Portrait of the week | 7 April 2016

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Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, said that the government would like a buyer to save Port Talbot steelworks. ‘We’re going to also have to offer support to eventually clinch that buyer and to give this steel plant a long-term viable future,’ he said. Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, said that he expected to learn by the end of this month the proportion that remained active of the 655,000 National Insurance numbers granted to people from the EU in the year up to September 2015. An online survey by Opinium for the Observer on the forthcoming EU referendum put the ‘leave’ side at 43 per cent and ‘remain’ at 39 per cent. An ORB poll for the Telegraph found 51 per cent of voters supporting ‘remain’, an increase of four percentage points in a month, and ‘leave’ support down by five points at 44 per cent. Queues built up at vets before the deadline of 6 April to microchip dogs or face a fine of £500.

Junior doctors called a strike over two days. Junead Khan, 25, a delivery driver from Luton, a supporter of the Islamic State, was convicted of plotting to kill an American airman outside a base in East Anglia. A power failure in overhead lines disrupted travel for thousands travelling by rail to and from Birmingham. Ronnie Corbett, the comedian, died, aged 85. Dame Zaha Hadid, the architect, died, aged 65. Sarah Young, 40, was buried at sea after losing her life when she was washed overboard in the Pacific during the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

Two teenagers were arrested after a boy of 17 was stabbed to death in New Cross, south-east London. Two girls, aged 13 and 14 at the time, were convicted of the hideous murder of a 39-year-old woman in her home in Hartlepool in 2014.