Cable Briefs

Press, 10 February 1981, Page 8

Cable Briefs

Big-top toll 67 The death toll in a. fj re that destroyed the big top of ' a circus in the south Indian city of Bangalore rose to 67 yesterday, the Press Trust of India has reported. The agency said that one more child died of bums in a Bangalore hospital, where about 300 people were being treated for injuries received in the fire on Saturday. The I police said the dead included 56 children. — New Delhi. - Chapman explains Mark David Chapman, ac- ' cused of killing John Lennon. has written a letter > saying people should read J, D. Salinger’s "Catcher in the Rye,” because it will “help ... many to understand what ’ happened.” A copy of the t novel was in Chapman's v possession when he was arrested on December 8, only > a few feet from where Len- ■ non lay dying from gunshot wounds outside his Manhat- < tan apartment building. I Chapman, who is 25, marfe ? > the statement in a handwritten letter delivered to 'k the “New York Times” last ♦, week, the newspaper has re- ‘ ported. The novel is about a >1 16-year-old youth approaching a mental breakdown be- $ cause of his inability to t cope with what he perceives - as a lack of love in the • ► world. The latter was signed i “Mark David Chapman — The Catcher in the Rye.” — New York. Rebels executed Radio Kabul has announced the execution of three Afghan insurgents, whom they described as American agents and members of a Pakistan-based resistance group, the Hezb-I-Islami (Islamic Party). The broadcast said that the trio were shot dead after sentencing by the special revolutionary court in Kabul, the■ Afghan capital. The executions were believed to be the first reported by the State Radio in more than six months. Hezb-I-Islami is one of the best organised resistance groups. A Right-wing, Muslim fundamentalist party, it has maintained close contacts with the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran and has pointedly not appealed for Western support. — Islamabad Six found guilty The 10-member jury in Australia’s longest criminal trial have found six men guilty ; of conspiring to make dangerous explosives with intent to maliciously injure property . and buildings, thereby endangering life. The jury found five of the men not guilty of a further charge that they conspired to murder two men. The prosecution had alleged at the trial, which began last March, that the six were Croatian nationalists who planned to explode bombs to disrupt Sydney’s water supply — to bomb various clubs and travel agencies in Sydney, and to explode bombs in the Elizabethan Theatre at Newtown during a performance of Croatian singers and dancers visiting Australia from Yugoslavia. They will be sentenced later. — Sydney