Cable briefs

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 6

Cable briefs

Australian offer An offer by the Australian Prime Minister (Mr Malcolm Fraser) to release Britain from its commitment to sell the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Invincible to Australia is being considered, a British Defence Ministry spokesman has said. The British Prime Minister ' (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) is expected to thank him for his offer. The issue is likely to be,examined by Ministers but the immediate reaction in Whitehall yesterday was' that Britain will probably continue with its plans for the sale. The Australian offer has been viewed in Australia as matching New Zealand’s loan of a frigate to Britain—’London. Journalist expelled A correspondent of the French daily -newspaper, “Le Figaro,” covering the Falklands crisis has, been expelled from Argentina for contravening the country’s security laws, his colleagues said. French journalists delivered a copy to news media of a note,; sent-, io, Argentine authorities protecting the expulsion of the , reporter, Lesigne. They said that the, police detained Lesigne . at the Sheraton Hotel, where most foreign correspondents are staying, and added that he was taken. to Federal .police headquarters for questioning. He was later put aboard an Air France flight which departed for Paris, . the journalists said. Last month three foreign journalists were expelled from Argentina for reports considered contrary . to the national interest in the Falklands conflict—Buenos Aires. Snow in Sydney Snowflakes fell in the city area of Sydney and some suburbs yesterday for the first time in 20 years. The weather bureau said flakes were reported from several suburbs including Prospect, Liverpool, Chatswood, Belrose, and Pennant Hills. City office workers saw light snowflakes floating past their windows. The light snow began in the suburbs between 9 a.m. and 10.30 a.m., and some light flakes were falling in the city at noon. But yesterday’s fall was not in the same class as one in 1836, when there were reports of people building snowmen in Martin Place.— Sydney. Etonians expelled Seven boys have been expelled from Eton for using cannabis. They told the

police that their shared interest in reggae music led them to the London dealers who sold them the drug. The boys — all 16 except for one, who is 18 — regularly patronised West Indian record shops in Notting Hill Gate, an area notorious for its flourishing drug trade. Their headmaster, Eric Anderson, said that he could see signs of a slight increase in drug-taking among his pupils. “I think they get the idea from fashionable London parties,” he said.— London. Blast kills youth One person was killed and two others injured in a bomb explosion in south Belfast yesterday. The victims are all believed to be youths caught by the blast of what appeared to be a nowarning bomb. Earlier in north Belfast police patrols came under a number of petrol-bombing attacks. In one, a petrol bomb bounced off the front of a Land-Rover and shattered over a woman passerby, setting fire to her hair. A quick-thinking youth shotted the woman, pulled her coat over her head and extinguished the flames, and she was able to be released from hospital after treatment—Belfast. Mass grave A mass grave containing 936 bodies, dating from the Algerian . war of independence (1954-62), has been found in a former French Army camp in' Khenchela, 125 km south of Constantine, in Algeria, according to the Leftist Paris daily, “Liberation.” The daily said that it was the largest mass grave ever found in Algeria. "Liberation” said that the bodies, some of them “terribly mutilated ... had been buried in the. centre of a French fortified camp . . . They prove that over six years, from 1956 to 1962, the French Army carried out the torture and liquidation of fighters in the (Algerian) Liberation Army as’ well as of civilians.”—Paris. Coloured total

Nearly one in 20 of Britain’s population is coloured, according to figures from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys Monitor. This is almost double the percentage estimated in 1971. Forty per cent’ of the coloured population are apparently under 16, compared with 24 per cent of the white population. The median age of coloureds is only 21, compared with 35.5 years for whites—London.