Cable Items In Brief

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30687, 1 March 1965, Page 13

Cable Items In Brief

FIFTEEN political prisoners have been released from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. They had been detained after incidents during the visit to Ireland of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. FORTY-ONE miners were killed and 16 injured when gas exploded in a coal mine at Uricani, west Rumania, last Tuesday.

IN GUATEMALA the Government has applied an indefinite “state of siege”— modified martial law—to counter Communist guerrilla activity in rural areas.

IN MERIDIAN, Mississippi, a federal judge has dismissed felony charges against 17 men charged with plotting the deaths of three civil rights workers at Philadelphia, Mississippi, last year. THE COLONIAL Secretary, Mr Anthony Greenwood, has invited all the unofficial members of the Fiji Legislative Council to a conference in London. The aim of the talks, which will open on July 26, is to discuss changes in the constitution of the South Pacific territory, in the process towards internal self-govern-ment.

LORD SNOWDON caught his finger in a spinning machine when he visited a tweed factory at Hawick; Roxburgshire, last week. His

finger was cut, but he refused an adhesive dressing. Later, however, he put a plaster on the cut.

A NEW post in the International Wool Secretariat—director of carpet marketing in Europe—is being taken over on March 1 by Mr B. W. Lucas. MENTAL illness costs the National Health Service in England and Wales more than £l3O million a year. Tranquillisers and other drugs have considerably reduced the number of patients in mental hospitals. A FEDERAL grand jury in Washington has re-indicted the United States Communist Party for failure to register as a Communist-action organisation. AN AMERICAN atomic clock is checking the timekeeping of European observatories. The clock will lose less than a second in 16 centuries. GAMBIA, which became independent from Britain last week, has applied for membership of the United Nations.

THE AUSTRALIAN aviation pioneer, Mr Andrew Delfosse Badgery, has died in Sydney aged 77. He qualified as a pilot in England in 1913.

TWO FARMERS died of acute alcoholic poisoning after each drank more than three pints of sake (rice wine) in five minutes for a bet at Mortoka, northern Japan. IN DALLAS Judge J. B. Brown says he will hold a sanity hearing for Jack Ruby, at a date to be fixed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has decided not to review Ruby’s conviction and death sentence. If Ruby is found insane, he will be sent to a State mental hospital; but if he is found sane, the Appeals Court would review the conviction.

IN FLORENCE, the controversial play “The Representative,” critical of the late Pope Pius XII, has been performed before an invited audience of about 400. IN WASHINGTON the Public Health Service says that at least two million Americans have diabetes and are unaware of it

HINDI will be India’s official language and English would continue to be the “associate official language,” says the Indian Prime Minister (Mr Shastri).

THIRST - CRAZED elephants and oxen have been

fighting to the death at dwindling water holes in drought-stricken parts of Angola. Several oxen were killed before the first rains of the wet season eased the drought.

THE INDONESIAN Government has closed 21 newspapers.

THIESS Peabody - Mitsui Coal, Ltd., has signed a £125 million contract with Mitsui for the export of 30 million tons of coking coal from Australia to Japan between 1965 and 1977.

GRAZIERS in parched areas of Queensland are rushing stock agents with cattle and sheep they want sold before they lose them to drought. In Julia Creek, stock agents who normally have 2000 sheep on their books now have 43,000. TONGA now has legislation to control the outflow of money and cut non-essential imports. The measures are retrospective to last Wednesday. SOUTH AFRICA has decided to abolish all compulsory corporal punishment.

THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury (Dr. Ramsey), said in San Francisco that in England •’there seems to be a good deal of falling away from Christian beliefs and moral standards, but one must know more facts to say people are more depraved now than they were, say, in the 18th century.” IN BRIDLINGTON, England, the town council has approved the sale of hot dogs on the seafront—but only without onions. Some members contended that the aroma might offend visitors to the resort. A minority

-view came from Cr. William Cook. He said: “They sell hot dogs outside Lords cricket ground and Prince Philip hasn’t resigned yet.”