PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The 39 American hostages still held in Beirut after the seizure of a TWA airliner were at last freed, after negotiations be- tween Syria and the USA. Their departure from Beirut was delayed for a day after the thugs and barbarians who had captured them took exception to being described as thugs and barbarians by President Reagan, and demanded that the USA should not retaliate. As soon as the hostages had returned, President Reagan announced a boycott of Beirut airport and the refusal of landing rights in America to any airline serving the Lebanon. Israel released 300 prisoners captured in southern Lebanon. More terrorists killed a Spanish woman who was trying to buy a ticket in the British Airways office in Madrid, and injured 25 other people. Another bomb at Rome airport injured 12 more. A North Sea diver was fined £1,500 in Aberdeen for making a joke about bombs in his luggage at the airport. Mr Grigori Romanov fell from S power in Russia admidst rumours of a drink problem: while Andrei Gromyko became president of the USSR. His old job as Foreign Secretary went to a Georgian protégé of Mr Gorbachev's, Eduard She- vardnadze, said to be an expert on corrup- tion. President Reagan announced he would meet Mr Gorbachev in November. Robert Mugabe threatened to abrogate the Lancaster House agreement after Ian Smith's party did very well in the elections for the white section of the Zimbabwean parliament. Mrs Thatcher was humiliated and wished it to be known that she was angry when by a majority vote at the EEC summit in Milan it was decided that more majority voting was desirable, and that the Treaty of Rome should be so amended.
THE victories over the IRA continued: a man was charged with causing the Brighton bombing last year, and a cache of arms and explosives was discovered in Glasgow. Mr Arthur Scargill managed to evade a change in the rules of the NUM that would have forced him to stand for re-election quin- quennially. He also demanded that a fu- ture Labour government should reinstate all sacked miners without exception, and sack Ian MacGregor and most of his subordinates. A batch of a drug used to treat asthma attacks was found to contain curare, which paralyses the respiratory system. Australia comfortably won the second Test at Lord's. Mats Wilander was defeated in the first round at Wimbledon: British hopes fizzled out as usual. Chim- panzees' tea parties are to be discontinued in British zoos because the animals find playing at humans so absorbing that they lose all sexual interest in their own species and refuse to breed. A double punk wedding (among humans) ended in 17 arrests after fighting broke out in a South- ampton Registry Office with the police, four of whom were injured, one bitten. One of the couples involved spent their wedding night in separate cells: the other bridegroom, Mr Sean 'Hitler' Monaghan, announced that he would go for an LSD trip in the park, as a cheaper honeymoon. John McEnroe lost at Wimbledon. ACB
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