Reporter’s Diary

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34130, 17 April 1976, Page 3

Reporter’s Diary

Repriei'ed

LAWYERS cannot complain that the bench is never sympathetic to their welfare. When a man failed to answer his bail for sentence in the Magistrate’s Court on Thursday, his counsel, Mr D. M. Palmer, suggested that instead of the Magistrate's issuing a bench warrant for the man’s arrest, the case simply be adjourned to Wednesday. If his client should be arrested, said Mr Palmer, he would be inconvenienced over Easter by being called out to represent him. Mr P. L. Molineaux, S.M., must have taken that into account — he adjourned the case, giving the convicted man another chance to appear. Rare cancer

THE HEALTH Department is recommending that women who were treated years ago with the drug Diethylstilboerstrol, and who now have daughters, should have their daughters examined for signs of a rare cancer which has been linked to the drug in Australia. Dr L. F. Jepson, the Medical Officer of Health in Christchurch, said yesterday that the drug had also been used here. But Mr Keith Drayton. a city gynaecologist, said it was not used here to treat pregnant women. Many years ago there had been a vogue of using it to treat toxaemia, but it went out of use very quickly because it was one of the group of oestrogen hormones found to be associated with a higher incidence of thrombosis.

Baby's tcelfare A MOTHER’S conviction on a baby-bashing charge was quashed on appeal this week, with the appeal judge speaking of “suspicion amounting almost to certainty” that the child had been battered. What happens to the child now? The little girl has been taken into the care of the Social Welfare Department, and Mr S. G. Erber who represented the mother in the Supreme Court, says the child’s future will be determined in the Children and Young Persons Court on April 22. He told Mr Justice Roper this week that the mother intended to consent to the girl’s remaining in the guardianship of the Director-General of Social Welfare. II edding u eek-en d NOT everyone is relaxing this week-end. Easter is one of the most popular times of the year for weddings, and Post Office telegram delivery boys are rushing about with bags bulging with messages. One said they expected to attend about 120 weddings this Easter, double the ordinary week-end tally. Caught out A PROMISING moneymaking scheme at a wellknown Christchurch boys’ school has just come unstuck. A boy has been selling passports to freedom in the form of dental cards which he found in a rubbish dump. He was charging 10c each, and the cards were fooling the prefects quite well — until

someone discovered that the dentist named on the cards had been dead for some years.

Space reserved

RHODESIANS hardly get their money’s worth when they buy aerograms these days. More than half the space is taken up with a printed propaganda message from the Rhodesian Government. One received by a Christchurch family from a son working in Salisbury starts off “Dear (space for the addressee’s name). No doubt you are worried about the situation in Rhodesia, particularly in view of all the sensational headlines and horrific articles which appear in the press. The psychological war being waged against Rhodesia through many of the news media of the world has escalated to such proportions of misrepresentation that many observers outside this country find it difficult to separate fact from fiction . . . ” It goes on to say' how' calm and peaceful Rhodesia really' is, before finally letting the poor letter-writer get started on thanking Aunty for the socks sent at Christmas. Pope Tom? A BRITISH Communist militant who is also a Roman Catholic, has declared himself a candidate to succeed Pope Paul VI as head of the Roman Catholic Church. Tom Ciitherow, aged 46. who is married but separated from his wife, has issued a statement in London announcing that he will campaign among the Cardinals in an attempt to become the next Pope. If elected, Mr Ciitherow would be the second English Pope The first was Adrian IV (1154-1159).