Cable Briefs

Press, 4 May 1978, Page 8

Cable Briefs

Five die in riot The death toll in violence in the town of Agra where police opened fire this week on crowds of rioting harijans — untouchables — has risen to five after four more people died from their wounds. The police and troops were called into Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, after rioters set fire to shops and vehicles and attacked post offices. India has been hit by a wave of violence in which more than 100 people have died in the last two months, much of it caused by tension between harijans and high-caste Hindus. — New Delhi. Butler did it A butler and a casual friend he met in London have been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to the Highlands murder of a former member of Parliament, Mr Walter ScottElliot, who was 82. Immediately after the sentencing, the prosecution said further warrants had been issued in cjnnection with three other murders, including that of Mr Scott-Elliot’s wife, Dorothy, aged 60. The butler, Archibald Hall, aged 53, and Michael Kitto, aged 39, had also been charged with theft of coins and antiques from the wealthy Mr Scott-Elliot’s fashionable flat in Belgravia, London. — Edinburgh. TV violence suit Claiming television programmed their son to kill, the parents of a teen-ager convicted of murder last year have sued the three main American networks for damages totalling SNZ2SM. The suit filed in Federal court in Miami, Florida, said that 15-year-old Ronny Zamora had “from the age of five years . . . been involuntarily addicted to and has been completely subliminally intoxicated by the prolonged intense viewing of television programmes distributed and televised by all three defendants ...” — Miami Dogs eat master Fifteen starving dogs trapped in a suburban Sydney house for a week after the death of their recluse owner ate his body, the police have said. Policemen who broke into the house after a postman reported he had not seen Mervyn Sallows aged 53, for several days were also attacked. Mr Sallows’s badly-mutilated skeleton was found on the kitchen floor. The police said he had died of natural causes. — Sydney. Moderates win Political moderates have routed Leftist extremists in elections in Worthing, England, which decided who controls Britain’s secondbiggest trade union, the 900.000 member Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. The results boosted the British Government’s chances of persuading unions to accept another year of wages restraint, probably holding pay rises below 10 per cent. — London. Higher inflation? The Carter Administration expects United States inflation to be worse this year than was earlier predicted, the chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (Mr Charles Schultze) has said. Blaming higher food prices and the dollar’s decline in value, he told a National Press Club luncheon that the inflation rate could go to 6.75 or 7 per cent this year from the 6 or 6.75 per cent level forecast earlier. —Washington.