Cable briefs

Press, 8 July 1976, Page 9

Cable briefs

Flo cost mounting

The cost of the United States Air Force’s new Fl 5 combat aircraft project has risen by nearly sf,ooom in the last few months, according to informed Government sources in Washington. When added to the most recent estimate. this increase, of about 10 per cent, would bring the cost of the programme to about $12.500m, and each Fl 5 would cost about sl7m. Israel is the only foreign country to have ordered the Fl 5 so far. — Washington. Marine-training toll Thirteen United States Marine recruits have died during basic training since 1972 and [another 249 recruits have • been injured, according to a [member of the House of ReI presentatives. Mr Leslie Aspin. During the same period, (he says, there were 16 training deaths in the army, which I t rained four times as many

i recruits. Seven of the Marine training deaths were caused by heart attacks and two by kidney failure, and one was by accidental shooting. “Everyone agrees that Marine training needs to be rugged, but I question why there are so many deaths and serious injuries,” Mr Aspin says in a statement. — Washington. Ties broken

Venezuela has severed dipilomatic relations with Uruiguay over the alleged seizure by the Montevideo police of ia woman refugee from its embassy last week. The break j came shortly after the Uruguayan Government had declared the Venezuelan Ambassador persona non grata as a result of the dispute. — Caracas. Escaper caught Prison officers have rei captured Arthur Skingle, !aged 29, a convicted murd-

erer, who had escaped from the Parkhurst maximum security prison on the Isle of Wight the previous day. The first prisoner to have escaped from the prison since it was opened 10 years ago, Skingle was recaptured on the fringe of Parkhurst Forest. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971 for shooting an unarmed detective nine times. — Parkhurst >

’Quake report The League of Red Cross Societies says that 274 people were killed and 30 are still missing after the earthquake on June 26 in the Irian Jaya island of Indonesian New Guinea. The League’s headquarters in Geneva says that 30,000 people were affected by the tremor, which affected an area of 11,500 square miles. — Geneva. IT imiiHg film The American film “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson," has won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, despite a protest by the director Robert Altman, that he did not want the pic-

ture to be considered for a prize. The film was produced by the Italian, Dino de Laurentiis. and in a letter to the festival’s director. Mr Altman said that it had been so drastically edited for public showing that it 'perpetrated a fraud" on cinemagoers. The jury at the twenty-sixth festival praised the picture as "a masterly-directed, pointedly self-critical excerpt from American history.” — West Berlin.

Reporter expelled ' The Chilean journalist who (sent an erroneous report on the wires of United Press International announcing the assassination of President Micheisen of Colombia will be expelled by the Colombian Government. The journalist, Mr Patricio Candia. was (detained for questioning on Saturday after the report had been sent by mistake while Mr Candia was practising howto use the U.P.l.’s teleprinter machines. He was to have joined the news agency on Monday. U.P.I. maintains that Mr Candia did not know that the teleprinter machine he was using was switched on.

land that what he was typing! ias an exercise was being re-1 payed to New York and fedj [into a computer for world-! [wide transmission. — Bogota ! Toll in Argentine Argentine security sources' say that 15 bullet-riddled bodies have been found in Buenos Aires in the 24 hours since a Left-wing terrorist bomb exploded in a crowded police dining-hall, killing 18 people and injuring 66 others. 11 seriously. Although the! bodies of the latest victims of the violence in Argentina' have not been identified, the killings were typical! of the Right-wing "death squads” blamed for the murder of more than 2000 susIpected Leftist activists in [the last two years.—Buenos Aires. Restraint trins The powerful British! [Coalminers’ Union has voted [by 145 to 128 to reject a [ series of resolutions by its • more militant members seek ling to break the country’s I wage-restraint policv — I London.