Cable Briefs

Press, 16 July 1979, Page 8

Cable Briefs

*Guerrillas kill 12' Communist guerrillas of the New People’s Army has ambushed a Government civic-action party, killing 12 people including two doctors and a constabularly lieutenant, in the far southern PhilI ippines province of Zam|boanga Del Norte. The group, escorted by a company of para-military constabulary soldiers, had been on its way to give medical and social help to villagers in the Manukan district, some 800 km south of Manila, when the guerrillas had attacked them, the military said. — Manila. Festival death A 26-year-old New Yorker has died in Pamplona. Spain, after falling off the city wall where he was sleeping while attending the traditional bull-running festival, police sources have said. Witnesses '(said Robert Gerald Groh had been sleeping in a grassy area on the top of the wall when he fell. — Pqmpona. Plant shuts down A United Statej-designcd nuclear power plant in western Japan has made an emergency halt after abnormal signals were detected, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry has said. The 1175mW reactor at Ohi, Dukui prefecture, automatically shut down as its control rods' malfunctioned, a Ministry spokesman said. But no leak of radioactivity was detected, he said, adding that the cause of the incident was under investigation. The reactor had been run at its full capacity since it resumed generating on June 13 after two months of safety checks after the Three Mile Island accident. — Tokyo. M.P.s' pay rise British members of Pariament moved a step up in the pay bracket when they voted j themselves an annual increase of $5500 last week, with as much to come again. Their salaries now stand at $20,500, although they are still paid less than their counterparts in all Common Market countries except Italy, and still below senior Civil Service rates. Under a hastily-changed Government formula, the members will qualify for another $5500 in two instalments over the next two years. But the Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) and the Government's senior peer, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham) will not rise to the agreed $87,000 and $BO,OOO respectively until 1981. — London. No sign of crew A search has failed to find any trace of two men seen on a raft after their light aircraft was shot down by a Colombian Air Force plane in the Caribbean on Friday, the Colombian Defence Ministry has announced. Their plane was believed to be carrying an illicit load of marijuana. It was shot down about 1000 km north of BoIgota after ignorine orders | from the warplane to i land.—Bogota. I Bus tragedy I Sixty people have been drowned and 33 injured when their bus plunged into Lake Victoria. The Tanzanian Government-owned “Sunday News” has said. The accident had occurred 'on Saturday morning near the north Tanzania lake port of Nansio, the paper said. It said a further 13 people had escaped unhurt. Among them was the conductor who disappeared after swimming to safety. He was being hunted by police. The bus had been carrving 106 people instead of the maximum permitted 65, the report said. — Dar-es-Salaam.