Cable briefs

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 6

Cable briefs

Italian arrest The Italian police say they have arrested the suspected leader of a gang responsible for the theft of priceless Renaissance paintings in Budapest in November. The police said that they found Ivano Scianti hiding in a closet at an apartment in Rubiera, a small village in northern Italy. The owner of the apartment, Giovanni Battaglia, was also arrested. A Greek millionaire was among eight suspects arrested earlier in Hungary, Greece and Italy over the theft of paintings which included works by Raphael, Tintoretto and Giorgione. Six of the paintings were recovered at a monastery in Greece. — Bologna.

Four accused

The British police have charged three more men with the kidnapping of an Indian diplomat, Ravindra Mhatre, who was abducted and murdered by Kashmiri extremists. The arrests bring to four the number accused of abducting Mhatre, who worked at the Indian consular office. Four men were seen pushing him into a car near his home on February 3. — Birmingham.

Basque status

Some 22 young Spanish Basques have ended a 40-day-old hunger strike in support of demands for political refugee status in France. The end to their protest in a church near Biarritz came after assurances that Justice Ministry officials in Paris were reviewing the status of 700 Spanish exiles in the French Basque country. — Bayonne.

Festival winner

The American film “Love Streams” by John Cassavetes has won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the West Berlin film festival. Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands star in the film, which depicts the different attitudes to love of a writer and his sister. — West Berlin.

Nazi reunion

Eight hundred former members of Hitler’s elite Waffen S.S. are planning a four-day reunion in the West German mountain resort of Bad Harzburg. The event has been listed as a symposium of economic experts. The town’s director, Horst Voigt, said that the meeting in May had been disguised in the hope of avoiding Leftwing and trade union demonstrations similar to those accompanying the group’s reunion in Bad Hersfeld last year. Bad Harzburg, on the East German border, has historical significance for the Nazi movement as the place where the Nationalist Harzburg Front was formed in October, 1931. The front, dissolved in 1932, helped collapse Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s Government and helped pave the way for Hitler’s coming to power. — Bad Harzburg.

Mothers’ milk polluted

Traces of the highly toxic chemical dioxin have been found in samples of mothers’ milk taken from five women in West Germany, West German television has said. The highest concentration it found was one part per * trillion, 30 times above that considered harmful in the Netherlands. West Germany has no official guidelines for safe levels of dioxin in mothers’ milk. The milk came from women who live near a large industrial dump in the Georgswerder area of Hamburg, where uncontrolled disposal of dioxin and other toxic waste took place in the 19605, the programme said. — Cologne.

Iced-in

India’s third Antarctic expedition has commissioned a permanent station on the continent. A 12-man wintering party will stay at the station for a year and the rest of the expedition’s 83 members will return home. — New Delhi.