Walker spoke in favour of a corporatist partnership between Govern- ment and industry as practised by the Japanese. Mr Heseltine was quiescent. General Motors seemed close to agreeing a price for the purchase of some parts of British Leyland; Volvo announced its in- terest in other parts; the Sikorski-Fiat consortium finally gained control of West- land helicopters. Mr Murdoch's savage assault on ordinary working people con- tinued with a night of fighting outside the Wapping printing works: rubber trun- cheons, hammer shafts and bottles were used against the police by enthusiastic socialists. The Times refused to print a reasoned attack on Mr Murdoch by Peter Kellner. John Carlisle MP, an enthusiast for South Africa, was attacked by Asian yobs when he attempted to address a meeting at Bradford University and had a finger broken. Mr Ray Honeyford had to cancel a speaking engagement at Bristol University for fear of violence there. Another Conservative MP was punched in the face at Sunderland Polytechnic. The Labour Party's enquiry into the Liverpool district party's affairs recommended that Mr Hatton and several of his cronies be expelled, though this leaked information was promptly denied. The Queen revisited Nepal, whose monarch is King Birendra, Archbishop Runcie visited Mother Teresa, and was greatly impressed; in Canada, two Anglican deaconesses were suspended af- ter they told the press that they were both Lesbians and one of them was pregnant. A team of scientists discovered that elephants have an organ on their foreheads which emits very low-frequency noises, which are used to communicate messages of sexual excitement.
PRESIDENT Marcos was officially announced to have won the Phillipines elections; Mrs Aqunio announced a cam- paign of strikes and civil disobedience. The American attitude was not clear: President Reagan detected 'an appearance of fraud' in the result, and sent Mr Philip Habib to mediate. Perhaps influenced by this, Presi- dent Marcos sacked his chief of staff, General Ver, who is widely held responsi- ble for the murder of Mr Aquino. Fierce fighting continued at the head of the Gulf, where an Iranian offensive may have cap- tured the town of Faw. There was more fighting in Chad: French planes bombed a Libyan airstrip at Wadi Dum; a Libyan plane bombed the airstrip at N'djema, and French reinforcements were sent to aid President Habre. Two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, apparently by a Shi'ite group, in southern Lebanon while patrolling with the client militia. The Israeli Array mounted a small invasion to rescue them; their captors threatened to kill them unless the army withdrew. Mario Soares was unexpectedly elected President of Portug- al. A Russian cruise ship, the Mikhail Lermontov, sank on a reef off New Zealand, and one sailor drowned. The popular American painkiller, Tylenol, was once more withdrawn from sale after a woman in New York was killed by a capsule contaminated with cyanide. Three years ago, seven people died in Chicago from the same cause. Captain Dmitrts Georgoulos was sentenced to 12 years by an Athenian court for scuttling a super- tanker off the coast of Liberia after deliver- ing oil to South Africa. Count Wilderich von Spee, the mayor of Korschenbroich, near Frankfurt, resigned his office. He had suggested that the town's financial prob- lems could be solved by 'killing a few rich Jews', though he later maintained that he had been quoted out of context. ACB
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