to be able to fly nine meters.
When he was a soldier in Germany,
he met Priscilla Golding.
I have the fire back.
I'm burning.
I'm set for a peace.
We will be looking for the enemy.
As the body of the firefly lands near New Orleans.
The year began with a mass exodus of tourists in Rhodesia.
After six white settlers had been murdered by black nationalists.
The settlers had lived around Lake McElwain,
just outside Salisbury.
And the killings came just a fortnight
before scheduled constitutional talks
between the government and black African leaders.
Every car coming out of the area was searched.
The police were called in.
The police were called in.
The police were called in.
The police were called in.
Every car coming out of the area was searched.
By three o'clock they hoped to have the whole area evacuated.
Sections of what they called the police anti-terrorist unit
had moved in earlier.
It was known that a guerrilla group had two days previously
attacked a nearby pub
and killed three off-duty black members of the army
and a civilian.
It was thought that the same group of guerrillas
might have infiltrated the tourist area at Lake McElwain.
Good afternoon. BBC television news.
How are you? What can we do for you?
Well, what's happening around here?
I can't tell you anything. No comment at all.
No comment at all? But can we go on down to the game park?
The game park is closed.
We were warned that we went on at our own risk.
About a mile further on we came to the entrance to the game park itself.
The park was officially closed.
But the African ranger had seen the guerrillas the previous night
and would have been shot himself
if he hadn't lied to them about being a ranger.
At that moment I was very, very frightened.
And I didn't sleep well during the night.
I wanted to go and sleep in the forest with my family.
Then my wife refuses because of the kids.
The hut the guerrillas had been at is only a couple of hundred yards
across the bush from the nearest White House,
an elegant, low, rambling lakeside cottage.
None of those present had heard the guerrillas were around
except one of the black maids.
None of them were to know that later that night
two of their neighbours were to be shot dead too.
Mrs Cummings and her children had gone to visit a relatives' farm.
The relatives went in, but the three of them went inside to wait
when they were surprised by the guerrillas.
Mrs Cummings and her two daughters were then taken outside,
made to sit on the ground with their hands up and then shot.
The guerrillas fired an entire magazine at them.
Ironically, Mr Cummings, who's in the police reserve,
was, even as his family were being shot,
out with an anti-guerrilla unit trying to track them down.
Fleeing from South Africa, where he'd been banned from working,
the Liberal newspaper editor Donald Woods arrived in London.
He'd attacked the Pretoria government over the death of Steve Biko,
the anti-apartheid campaigner.
Reunited with his family, Mr Woods said the situation was impossible.
I could no longer function there as a journalist.
I was no longer able to oppose the government,
as I have been doing for many years,
within the limits of the laws which applied at that time.
Which were already highly restricted.
They weren't the sort of press laws you have here.
But we did understand them.
We knew how to function within them.
And it was quite a special skill, I think,
because they were both written and unwritten rules.
Now, on October 19th, all those rules were torn up.
Mr Woods, you've been very successful.
You've been very successful in opposing the government inside.
They're winning court actions against government officials.
They're winning court actions against government ministers.
Why didn't you stay on the inside, as some people have asked you,
and fight on inside?
When your hands are strapped together, you can't punch.
When you're silenced, you can't speak.
People have been killed in South Africa.
My best friend was actually killed in the hands of the security police.
Now, at Nuremberg, the principle was established
that the doctrine of befall is befall, orders are orders, is not a defence.
I think a sort of reverse thing must come about now.
Namely, that a commanding officer or minister in charge of a department
must not be able to plead that he didn't know what his subordinates were doing.
Britain's servicemen got back to normal duty after the long fireman strike.
The government suggested it was the success of the Green Goddesses
that had prompted the strike's collapse.
The dispute over pay and conditions had angered many of the moderate members
of the fireman's union, who said they'd been pressured by militants.
When the strike began nine weeks ago, there were predictions that this was something
untrained servicemen with antiquated fire engines just wouldn't be able to handle.
In the event, they managed brilliantly.
By midnight tonight, they expect to have dealt with their 39,000th emergency call.
The dangers have been shown in the casualty figures.
Two servicemen dead, 316 injured.
But to these men, the danger was one of the attractions.
Most soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines enjoyed firefighting,
not least because of the friendship shown to them by a grateful public.
But firefighting tied up nearly 21,000 servicemen and women for more than two months.
It affected training, exercises and marriages.
And for the military chiefs, it's been a nightmare.
Mrs Thatcher, then in opposition, used a pair of scissors in February
to demonstrate how she saw the real value of the pound sterling.
Let me tell you what that means to your pound.
That was a conservative pound that they started with.
Let's see what Mr Healy has done to it after four years at Mound Rillet and Downing Street.
It doesn't buy that number of goods now.
It's now down after four years of Labour government to 53 pence.
Now, I was going to take some scissors and cut it, provided some sealant.
Someone's got some sealant tape to stick it up again.
That was the conservative pound.
That's the Labour pound after four years of Labour government.
She knew the real value of money, she said.
I can count the pennies.
I wasn't born and bred in a grocer's shop for nothing.
And now it's got down to...
At Lanarka Airport in Cyprus on a pitch black night,
a tragic attempt to rescue hostages from a plane.
Two Palestinian extremists had killed a liberal Egyptian editor in a Nicosia hotel
and then hijacked a Cypriot airliner holding crew members hostage.
After the shooting, the hostages were freed and a medical unit moved in.
It transpired that an elite Egyptian commando unit had attempted an intubestyle raid on the plane
without telling the Cypriot authorities.
15 were shot dead and 16 wounded by Cypriot National Guardsmen in the dark confusion.
No-one else was hurt.
The hijackers were taken prisoner and detained for a later trial.
Deeply angered, the Egyptian government broke off diplomatic relations with Cyprus.
The Ogden War moved up a notch with Somalia announcing it was committing its armed forces
to the fight against Ethiopia.
Although poorly armed, the Somalis had begun inflicting defeats on Ethiopian units
in the Somali-speaking Ogden region.
But the Somalis had found that little support was coming from the Western world,
despite the Soviet Union and Cuba saying they would champion the Ethiopian cause.
Khalifa was a typical Ethiopian garrison town with a fort in a commanding position.
The Ethiopians fled or were killed last July.
Khalifa today is in a great state of excitement.
Mobilisation has begun following the Ethiopian advance.
From childhood the people of the Ogden learn to use guns.
However, there aren't enough modern weapons and ammunition to equip these enthusiastic units.
And like many communities in the Ogden,
Khalifa is cut off from knowledge of what's happening at the front.
There's still a blind but touching faith that somehow the West will send supplies.
What you realise on a journey like this is the sheer immensity of the Ogden.
Even a superpower would find it difficult, if not impossible,
to impose military occupation of such a vast, thinner populated area.
So the problems that would confront Ethiopia in those circumstances
are of the magnitude that defeated the Americans in Vietnam.
Girls are also being drafted. The weapons are Kalashnikov 47s,
maybe old ones from Russia, possibly a new shipment from China.
But there's little ammunition.
Such preparations are for a protracted guerrilla war,
like the secessionist struggle continuing on the other flank of Ethiopia in Eritrea.
Off the coast of Brittany, the supertanker Amoco Cadiz split in two in heavy seas.
It spilled almost a quarter of a million gallons of crude oil into the Channel.
A fleet of 20 British vessels was called in to spray chemicals on the slick
to try to disperse the thick black sludge, but still it crept over the rocks.
35 miles of white beach coastline are 100% polluted.
Sea walls were being erected today at the already saturated harbour of Port Salle,
one of the worst affected of the local fishing villages.
To the people of Port Salle, such devastation is nothing new.
Eleven years ago, oil from the Torrey Canyon destroyed the seaweed crop,
their main source of income. Since then, two other tanker accidents have polluted their shores.
Now, yet again, the seaweed, the birds, the fish, the country has been destroyed by oil.
Not surprisingly, they're asking how and why it keeps on happening.
Finally, helicopters and jets from the French Navy were called in to drop bombs on the tanker,
a scene reminiscent of the Torrey Canyon disaster.
French officials investigated claims that the splitting of the tanker had happened
while the skipper was arguing with a West German tugboat captain
over financial terms for the salvage operation.
Both captains were taken into custody by French police.
Three weeks later, seabirds saturated with oil were being found on Brighton beaches over 200 miles away.
In Venezuela, Prince Charles had embarked on a business holiday drumming up trade for British exporters.
In his approach to his job, there has been on this tour a noticeable change in emphasis and in style.
The Prince of Wales has said that he wants to learn as much as possible about trade and industry,
and he's certainly set about that at a brisk pace.
For every official ceremonial engagement like this one,
there have been half a dozen visits to factories and to industrial installations,
encouraging British firms who are doing well here, drawing attention to sectors where British firms are not doing well,
or indeed in some cases where it seems they aren't even trying.
British aggression was first felt here in 1821 when a battalion of British mercenaries
fighting in Beliva's army for the liberation of Venezuela played a decisive part in victory
and lost 11 officers and 95 soldiers killed at the Battle of Carabobo.
An example of a British success he saw at a textile factory belonging to a Scottish-owned group.
It represents a 20 million pound investment, and with a labour force of 800,
produces 15 million miles of thread a year, worth 10 million pounds in sales.
A less encouraging story he learned when he visited Venezuela's massive Guyana project,
where, beside the Orinoco, a whole industrial revolution is being forced through in under a decade.
In just under five years, the total investment here will be 6 billion US dollars.
Britain's stake is small, some fringe work and management advice services.
A significant British exploitation, though, has been by a group of modern-day mercenaries,
60 British bricklayers employed for their skills to line the kilns of the aluminium works.
The prince spent some time talking with them. He tried a royal hand at bricklaying.
These men were shy about disclosing their take-home pay, but their presence proved a point,
that opportunities for British enterprise and skill do exist in Latin America
for those aggressive enough to go out and compete for them.
Using techniques discovered in Peru, the famed voyager Tor Heyerdahl was trying to prove
that reed boats must once have crossed the Atlantic, since such vessels could still be found in the Persian Gulf.
He built a number of models as he tried to prove his theory.
During the past few months, the boat has been slowly taking shape under the close scrutiny of Heyerdahl.
He supervises everything, encouraging the men as they bind the dry reeds together to form the vessel.
When finished, Tigress will weigh about 40 tonnes and become home for Heyerdahl and his 13-man crew.
As he explains, it's all very complex.
The main problem is the fact that we're building a ship so big that none of these reed experts
working with us have ever coped with a size like this.
He navigated the Tigress across the Indian Ocean and then back west to the Red Sea.
But there, the Ethiopian War had prevented him from landing.
He sailed the now water-sodden vessel to Djibouti, a friendly port,
and there, like a true Viking, he burnt it on the beach.
In Pakistan, the government under President Zia cracked down on the people,
using ancient punishments like flogging to stop a wave of political unrest.
He already had the deposed Premier Bhutto in jail sentenced to death.
As this was a martial law punishment imposed by military court, the army was in hand.
The man to be flogged had been sentenced to one year's imprisonment and 12 lashes for attempting to rape a little girl.
After the 20-minute punishment, the man was carried to hospital, semi-conscious.
Pakistan's military strongman, General Zia, believes such punishments are an effective deterrent.
A bit of punitive action with very kind and benign martial law that is there.
You'll find that in all the previous martial laws, things were strict.
We started out with an open hand. This is the example I keep on giving.
We started out with an open arm, with an open hand, a hand of love and affection for the people of Pakistan.
But then I find that at times the squeeze has to be applied.
So now I'm trying to close the hand gradually to apply the squeeze where it is necessary.
But when you said the other day that perhaps one or two more public hangings would warn off saboteurs,
do you really mean that or is that just a threat?
Oh, no, no. We have a case and you will hear very soon. We are going to handle that.
Because if a man commits a murder, it's one-to-one.
But when a saboteur plays with the life of thousands or a hijacker plays with the life of 300 on board,
boy, in my own thinking he leaves no saboteur.
President Zia was killed when his plane blew up 10 years later.
Assassination was not ruled out.
At home, Prince Charles took to the air for a leisurely descent.
He was getting his wings in the parachute regiment with a series of jumps at South Cerny in Gloucestershire.
245.7 and 18.0.
Then at 4 o'clock with the cloud base lifting and wind speeds falling,
the go-ahead was given and the Air Force Hercules flew towards the dropping zone.
As on Prince Andrew's first public descent last week,
the Royal Parachute lines were twisted but with fewer twists this time.
Prince Charles took just 8 seconds to clear them.
As he neared the ground, he pulled down on the rear lift webs to reduce drift in the still stiff breeze.
After a trouble-free second jump, he talked about it.
Do you enjoy that one, sir?
Yes, very much.
Are you likely to try any free falling when you've got through this?
No, it's too difficult.
Well, it presents too many problems for everybody else.
I feel you've done a good day's work, sir.
Well, I don't know about that, but it's quite exciting.
It's always a sense of achievement.
Would you like to do an operational tightrope, sir?
Well, I'd say that you never know what might happen.
I didn't have any twists in the rigging lines, which is the other slight problem.
But like all these things, they train you to take the appropriate actions as long as you remember them.
It's all right.
The wings might have been seen as a necessity.
He was, after all, Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment.
In America, deep in Oklahoma, a special world championship was being held.
Some say the event went back to the early days of the settlers.
Partly the crowds come to watch the parade and to celebrate Beaver City's birthday
and to enter again into the old frontier spirit.
But mostly they come for the cow-chip throwing contest.
What is a cow-chip?
This is a cow-chip.
We call them cow-pats, and they're what this town is famous for.
For this is no local or provincial contest.
This is the World Cow-Pat Throwing Championship.
For that, you need a good eye, a strong arm, and the skill to pick from the cartload available, an aerodynamic cow-pat.
Oh, yeah, I really wouldn't want one like that.
That's just too big a pat.
It's what you throw that matters and how you throw it.
The rules are strict, and it's a lesson the judges soon learn,
if they don't want a pat on the back or a chip on the shoulder,
that they'll do well to look to the front.
There are separate categories for the town's special guests and for women,
and even children are able to have a fling.
But the main event is the men's open.
The 25 competitors include the defending champion and his rival,
the holder of the new world record set last month in Uto at 272 feet.
In this sort of grass-root sport not yet tainted with professionalism,
cow-pat pitchers do what they do for the love of it.
So for the winner, Bob Fleming, the only reward is a suitable trophy,
and, of course, the sweet smell of success.
In Japan, a long, bitter struggle between the people and government
was coming to an end.
The Narita Airport, 30 miles outside Tokyo, would open, said the authorities,
no matter how many protesters disagreed.
Initial opposition had come from farmers who'd been forced to sell their land.
Leftists who'd been behind much of the violence over the years
have given some hint of what's in store.
Balloons let up into the flight paths of aircraft,
logs with steel spikes on them rolled in front of vehicles,
direct attacks on fuel tanks and other airport property.
They say their guerrilla warfare will last until Japan's costly new airport is abandoned.
Sitting in the rain, they listen to familiar speeches,
the theme, Narita must be destroyed.
Afterwards, loudspeakers blaring, they marched through Tokyo.
An uneventful, if noisy demonstration, at the end of a week
when leftists had destroyed the carriages of an airport train
and set fire to the home of a farmer who committed the unpardonable sin
of selling his land to the airport authorities.
The rally over, some of them went home to plan the next stage
in what they describe as their campaign of disruption.
Demonstrators took over a 100-foot tower, taunting the police to remove them.
Hundreds of other protesters against the $3 billion project
crouched behind barbed wire fences.
Five people had died and thousands been injured before these final protests.
Eventually, a government official arrived with his eviction notice.
The anti-airport movement have shown little respect for authority over the years.
In the last few minutes, they dealt with one of the notices,
soon after they destroyed the other.
Supporters of the movement all complained the government was wrong
to take away farmers' land to build an airport which they say no one actually wants.
But the airport has been ready for use for six years,
and this time, says the government, it will open.
On May 22, the first passenger flight left safely for Nagasaki.
In Beirut, hurried meetings of the various political factions became more frequent
as the country looked towards the withdrawal of Israeli forces next month.
Another political faction backed by a small, private but well-armed army
which takes over the streets for the afternoon is holding a political meeting.
These are the leftists, not directly involved in the recent fighting,
but part of the struggle for the political identity of the Lebanon.
The Lebanese, regarding themselves as true patriots.
In the past, they've had their violent differences with the Syrian troops
who now have the whip hand in Beirut,
but their political ambition is for the Lebanon to drop its traditional affinity with the West
and join a united, hard-line Arab front.
Another voice, backed by guns and men ready to use them.
But desperately complicated, though the reasons for the killing in the Lebanon may be,
this demand for what is called the Arabization of the Lebanon comes close to the heart of it all.
Only the massive scale of the shelling of the Christian suburb of Ashrafiyah
brings anything new to Beirut's recent and bloody history.
It was no spontaneous exchange of fire between edgy gunners.
Thousands of shells, rockets and mortar bombs fell on the close-packed houses and blocks of flats.
For the Christian fighters who remain, there's no choice.
Young, tough and almost indistinguishable from their rival countrymen
parading outside the cinema and the streets beyond their battered suburb,
they see ahead only more battles with the Syrians
or whatever faction attempts an assault on their suburban fortress.
As fighting and artillery shelling continued,
it was difficult to see how peace could come to the Lebanon.
The United Nations forces had largely proved ineffective.
In Switzerland, grave robbers stole the body of Charlie Chaplin
from the cemetery where he'd been buried in December.
A ransom was demanded and then the coffin turned up in a field a few miles away.
Lady Chaplin has lived here 25 years and despite her usual reluctance to give interviews,
today she was pleased enough to describe her reaction to yesterday's news.
Oh, I was very, very happy. Of course.
And thrilled with the Swiss police, who were marvelous.
They kept on the job, you know, for two months.
I got discouraged, but they didn't.
What new arrangements are now going to be made for the reburial?
Well, they're just... arrangements are just being made in about a week.
And I gather there may be extra precautions this time?
Certainly, yes, yes.
Can you tell me what kind of precautions?
Well, they've cemented the place so it can't be dug up again.
After a long separation, the Earl of Snowdon and Princess Margaret
announced they were seeking a divorce.
They'd lived apart for two years.
The two children would stay with their mother.
Were you expecting a announcement?
I've got nothing further to add.
Yes.
I have a statement that I made two years ago in Australia,
except that I do hope that Princess Margaret will get encouragement
and support when she comes back from hospital and goes back to her duties.
Thank you very much.
Princess Margaret had been ill in recent weeks
and had left hospital the day after the announcement.
She'd been suffering from hepatitis.
Two weeks later, the 18-year-long marriage ended in the London Divorce Court
in a batch of other cases that included a charlady,
a music student and various housewives.
As predicted, the Israeli forces began moving out of Lebanon,
withdrawing from the five-mile-deep stretch of the border area
they'd controlled since March.
Israel was leaving behind a sophisticated network of bunkers
and defences for the Christian forces
who would form a buffer against guerrilla incursions in the area.
Few people were optimistic that peace would be achieved in the near future.
With this handover ceremony to the Lebanese Christian militia
commanded by Major Saad Haddad,
the Israelis are making it crystal clear that they exclude the United Nations
from its peacekeeping role in the area immediately adjoining their border.
After he'd finished thanking the Israelis for driving out the PLO,
Major Haddad said an agreement had been reached with the United Nations commander
over the handover to his forces.
The UN spokesman in Jerusalem was later to deny all knowledge of this,
and the only sign of UNIFIL, the UN force in Mis El-Jabal this morning,
was when some Irish troops just happened to pass through.
They left quickly, apparently not relishing the role of uninvited guests.
In handing over to their Lebanese allies rather than to UNIFIL,
the Israelis are demonstrating their doubts about the ability
of the multinational peace force to keep the PLO away from their borders,
doubts for which they believe the past performance of the UN
has given them ample grounds.
In Vienna, in a civil ceremony, Prince Michael of Kent married
Baroness Marie-Christine von Reipnitz.
The prince, the queen's cousin, was marrying a Catholic
and renouncing his right to the throne.
His wife was also a divorcee.
The pope refused a church wedding because Prince Michael had said
that children of the marriage would be brought up as Anglicans.
It was the first civil wedding involving a member of the royal family
since the Duke of Windsor married Mrs Simpson in 1937.
The World Cup this year saw Argentina, the host nation,
lift the trophy, beating Holland 3-1.
Mario Kempes scored two of the victory goals
and was the tournament's top scorer.
The River Plate Stadium is still packed with thousands of Argentines
who refuse to go home, and they may be here for hours.
But when they do leave the stadium, it will be to join hundreds of thousands
of other Argentines who will no doubt pat the streets celebrating
for the whole night and probably all of tomorrow.
The stadium is still a mass of blue and white, Argentina's national colours.
Many people criticise the government here for spending 350 million pounds
at a time of high inflation.
But there will be few Argentines complaining tonight
because the World Cup is here in Buenos Aires.
In Britain, a third of the Iraqi embassy staff was sent packing
in a clear out of people believed by security officials to be involved in spying.
The authorities were also worried that London was being turned into a hunting ground
by Arab factions paying off old scores.
There was even talk of diplomatic bags being used to bring in firearms.
The expulsions have followed police enquiries into the murder of the PLO official
Saeed Hamami at his Mayfair office earlier this year.
Because of his moderate attitude towards Israel, Hamami was on the death list
of an Iraqi-based Palestinian group called Black Dune, led by Abu Nidal,
the most feared of all extremist leaders.
From Baghdad, he controls the squad that's been responsible
for some of the bloodiest terrorist incidents.
Then there was the recent murder of the former Iraqi Prime Minister,
General Al-Naeif, at the Intercontinental Hotel.
He'd been sentenced to death in Iraq,
and there had been one earlier attempt in London on his life.
The police believe that Arab extremists have come to regard London,
with its customarily unarmed policemen, as a safe base.
With so many Arabs here now, this area is even nicknamed Saudi Kensington,
they don't attract attention.
British security officials suspect that the Iraqi Embassy has provided
extremists, including Abu Nidal, with diplomatic passports.
Certainly the Israeli Embassy in London has long maintained that the Iraqi diplomats
have abused their position by using the diplomatic bag to carry arms
into Britain and other countries.
Down in the forest, something stirred.
Hazel had escaped from Windsor Safari Park. She'd not intended to stray.
But that was where Hazel ended up, almost as tired as her hunters,
after 16 hours crashing through the undergrowth on the Crown estates.
She was so drowsy, in fact, mainly because of the effect of the tranquiliser darts,
that a winch and tractor had to be used to ease her 2.5-tonne weight on its way.
And slowly and slightly unsteadily, she began the four-mile trudge back home.
Hazel, who is 14, had escaped last night, just before feeding time.
It's thought she may have been suffering from stomach cramps.
But by this afternoon, she was safely back in the fold,
with only a few royal sacklings crushed underfoot, to show for her night on the loose.
South of Rome, in his summer palace in the village of Castel Gandolfo,
Pope Paul VI died of a heart attack.
He was 80 years old and had led the Catholic Church for 15 years.
It was here yesterday that he collapsed while assisting at a private mass in his room.
He had once described himself as an apostle on the move,
and being the first pope to travel by air,
he had established a personal following in many countries.
This morning, groups of nuns and priests sang hymns while they waited to pay their respects.
After a short while, they were allowed inside.
Pope Paul's body was flanked by four of the Vatican Swiss Guards.
Several of the mourners commented on how peaceful he looked,
a tribute to a man who had spoken so often about the world's conflicts.
Only last year, he had offered himself as a hostage in exchange for the lives of passengers hijacked to Mogadishu.
In his last days, he had been preoccupied with his approaching death.
Only last week, he had said, death for us could not be far away.
The cortege carrying Pope Paul's body begins the short journey to St Peter's Basilica.
Outside the gates of his 17th century summer palace,
the residents of Castel Gandolfo have been waiting patiently for some hours.
They watch respectfully as the hearse moves down the driveway.
It appears in death that Pope Paul may have achieved what many believe largely eluded him in life,
mainly understanding and even popularity.
Over 100,000 have filed past his body in the last few days.
The cortege is flanked by 40 police outriders, the roads lined with local police and carabinieri,
a more elaborate procession than the simple one asked for by the Pope.
But a mixture of the needs and security and the respect of the Italian state have changed all that.
The Queen arrived in Canada earlier this month, visiting the Midwest,
before officially opening the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton.
She arrived in Edmonton, the final destination of what's turning out to be a great city.
The final destination of what's turning out to be an exhausting royal tour,
where on Thursday the Queen will open the Commonwealth Games.
The Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Edward,
certainly looked tired and didn't smile too often during the official ceremonies.
But several hundred people had turned up at the Canadian Air Force base on the city outskirts
to make their feelings quite plain.
Nevertheless, the controversy rumbles on, especially the anger over the proposal being considered
by the influential Canadian Bar Association for the Queen to be removed as Canada's head of state.
A plan described as treason by some politicians, among them Mr. Dieffenbaker,
the 82-year-old former Prime Minister.
The production of this statement is the most shocking example of indecency.
I have no objection to discussions going on, respecting any matter pertinent to the country.
The untimeliness of producing it while the Queen is here indicates a reprehensible attitude
and one that can only be condemned in the clearest possible language.
Politics, however, have little or no meaning for the children,
whose welcome, as always, has been the most enthusiastic of all.
The Queen's visit to Peace River was certainly a rare occasion in which to relax,
away from the pomp and ceremony.
There was all the excitement, too, of a Western-style rodeo,
and the Queen obviously enjoyed her afternoon out at the Peace River Stampede.
In the middle of the month, a severe earthquake hit Iran.
From its centre, Iran-Tabas, the shock waves caused over 25,000 deaths.
It stretched all the meagre resources that could be brought to bear.
Slowly but somewhat haphazardly, the relief operation is getting underway.
Air Force transport planes shuffle medicines, food and clothing across from Tehran.
Helicopters fly them out to the villages.
The tents are going up, and some kind of aid is at last being given
to the thousands of homeless, sick and injured.
Clearly, though, there is not nearly enough of it.
Tabas was once one of the jewels of ancient Persia, a prosperous trading centre
and an important link on the Silk Roots from China to the West.
In later years, it drifted into obscurity, a small town in the middle of nowhere,
famous, if anything, for its vulnerability to earthquakes.
There have been 19 major quakes in this region in the last 20 years,
and more than 25,000 people have died.
The last one was 10 years ago, nearly to the day.
It was almost inevitable it would happen again.
But nobody ever imagined it would be on such a horrific scale.
In Rome, the joy that had greeted the elevation of Cardinal Albino Luciani
proved to be tragically short.
As Pope John Paul I, he'd held office for only 33 days.
He was an Italian of peasant origins, a humble man,
and devoted to the movement for worldwide Christian unity.
He'd been regarded as a moderate, capable of securing the support
of both liberal and conservative wings of the Roman Catholic Church.
The church leaders who gathered in Rome for the funeral were stunned at his death.
I don't think anyone could believe it.
They kept repeating this over and over again,
and Rome has been in a great state of shock for the greater part of the day.
I'd say the shock is diminishing now,
and there's a mixture feeling of both of great grief
for someone whom they'd come to love very much in a few weeks he'd been here,
but also I think of thanksgiving for an example of a very short bunt of it,
but something which was full of meaning.
In South Africa, John Forster resigned due to ill health
after 12 years as the country's prime minister.
He saw himself as the strongman of African politics,
and had used the office of Minister of Justice to create a power base in the early 60s.
In recent years, despite many disagreements,
he's worked fairly closely with successive British administrations
to try and resolve the Rhodesian crisis.
Short of joining the rest of the world and imposing sanctions against Rhodesia,
something his national party at home would never have tolerated,
he's put considerable pressure on Ian Smith to reach a settlement.
He believes in separation of the races,
and although during his tenure there's been some relaxation of what's called petty apartheid,
the basic policy of separate development and white domination has remained unchanged,
despite massive opposition, and it's likely to remain so whoever takes over.
His successor, P.W. Porter, had been Minister of Defence.
He was an impulsive figure and another hard man.
In London, an expatriate Bulgarian broadcaster, Vladimir Semyonov, was found dead at his home.
Was this another deadly attack on Bulgarian defectors, asked Scott and Jörg.
Throughout the day, there's been a minute examination for anything which might explain the death of a young
and apparently happy man who was planning to go on holiday at the weekend.
And if he did fall, was it because of his sluggishness that he was killed?
And if he did fall, was it because of his slight heart condition,
or had he been the victim of a toxic pellet, like his colleague Georgi Markov,
whose murder by umbrella is still unsolved?
In the early 60s in West Germany, Russian KGB agents were proved to have used chemical
and bacterial weapons against Soviet enemies,
and East European emigres now fear something similar here.
Scotland Yard won't speculate on this and gave only this progress report.
All we've really got positive is the mammoths at the foot of the stairs.
This is something now we want to find out how we arrived at.
Semyonov broadcast regularly to Bulgaria from Bush House, but unlike Markov,
he didn't work for other stations which are stridently anti-Soviet.
Semyonov introduced young people's pop music programs and read the world news.
This morning, the Congress investigations started with the current news.
As the majority of the delegates said, they criticized the current system.
The Bulgarian government said allegations of its involvement in the deaths were pure fabrication.
Thirteen years later, as communist regimes in Eastern Europe fell apart,
the Bulgarians said they would re-examine the deaths.
In Rome, the Swiss Guard preceded the Cardinals from the Vatican,
who'd been voting for a new Pope.
They chose Karol Wojtyła from Poland,
the first non-Italian Pope in over 400 years.
He took the name John Paul II, honoring his short-lived predecessor.
At 58, he was the youngest pontiff this century.
There was some concern that such an outspoken man on church-state relations
should be at the helm of the Catholic Church.
Like his predecessor, the short-lived John Paul I,
the new Pope donned only spiritual power as Bishop of Rome.
Gone was the triple crown of earthly authority.
And yet it was still a scene of splendor witnessed by the biggest crowd of the year.
Blessing the crowd in Latin, Pope John Paul II used the first of 13 languages in the service.
Pilgrims from his native Poland were loudly applauded by the crowd,
who seemed delighted with their non-Italian Pope.
Delegations from other churches included the Archbishop of Pantabri, Donald Coggan,
Moderator Brody of the Church of Scotland, leaders of Eastern Churches.
In Polish, the Pope said his heart was almost too full for words.
The crowd responded as they did to his Italian and his English.
May Christ give you his grace and his peace, overturning the barriers of division and making all things one in him.
In London, at the Royal Academy, a priceless collection of gold artefacts from South America went on display.
The very first items unpacked gave an idea of the scope and richness of the collection.
In all, there'll be 580 gold exhibits.
They're treasures of inestimable value, say the organizers, who deftly parry questions about insurance and security.
For the Colombian Indians, gold was plentiful.
They were a primitive people who lived in grass huts,
but their gold-working technology was several centuries ahead of the rest of the world.
Theirs was a drug-taking society, and hallucinations probably influenced design,
like the jaguar, symbol of power, with the tail of a scorpion.
But how about these? Fish hooks made of real gold.
A thousand years ago, the Colombian Indian went out and caught his fish on one of these and then threw it away.
Today, with the price of gold standing at $240 an ounce or more, he couldn't afford to do that.
In Trafalgar Square, two athletic anti-apartheid protesters used Nelson's Column to further their nonviolent campaign.
Roped together, they'd begun their dawn ascent and were well out of official reach before the police had spotted them.
By then, they could do no more than share what had become a tourist attraction.
Trying to stop the climbers would have been more dangerous than letting them get on with it, a senior police officer said.
And no ship's master Trafalgar was ever climbed with greater confidence.
The exploit resulted in traffic jams all round the square, some of the congestion caused merely by motorists' curiosity.
The climbers' banner, protesting against British investment profiting from apartheid,
was obviously intended to be seen by the South African Embassy opposite.
Coming down the 170 feet of Nelson's Column presented the climbers with no more difficulty than going up.
Anchoring their banner, however, did cause problems.
Nelson's Column has never been climbed before without scaffolding, a feat which didn't go unappreciated.
But when it was back to terra firma, the police lived up to what Nelson would have expected of them this day.
They did their duty.
In Iran, the Shah of Persia's reign was coming to an end.
The Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader who'd sworn to bring down the Shah, had been expelled and sought asylum in France.
His supporters came out in their thousands to protest.
For two days there was mob rule in Tehran, with crowds rampaging through the capital.
First, the army was strongly in evidence in the streets, and the battles became widespread.
But today, unlike yesterday, the army relied more on its anti-riot equipment and less on its guns.
And although the soldiers frequently beat people up, there'd been relatively few reports of demonstrators being injured or killed by gunfire.
Soon the army and the demonstrators reached a kind of truce, and from that point on, the demonstrators had free reign in the city centre.
Then their hostility turned towards foreigners, and they attacked the British embassy, setting fire to a building in the embassy compound.
This was in revenge for British government support for the Shah, though the embassy had been evacuated in time.
A number of banks, including several British ones, were attacked, so was the British Airways Office.
While the fires burned, the cabinet was in emergency session, and the Shah's own position is now increasingly threatened.
It was the start of the Muslim holy month of mourning, and the religious fervour in the streets bowed ill for the monarchy.
Six weeks later, the Shah and his family fled the country.
After a long illness, the Shah died in Cairo in July 1980.
Back home, the political scandal of the year was being revealed at Minehead Magistrates Court.
Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal leader, stood accused of allegedly plotting to kill a one-time lover, Norman Scott.
Three other men were accused of conspiracy to kill the man. Thorpe had pleaded not guilty.
Accused with him, but of conspiracy only, are George Deakin, a nightclub owner, David Holmes, a merchant banker and friend of Mr Thorpe since university, and John LeMassurier, a company director.
Norman Scott, who has claimed to have had a homosexual affair with Mr Thorpe, has always been strenuously denied by the Liberal MP, will be a prosecution witness.
So too will Andrew Geno Newton, the former airline pilot who admitted shooting Scott's dog in 1975, and Peter Bessel, the former Liberal MP who's returned from self-imposed exile in California with immunity from prosecution granted by the director of public prosecutions.
The magistrate's chairman, after nearly a month of deliberation and listening to allegations from the prosecuting QC, Mr Peter Taylor, found there was a prima facie case against the four defendants.
The startling allegations directed in particular at Mr Thorpe, one of Britain's best-known politicians, were difficult to take in.
Mr Taylor said that Thorpe first met Scott, who was involved in training horses, at stables in Oxfordshire in 1961.
The evidence would be that their homosexual affair began at Thorpe's mother's home in Surrey, where, during the night, Thorpe entered Scott's room and homosexual relations occurred.
The following day, Scott moved into a furnished room in Dracot Place near Westminster at Thorpe's expense.
Homosexual relations occurred, said Mr Taylor, off and on until 1963. The two lived together at Thorpe's flat in Westminster.
Eventually, Scott became a danger to Mr Thorpe's reputation, a danger because Scott constantly pestered him for help and talked of their relationship to others.
The case went to trial the next summer.
It was to last 31 days, and at the end, the old Bailey would hear that Thorpe and his co-defendants had been judged not guilty.
But it was the end politically for Thorpe. During his 20 years in the House of Commons, he had revived Britain's once great Liberal Party as a force in politics.
In the words of the prosecution, Thorpe's story was a tragedy of truly Greek proportions.
In London, the Church of England again turned down the idea of the ordination of women. There was no support from the Bible, the synod was told.
One note I hope we shall not hear, and that is the note of women's lib or women's right.
Because as St Paul said in another connection, I believe that is excluded, totally excluded, for the simple reason that not one of us has a right to be ordained.
Certainly not the man who is now speaking. Certainly no bishop or priest in this assembly.
Ordination has nothing to do with rights at all. It is due solely to the sovereign mercy and grace of God who calls and then enables.
It is due solely to the sovereign mercy and grace of God who calls and then enables. There were protests but to no avail.
In Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel.
Only Mr. Begin was there. President Sadat had other business in Cairo.
Mr. Begin is not the most popular winner in the history of the Peace Prize.
Hence the unusual sight of armed guards in Norway's capital and the decision to dispense with the usual triumphant motorcade in favour of a somewhat safer helicopter for the journey to the ceremony.
That way Mr. Begin also missed the pro-Palestinian demonstrators whose activities replaced the peace procession through the streets of Oslo that normally accompanies the awards ceremony.
Opinion polls indicate that a considerable majority of Norwegians disprove of the Nobel committee's decision.
The ceremony itself held this year in an ancient fortress as an additional security measure reflected none of the controversy however as Mr. Begin and President Sadat's envoy received their medals.
Though Mr. Begin's acceptance address did hint at the differences that still remain between them.
We knew and learned that we have differences of opinion but whenever we recall those days of Jerusalem we say always that they were shining beautiful days of friendliness and understanding.
It was in this same atmosphere that the meetings in Ismailia were conducted.
In the spirit of the Nobel Prize tradition we gave to each other the most momentous pledge.
No more war, no more bloodshed, we shall negotiate and reach agreement.
The river Uus in York rose to nearly 16 feet above its normal level causing some of the worst flooding since 1947.
The army were called in with lorries and boats to help evacuate people from the worst affected area where water rose to four feet in places.
Around 400 homes were flooded and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage caused to furniture and carpets.
Electricity, gas and telephones were all cut off.
What are conditions like in your house downstairs?
Oh, you mean like this?
A lot of furniture damaged?
No, I don't think.
Are you going to stay put?
No, we're going to Midartes.
I'm just going home. I've been away for the weekend, I'm just going home.
And you've just come back to find this? What do you think it's going to be like in there?
It'll be alright, come on Mrs Arendelle, it'll be alright.
Will it be alright?
Yes.
The soldiers did their best to provide a water-borne taxi service for people who were stranded.
Plans to ferry food supplies to the many who opted to stay were also being arranged.
More than 200 families decided to evacuate and for those with nowhere to go the council and volunteer services arranged accommodation at a former remand home.
For those left behind there's no sign of any improvement.
In Scotland it was blizzards that hit the countryside.
Fierce winds from the far north brought traffic to a standstill.
300 people had to be rescued on this stretch of the Edinburgh border road.
Police leave in the area was cancelled and special teams working from a fleet of snowplows battled for most of the day to reach the stranded travellers.
They've all been taken to shelter in village and church halls and neighbouring farms, but the problems still aren't over.
The weathermen say there's more snow on the way, particularly in that area.
If the snowplows can't get through in the next 24 hours then a special airlift of food will be flown in for them.
There have been scores of accidents, but fortunately no one has been seriously injured.
At least nine main roads in Scotland are tonight still blocked.
Every available snowplow has been pushed into service, but their efforts are being hampered in some areas because of industrial action by supervisors who are supposed to be organising gritting.
At the end of the year, Gracie Fields was made a Dame at the age of 80 and celebrated famously.
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And so ends 1978, one of a series of cassettes produced by Newsbrief International and available for each year from 1970 onwards to the present.
From me, Kenneth Kendall, goodbye.
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