Word: corking
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Tentative Step. Costa Gomes, known in Lisbon as "the cork" because he always seems to bob up on top of every political crisis, waffled as usual. Addressing the crowd outside the palace as "my dear friends and comrades," he warned that if the Portuguese people did not reconcile their differences, they risked "a reaction from the right that could lead them to a regime similar to that in Chile." Nonetheless, he assured them, "while I am in this place, I will do everything possible to see that the reforms that are made in this country under any government will always...
...hypothesis the police intend to investigate further: that I.R.A. sympathizers in Ireland smuggle weapons and explosives aboard the QE 2 at Cork, where she sometimes stops on her trans-Atlantic route. The illicit cargo is kept undercover during the Manhattan turn-around and then smuggled off the ship when she returns to Southampton. British authorities also suspect that weapons smugglers are receiving financial and other help from U.S. sympathizers, especially Irish-American enclaves along the East Coast...
Died. Mary Penelope Hillyard, sixtyish, owner of Blarney Castle and the stone embedded in its parapet that is said to bestow the gift of persuasive eloquence-in other words, blarney-on whoever kisses it; after accidentally setting her clothes on fire with a cigarette; in County Cork, Ireland. Mrs. Hillyard inherited the 15th century castle in 1951 from her uncle, who stipulated in his will that the fabled stone must never be sold. When an American chain-store millionaire offered to buy it in 1968, she turned the offer down, presumably with eloquence...
...Navy popped its cork? Through the ages many a great vessel has been adorned with a topless if wooden dame of the sea. And last week at a cocktail reception before a "Circus Saints and Sinners" charity luncheon in Washington, two bare-breasted belly dancers were ogled by, among others, a sprinkling of admirals and generals. Little wonder that Stevenson has sought legal counsel to have his post restored and the letter of reprimand removed from his file...
...Communist Party's strongest following has traditionally been in the impoverished Alentejo region south of the Tagus River, an area of huge farms owned by absentee landlords. There, tenant sharecroppers and migrant workers barely subsisted producing cork, olives, a few pigs and some wheat. Laborers frequently went hungry in the midst of unworked estates that had been turned into private hunting preserves...