Cable briefs

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 8

Cable briefs

New Tokyo P.M. The Japanese Lower House of Parliament yesterday voted Yasuhiro Nakasone, president of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, as Japan’s seventeenth post-war Prime Minister. He succeeds Zenko Suzuki, who resigned last month after criticism in the party about his handling of Japan’s budgetary problems. - Tokyo. Shackle plan dropped Plans to make prisoners wear leg-irons' as well as handcuffs, on their way to courts and hospitals have been dropped after Malaysian lawyers and politicians protested that the scheme was barbaric. The use of leg irons was stopped in 1953 but Datuk Ibrahim Muhammad, director-general of prisons, announced that he would bring it back next month to make escapes more difficult. But he now’ says that the Malaysian Home Ministry has ruled out the practice, described by critics as “primitive, inhuman, and morally wicked.” — Kuala Lumpur. Double-up offer Singapore Airlines flight attendants are to be offered extra money to share hotel rooms and help the company trim its bills for putting them up on overseas stops. A spokesman said that the airline planned to pay SUS4O a month to attendants willing to double up. This would cut $2 million off its annual hotel bill of 611 million, he said. But one thing was stressed — the flight deck crew would continue to sleep alone, at least officially. - Singapore. Beirut blast

A big explosion has ripped through an eight-storey building in Beirut, killing six people and injuring about 20. Security sources said that the blast was on the ground floor of the densely-popu-lated block in a southern suburb mainly inhabited by poor Shi’ite Muslims. — Beirut. Afghan bombing Five people have been killed and 32 others wounded in two powerful bomb explosions in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Radio Kabul said the bombs had exploded in what it described as a pension department market in a shopping centre three hours before the start of Kabul’s six-hour night curfew. — Islamabad.