Cable briefs

Press, 25 August 1981, Page 8

Cable briefs

S6M drugs haul French Customs officials have made their biggest drugs haul, seizing . 1.75 tonnes of cannabis resin from a British-registered yacht off Brest. The haul, with an estimated . street value of $6.9 million, had been kept secret while inquiries were made in France and other countries, a Customs spokesman said. Two West Germans had been de-tained.-Brest. Cabbie on spree? The police fear that a minicab driver. Christopher Kevin Butler, who has disappeared with $544,660, may have gone on a wild gambling spree. Detectives trying to trace the 33-year-old Irishman have been told he liked to bet on the horses and dogs “almost every day." Mr Butler vanished last week while driving a Nigerian businessman who stopped off at a shop, leaving the money in the back of the car.—London. Passengers ‘burned’ Coroners and aviation physicians reported yesterday that almost all the people killed in the Boeing 737 disaster in Taiwan on Saturday were burned to death. They also said that the passengers" w’ere dead before their bodies reached the ground. “The bodies showed no signs of burst skin as there should be in the case of an explosion," they added. The officials made the remarks apparently in rejecting an earlier suspicion that sabotage, or a bomb explosion was involved. Eyewitnesses said they heard two or three explosions, then saw the aircraft break in two and hit the ground.—Taipei.

Carter in China The . former American President, Jimmy Carter, has begun a 10-day visit to China. Mr Carter did not visit China as President, but during his term of office the two countries formally established normal diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. He met the Communist Party Vice-Chairman (Mr Deng Xiaoping), the man behind China's modernization drive, during his visit to Washington that year. Mr Carter will also have talks with senior Chinese leaders.—San Francisco. ‘Decent and white’ A New South Wales state Labour member of Parliament has told residents'of a Sydney suburb that tenants in a proposed housing de-< vejopment in their area.will.it; be “decent, white. Anglo-: Saxon Australians.” Mr Mau- ' rie Keane said this while addressing about 1500 residents who were protesting against the planned Housing Commission development at Menai, on Sydney's southern outskirts. Mr Keane said it was not true that the development’s tenants would be Aboriginals or Vietnamese. "They will be normal Australians just like you,” he said.—Sydney. Sad cafe

The Peace Cafe, closed last year because it was the wildest nightspot in Peking, has reopened with strict rules against dancing, playing loud music and drinking too much beer. Once a fashionable hole-in-the-wall hangout for the smart set, the Peace Cafe was closed because it acquired an infamous reputation. It was known for rowdy patrons, rude, swaggering children of high officials, occasional fistfights and unladylike young women. When it reopened the first fashionable patrons appeared subdued, heeding the new regulations posted on the dingy walls: One bottle of beer per person; obey the law; don’t shout; don’t play cassette recorders too loudly; respect public property. And no dancing. A poster on the wall exhorts young patrons to heed the latest morality campaign and observe the "five stresses and Four beauties.” The “five stresses” are decorum, courtesy, sanitation, order and morality. The “four beauties” are beauty ol mind, language, behaviour and environment—Peking. Fears for painting

Art experts fear that a stolen Rembrandt painting, worth an estimated $2.19 million, will be ruined before the end of the summer unless it is recovered quickly. The tiny 30 by 25 cm portrait of Jacob de Gheyn 111 was stolen from the air-condi-tioned Dulwich College Gallery, south London, last week. “Because it’s an oil painting on wood it’s even more fragile than canvas and should not be taken out of a controlled temperature environment,” the gallery’s director, Giles Waterfield, said.—London. Anita Loos dies Anita Loos, a prolific author who captured the giddy jazz age through her play "Gentlement Prefer Blondes,” has died in New York at the age of 88. The writer of such movies as “Saratoga” and “San Francisco,” she had not been ill and the cause of death was not immediately learned. It was the 'fictional Lorelei of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” a not-so-dumb blonde of the roaring 19205, who told the world in song that “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.”—New York.