Crises

To Naples last week went a blackberry-haired Turkish beauty named Gunzeli Basar. Seventeen connoisseurs picked her from a field of twelve as Miss Europe of 1952, even though her rivals protested that the competition was not fair--Gunzeli refused to appear in the last-ditch Bikini suit which is what Europe's best-undressed beauty queens wear these days. Miss France, the runner-up, remarked darkly: "Her thighs are not well modeled." But Gunzeli steadfastly stayed in her (relatively) conservative bathing costume and the judges stuck to their decision. Said Miss Europe, disdaining the movie contract offered to the winner: "I just want to go back to Istanbul and study art."

In other, grimmer ways, the Middle East last week continued to claim the West's attention.

Iran was under martial law for the second time in a month. Right-wing Nationalists and Communists, brawling in Teheran, set fire to offices, bombarded members of the U.S. military mission with rocks and cabbages. Mossadegh's problem was how to make sure that the Iranian army, which is four weeks behind in its pay, will stay loyal to the government. Desperately, he set up teams of free-lance tax gatherers with orders to soak Iran's wealthy landlords and traders for some of the taxes they have never bothered to pay. The tax collectors will get a flat 1% of whatever they bring in. But the biggest source of revenue--the Abadan oil refinery--remained untapped. Without its British managers and technicians, the Iranians simply cannot run it. This week, U.S. Oilman W. (for William) Alton Jones, 61, president of Cities Service Oil Co., flew to Abadan at Mossadegh's special invitation, to see what could be done to get the plant going again.

Egypt, for the time being, at least, was firmly in the grasp of its new strong man, Major General Mohammed Naguib. An Egyptian army tribunal last week tried the 24-year-old ringleader of the rioters who set fire to Alexandria's textile mills (TIME, Aug. 25), found him guilty of treason. Sentence: death by hanging. Britain, apparently convinced that Naguib had come to stay, 1) lifted its 10-month-old embargo on the export of military equipment to Egypt, 2) invited Egyptian cadets to train in British military academies.

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