PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
M Alain Poher, interim French president, in- timated that if elected to the Presidency next month, he will reopen talks with Britain on entry into the Common Market. His support in the polls dropped slightly. A leftist military junta overthrew the government in the Sudan and established a National Revolutionary Council. The American Apollo 10 astronauts landed safely on earth after two of them had circled the moon at a height of 50,000 feet, and it was said that the landing on the moon planned for July would go ahead.
Biafran forces acquired an air capability with the arrival of five small Swedish trainer air- craft, equipped with rockets and machine guns. The fate of twenty-nine Italian and German oil workers, captured by Biafrans deep in the mid-west, continued to give rise to anxiety. British and Australian defence planners delayed a decision on whether to supply arms to Malaysia to combat racial disturbances. 'Canada's plans to withdraw troops from NATO were fiercely attacked by her partners.
President Svobocla of Czechoslovakia an- nounced an amnesty for the tens of thousands of citizens who have left the country illegally since the Russian invasion. An American ser- geant based at Mildenlrall, Suffolk, took off in a giant transport aircraft after he had been charged. with drunkenness and disappeared somewhere over the Channel. British tourists, arriving in large numbers on the islands of Majorca, Minorca and Ibiza, found that the hotels where they were booked had not yet been completed. The new Director-General of the BBC, Mr Charles Curran, announced that the corporation's financial difficulties would be much reduced if everybody who possessed a
television set had a licence for it, and if more people bought colour television sets. The Co- operative movement decided not to break from Labour in spite of their anger over selective employment tax. Mr Heath was criticised for allegedly delivering party political speeches in America, and undermining Mr Jenkins's efforts to make devaluation work. Mr Desmond Don- nelly said his new party would contest forty seats in the next election.
Sidney Stanley, the main figure in the Lyns- key tribunal of 1948 died in Tel Aviv, aged sixty-seven. Baron Heinrich Thyssen, the Swiss financier, denied charges by Italian police that he had been involved in the illegal export of works of art from Italy. A four mile oil slick off Southend spoiled Whitsun weekend for many holidaymakers, and heavy rain spoiled it for the rest. The Glasgow Herald sacked sixty journalists who were on unofficial strike and British Rail's Southern Region faced a strike threat from signalmen. Thor Heyerdahl. the Kon-Tiki explorer, sailed for America from Morocco in a boat made of papyrus. Cricketer Colin Milburn lost an eye. Princess Anne continued to receive lavish coverage in all English newspapers. and was described as a 'proper British bird' by Miss Jo-An Jenkins of the American Women's Wear Daily. Prince Philip told a student at Edinburgh University to 'grow up and shut up.' Students shot five policemen and a national guardsman in the grounds of North Carolina State Unive-- sity. King's, Cambridge, decided to have the ladies join it and Mr Wedgwood Benn turned uP for a speaking engagement at Bristol Univer- sity Labour Club to find his name misspelled on the posters (twice) and nobody there.
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