— Portrait of the Week DISASTER STRUCK at aircraft and at
an aircraft carrier: two airliners collided in a snowstorm over New York, killing 137 people; a USAF aircraft crashed on to a tramcar in Munich, kill- ing at least sixty; and fifty men died and hun- dreds were injured when fire swept the huge new USS Constellation in Brooklyn Navy Yard. Mr. Marples, Minister of Transport, appealed to local authorities, motorists and pedestrians to take care lest Christmas road accidents in Britain resulted in a similar casualty list. The Government announced its intention to abolish the British Transport Commission.
IN ADDIS ABABA the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia promised an amnesty to those who took part in the abortive coup d'etat. In Katmandu. King Mahendra of Nepal arrested the Socialist Prime Minister and Cabinet, dismissed the country's first elected government, assumed dic- tatorial powers and cut the telephone wires. In Berlin. there was a threat by the East German Government to Western communications. In Vientiane. the Laotian Government asked for United States military aid. In Paris. NATO was offered five Polaris rocket-firing submarines by the United States Government, and didn't seem to know whether it wanted them, or what to do with them. In Washington, Mr. John Kennedy, the President-elect, appointed his brother, Robert, as Attorney-General.
HR. BANDA returned to Nyasaland and said that Federation was dead. Mr. Joshua Nkomo apolo- gised to the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia for having walked out of the Lancaster House conference. and said that he hoped to be at the Southern Rhodesian constitutional conference in January. The Northern Rhodesian African Nationalists were in their place at the territorial Conference in London. French-speaking African States called for a round-table conference of the Conflicting Congolese parties. The Ghana Gov- ernment arrested thirty members of the opposi- tion party. Britain. Australia and Portugal abstained when the United Nations General Assembly called on South Africa to revoke all apartheid laws in the mandated territory of South West Africa.
SPEAKING AS THE CHAIRMAN - of the Public Accounts Committee, Mr. Harold Wilson said in the House of Commons that the control of Public expenditure was in danger of breaking down, referring especially to expenditure on guided missiles. A month after being opened, Glasgow's suburban electric railway service closed—an immediate inquiry was promised into the failures of the electrical devices that made this necessary. The Government announced that British subjects may now travel abroad on a tourist passport, costing 7s. 6d.. which has to be renewed every year, instead of an ordinary pass- port. costing 30s., which lasts for five, and can be renewed for another five for a further 20s. Members of Parliament are by now so bemused by trying to square what the Government tells them with what their common sense tells them that they are no longer capable of simple arith- metic. and welcomed this as an economy.
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CHRISTMAS STORY: The headmaster, a Mr. John nenians, of Widdicombe House, a school for mentally backward and infirm children (whose parents pay f360 a year), admitted to reporters having ducked some of the children in cold water, Pricking a limping child with a pin. cutting the hair off those who tried to run away, and wash- ing out with water, mustard and disinfectant the mouths of those who swore. His wife said, `If anyone says only love and affection should be shown to these children, they should try dealing with them themselves.'
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