Portrait of the week
As. the De Lorean scandal began to un- fold, debts of £26 million were disclos- ed, owed by Mr De Lorean to his Belfast ear cornpany which had received some £85 Million from the Government in 1978. It was said that 50 per cent of the company was transferred to a Mr John Valestra in ex- change for profits to be earned from the sale of cocaine. Mr Valestra was revealed as an agent of the US Drug Enforcement Ad- ministration. A $200 million loan for Mr De 2rean had apparently been arranged on "Ie daY he was arrested; later, the receivers fohis company were considering an offer ,r the plant and equipment from Con- !andated International Inc. of Ohio. De (-
,Lorean remained in jail on Terminal Island, as Angeles, and Elizabeth Taylor took !PI action to prevent De Lorean's third wife, Cristina Ferrare, portraying her in a television film.
Sectarian murders resumed in Belfast Aclitssem°wing elections to the Northern Ireland -k LAY. A Catholic and a member of the Lt.! 'it( were kidnapped and killed by, respec- ii,velY, Loyalist and IRA terrorists. Mr 'Ines Prior decilied to proceed with his Plans for an assembly, despite the election results which gave a quarter of the seats to nternbers intent on boycotting it. The SDLP 1v8on 14 seats, Sinn Fein five, from a total of
Mr Prior, saying that 'this was the most !!kely outcome,' shrugged off suggestions that he might lose his job.
president Gemayel of Lebanon told Pres- ident Reagan in Washington that he id not intend to sign a treaty with Israel, ashndMr Reagan agreed that Lebanon „auld ° retain its 'Arab credentials'. King jrlassan of Morocco led a delegation from 1.rdart, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Syria and t,Unisia to Washington to discuss peace in brie Middle East. In New York, the Anti- emefarnation League of B'nai B'rith criticis- Araerican television for giving too much tuDhasis to Israeli censorship and to pic- of the wounded and dead during the Isrres tin.aelin vasion of Lebanon. Israel's educa- 0;41 Minister, Mr Hammer, proposed dea ging the Hebrew calendar to avoid the s'gnation of the next Jewish year as 'The eat, of Destruction'. int n Spain, rumours continued of military ervention to thwart this week's general secIi°n, in which Felipe Gonzalez's wci'eialist Workers' Party was expected to household guard at the Zarzuela Palace was unit on full alert when it was learnt that a aiof the Brunete Division was passing by, v:clt on its way back to barracks. Floods ilastated the coastal regions of the pro- Fe ces of Valencia, Alicante and Murcia. cricketers from Sri Lanka who
went to play in South Africa were banned by their government from international cricket for 25 years. Colonel Gaddafi paid his first visit to China.
Mrs Thatcher gave evidence to the Franks committee of inquiry into the Falklands war. The Foreign Office, expec- ting to be blamed for failing to warn the Prime Minister of the Argentinian invasion, was upset by her appointment of Sir An- thony Parsons as special foreign affairs ad- viser. Relations between the British and US intelligence services were badly strained by the admission by Britain that a serious leak of information to Russia had been issuing from the communications centre at Cheltenham for several years. British in- telligence tried to make up for this by disclosing that a 35-year-old KGB officer, Vladimir Kuzichkin, had defected after five years at the Soviet embassy in Teheran.
In a final attempt to influence the miners' ballot this week, Mr Norman Siddall, chair- man of the National Coal Board, called Mr Scargill 'daft' for saying that 40 pits were to be closed. Mr Wedgwood Benn agreed to stand for election to the Shadow Cabinet 'in the interests of party unity'. Unemploy- ment figures showed a drop of nearly 48,000 in October. The Government an- nounced new immigration rules to allow the husbands and fiances of women with British citizenship to come to Britain. Crime figures for 1981 showed an increase in violent offences, but the lowest number of sexual offences for ten years. The Law Commission proposed that divorce should be available after a year of marriage. At Birkenhead Crown Court Mr George Graham pleaded guilty to theft during his wedding; he had left the reception with his best man and burgled the house of one of
'I was trained by the KGB, worked in MI5, and since I retired I've been an adviser to Smiley's People.'
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