PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Pope Paul VI in an encyclical, Humane vitae, forbade every form of contraception and called upon secular authorities to make it illegal. His ruling, openly criticised by many Roman Catholics, threatened schism. In Italy it seemed likely to provoke a political crisis. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury reasserted that birth con- trol was a matter on which the individual conscience should rule. The Pope told pilgrims at Castelgandolfo that 'never as on this occasion have We felt with such acuteness the weight of Our duty to the service of all humanity.'
The leaders of Czechoslovakia and Russia met in the cinema at Cierna nad Tisou, a little town on the frontier between their two coun- tries. Russia's military menace grew more acute, with extensive troop movements in Poland and East Germany, and reports of a thousand tanks round the Czech borders. The Czechs awaited the arrival of President Tito of Yugoslavia, said to be visiting Budapest. President Nasser went to Russia for medical treatment, and President de Gaulle prepared to recognise Biafra.
Strikes dominated the home front. The Rt Hon Frank Cousins, Pc, seemed all set to call a bus strike from 12 August and challenge his former Cabinet colleagues to try to put him in jail. Television technicians put their case for better treatment by wrecking the opening night of two of the new television programme con- tractors, Thames and Yorkshire. British United Airways (Channel Islands), whose pilots struck in protest against redundancies, announced that all its employees would be redundant on 31 October, when it would go out of business.
The publishers of Last Exit to Brooklyn, prosecuted and condemned as obscene, took their case to appeal and won. The Home Office, undaunted, turned its attention to cult of scien- tology, refusing admission to a planeload of transatlantic scientologists. Others were thought to be entering the country in secret, and Scot- land Yard set three men to investigate; the biggest witch-hunt, said scientological head- quarters, since the time of James II.
The fourth Test match, like the second and third, ended in a draw, England's slow play cost- ing them the chance of victory and of regaining the Ashes. At Goodwood, Sky Diver won the Stewards Cup for the second year in succession.
In the week before the Republican conven- tion, a Gallup Poll showed that Mr Richard Nixon would beat any Democratic candidate in the us presidential elections, and gave him ratings that were (for the first time) superior to both Governor Rockefeller's and Senator McCarthy's.
The 2201b giant tortoise at Whipsnade Zoo, whose sex had been undetermined since the creature's arrival seventeen years ago, resolved all doubts by becoming the mother of a fine egg.
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