Cable briefs

Press, 23 November 1981, Page 8

Cable briefs

Surgeon jailed

A British surgeon. Paul Vickers, has been jailed for life for poisoning his schizophrenic and crippled wife, Margaret with an anti-can-cer drug. Pamela Collison, aged 34, one of Vickers’ five mistresses and accused with him of murder, was acquitted at the trial in Middlesbrough. She had betrayed Vickers, aged 47, to the police when their affair ended. — London

Govt cash runs out Congressional negotiators have reached agreement on emergency spending legislation to rescue the Federal Government from its twoday insolvency. House Democrats said the plan would give President Reagan the new spending cuts he wanted although not in the precise programme he requested. But neither Congressional Republicans nor Administration officials provided any immediate word on whether the bill would be acceptable to the President. Mr Reagan has threatened to veto any measure that busts his Budget. — Washington Wedding tragedy A ceiling collapsed on a building used for wedding receptions, killing 45 people and injuring more than 90 others at the Saudi summer resort city of Taif, according to newspaper reports. The English-language “Arab News” reported that two wedding parties were under way when the ceiling came down. The two-storey building was constructed without licence, according to the Mayor of Taif, who added that a villa was supposed to have been built on the site of the ill-fated building. — Jeddah 6000 homeless Six thousand people were made homeless when one of the biggest fires of the year raged through a Hong Kong squatter area. Nine people, including three firemen, were injured and taken to hospital. The fire, fanned by high winds, destroyed more than 1000 cottage huts before it was put out. At the height of the blaze about 10,000 residents in a low-cost housing estate near the scene were evacuated. — Hong Kong Gas deal fears The United States has been concerned for some time about an agreement for a natural gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to West Germany, the State Department has said. The United States had told its European allies

that it questioned the dependability of the Soviet gas supplies. In the deal the Soviet Union expects to supply seven West European nations with Siberian natural gas. — Washington Award for Haig The American Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig), given tongue-in-cheek credit for such fractured phrases-as “careful caution” and “caveat my response," has won the 1981 Doublespeak Award from an organisation of English teachers. He edged out others in what the National Council of Teachers of English called language of “pernicious social or political consequences." The awards are “an ironic ‘tribute’ to American public figures who have perpetrated language that is grossly unfactual, deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing or self-contra-dictory,” said William Lutz, head of the Committee on Doublespeak. — Boston

Terrorist killed A police inspector and an "important" leader of the Kabul-based al-Zulfikar terrorist group have been killed and a police officer wounded during a raid on the group’s hide-out in Karachi. The murdered terrorist was identified as Lala Asad, who was wanted for the assassinations of the former Labour Minister, Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, and Justice Mushtaq Hussain, who sentenced the former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to death. — Karachi

Brief occupation Twenty-five young Jews’ occupied the London office of the Soviet news agency, Tass, for a short time in protest over the imprisonment of the Soviet dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky. A spokesman for the group said they left after unsuccessfully trying to send a protest message by telex to Moscow. Shcharansky, aged 33, a Jewish activist, is serving a 13-year prison term after being convicted of treason in 1978. — London Lebanese pull back South Lebanese militiamen under the command of Major Saad Haddad have lifted a blockade of United Nations positions just north of the Israel-Lebanon border, a United Nations spokesman has said. Major Haddad had informed United Nations headquarters his men were pulling back from positions set up last Tuesday around 16 United Nations posts, preventing any access to them. — Nahariva