Cable news reported briefly

Press, 16 September 1976, Page 8

Cable news reported briefly

Gloomy forecast

The Common Market Social Affairs Commissioner (Mr Patrick Hillery) has predicted a gloomy future for the Community’s 5 million unemployed. “The employment situation is still very disturbing, and likely to continue so,” he told a debate in the European Parliament. “The commission has diverted extra money from its social fund for retraining workers to help the growing number of young people out of work, but this additional cash will be quite inadequate.” — Luxemburg. All hope gone The three climbers from a British Antarctic survey team who have been missing for nine days have been given up for dead by their colleagues. The headquarters of the British Antarctic Survey in London says that weather conditions in the area are beyond those of human endurance, and that the party must have perished. The three, all experienced Antarctic climbers, last made radio contact with the survey base camp on Adelaide Island on September 6, after climbing the 5700 ft Mount Peary, 25 kilometres away on the mainland. Snowstorms and high winds have hindered ground and air searches for the men, but their skis have been spotted on a plateau near Mount Peary. — London.

France's defence France’s nuclear-deterrent threat will remain the country’s fundamental defence, the new Prime Minister (Mr Barre) says. “Our military defence policy rests, in the first place, upon our nuclear capability, which constitutes the fundamental condition of our freedom of action,” he told the Institute of Higher National Defence Studies in Paris. Mr Barre reiterated that France’s defence budget appropriations would increase from 17.06 per cent this year to 20 per cent bv 1982. — Paris.

Mission accomplished

The International Red Cross Committee has ended its repatriation flights from Saigon after bringing' out

more than 3000 foreigners. The committee’s liaison office in Saigon will be closed, leaving all International Red Cross matters in the hands • f the committee’s delegation in Hanoi. Most of the foreigners flown to Bangkok were nationals of India, Pakistan, Yemen. South Korea, and Taiwan. — Geneva. Closing a loophole A new United Nations human rights committee can begin hearing complaints from individuals for the first time from Monday: Mr Marc Schreiber, tire Belgian director of the United Nations Human Rights Division, told a news conference in Geneva that the move would help to close a loophole in international protection of the individual’s rights. The new committee will be elected in New York on Monday. Until now the United Nations has had to rely on governments to decide which human rights cases to deal with, and has been accused of ignoring complaints from the individual.—Geneva.

Space proposal A Soviet Union pledge to train Cuban, Mongolian, and East European cosmonauts may spell an end to the Soviet - American monopoly on manned space flights. The Tass news agency reports that would-be spacemen from all members of the Communist intercosmos space programme — which includes the nine countries of the Communist trading bloc. Comecon — will be trained to take part in space flights with Russian cosmonauts from 1978 to 1983. The Comecon members are Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Cuba, Mongolia, Poland, Rumania, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. —Moscow. Tito still ill

The Yugoslavian Head of State (Marshal Tito) has been forced to miss an important meeting of the country’s Collective Presidency because of an acute liver ailment. The Presidency, which has nine members when Marshal Tito presides, met under the chairmanship of W:e-President

Vidoje Zarkovic to receive the report from Yugoslavia’s delegation to the non-aligned Summit in Sri Lanka last month. President Tito, who is 84, led the delegation and would have been expected, had he been well, to take the chair at the session. There has been no further word on Marshal Tito’s condition. The announcement of his illness last Saturday said that he would have to rest for several weeks.—Belgrade. Toll in Argentina Four Left-wing guerrillas and two policemen have been killed in separate clashes in Argentina, bringing to 13 the number of police deaths since the week-end, when a bomb attack on a police bus in the northern city of Rosario on Sunday killed 11. —Buenos Aires. Fatal floods

Thirty-one people have been drowned and eight others are missing after flooding in five villages in the northern Thai province of Phetchabun, The flooding, the worst in the area for 12 years, swept away at least 31 houses in which the occupants were asleep, destroyed seven bridges, inundated 1200 acres of rice fields, cut the province’s communication links with the rest of Thailand, and killed a large number of animals.— Bangkok. Bilbao clashes

Clouds of smoke and teargas lingered over barricades in suburbs of the northern Spanish port of Bilbao on Monday night after violent clashes in which the police were reported to have shot and wounded six persons. There were also clashes in San Sebastian and Pamplona after 10,000 people attended memorial services for a Basque nationalist shot dead by the police last week. The clashes came after a day of strikes in the Basque country in protest at the killing of the 24-year-old draftsman. Labour sources said about 300,000 Basques answered the strike call. — Bilbao. Search delayed A tropical storm has prevented search planes from taking off in the search Jor a missing light airdraft

carrying top United States officials and German and Japanese diplomats, according to the rescue co-ordinat-ing centre in Manila. The centre said a communications search was under way in 10-mile radius around Manila Airport. A twin-engine Piper Navajo aircraft with at least eight persons aboard vanished on Monday as its pilot requested permission to land in a rainstorm at the airport. —- Manila. U.D.A. protest The paramilitary Ulster Defence Association, protesting against alleged brutality against U.D.A. prisoners in the Maze Prison, Belfast, last Friday, has continued a campaign of havoc in Belfast with petrol-bomb attacks, bomb scares, and two big fires. The outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters group has joined the row with a warning that all prison staff and their families will be regarded as “legitimate targets” until r Government inquiry is launched into the riot, in which 32 prisoners and six prison staff were injured. — Belfast. Murder charge

Five Croatian nationalists who hijacked a Trans World Airlines jet to Paris at the week-end have been charged in New York with murder and air piracy. The murder charge stems from the death of a policeman, killed as he tried to defuse a bomb planted by the Croatian nationalists group at New York Grand Central railway station. — New York. Viking jam The Viking 2 soil scoop has jammed and stopped delivering soil and tiny pebbles to the spacecraft’s tiny laboratory. The breakdown is similar to one that caused troubles on Viking I. — Pasadena. Soldiers massacred Sixteen soldiers and officers of the former Laotian Royal Army have been executed for refusing to go to a re-education camp, according to refugees from central Laos.

The 16 were among 24 exsoldiers being sent to the Pathet Lao stronghold at IMuong Viengsau. in northern Laos. —Bangkok.

Volcano threat

The rumbling Soufriere volcano on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has burst into life, setting off an earth tremor lasting 10 minutes and sending out a shower of ash. Scientists watching the volcano say that seismograph.. were saturated by the tremor lor more than four minutes. 7 he eruption was heard miles from the volcano, which has been threatening to explode in a serious eruption for more than two months. Thousands of people were taker to safety from around the base of the volcano last month.—Pointe-a-Pitre. Saccharin suspect

A Congressional report has urged that the United States Food and Drug Administration should reassess the iustification of the use of saccharin as an artificial sweetener- in foods. The General Accounting Office suggested in its report that the F.D.A. should consider greater safety margins for saccharin until questions about its safety are answered. Saccharin has been allowed as a food additive under an interim F.D.A. regulation for the last four years, after evidence had been found that it could cause cancer in laboratory animals. Questions about its safety will probably not be resolved before mid-1978.-— Washington. U.K. trade deficit

Britain has announced a trade deficit of £29IM, a substantial improvement on the E527M gap between import and export earnings a month earlier. Exports in August were valued at E2040M. Invisible earnings—items such as shipping, banking, and insurance—produced a surplus of £I6OM, reducing the over-all balance-of-pavments deficit to £l3lM.—London. Indian project

About 1 million people are expected to be sterilised during India’s national familviplanning fortnight, which [has just begun. The GovemIment has placed increased [emphasis on sterilisation in its family-planning programme in an effort to slow 'down India’s population increase of about 13 million a year. India’s population was 605 million on March 1 aof 'this year.—New Delhi.