Cable briefs

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 6

Cable briefs

Jackson surgery

The singer, Michael Jackson, will undergo surgery to reconstruct the section of his scalp burned when his hair caught fire while he was filming a commercial. Dr Steven Hoefflin, who treated Jackson after the accident on the set of a Pepsi Cola commercial, said that the surgery would not be extensive. Jackson suffered second and third-degree bums to his scalp when a pyrotechnic special effect accidentally set his hair ablaze during the filming — Los Angeles.

Marchers in Manila

With hundreds of residents cheering, about 15,000 antiGovernment protesters entered the suburbs of Manila from two directions yesterday, the sixth day of their march into the capital for a boycott of the National Assembly elections to be held in May. The marchers, some of whom started north of Manila last week, from Tarlac province, the birthplace of the assassinated opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, were to join marchers today from the south who started from three separate provinces. — Manila.

Salvador petition

El Salvador’s Christian Democratic Party has asked that a rival Presidential candidate, Roberto d’Aubuisson, be stricken from the ballot, to be held on March 25, because of his alleged “notorious lack of morality” and legal irregularities. Major d’Aubuisson is the candidate of the far-Right Republican Nationalist Alliance, known by its Spanish acronym as Arena. The petition also said that he had not refuted allegations that he was “the intellectual director and promoter” of the Right-wing death squads that have been blamed for thousands of civilian deaths. — San Salvador.

‘No changes planned’

The British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, plans no change in her tough, no-nonsense style despite rumblings of discontent from within her Conservative Party, close aides say. Unease about what some Conservative critics regard as her increasingly autocratic style of Government came to a head on Monday when a senior party member called on her to clarify the direction of Government strategy. The aides denied that she was out of touch with ordinary members of her party in Parliament They conceded that there had been mistakes in the presentation of some aspects of Government policy, but that Mrs Thatcher had no intention of changing course. — London.

Pact offer

The Warsaw Pact countries have proposed talks with NATO, on a mutual commitment not to increase military spending and then to reduce it, Radio Moscow reports. It said that the proposal was contained in a document distributed by the Rumanian Foreign Ministry to the embassies of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries in Bucharest — London.

Family killed

A family of four Turks trying to enter France clandestinely from Italy through a train tunnel were crushed to death by a speeding train. The police said that the mutilated bodies of the husband and wife and their daughters had been found less than 150 metres from the French side of the Frejus tunnel through the Alps. — Modane, France.

Irish jobless

The number of people out of work in Ireland reached a record 215,981 — or about 16.5 per cent of the workforce — last month, the Government says. The figure was 27,500 higher than a year ago. Adjusted to eliminate seasonal factors the growth in unemployment in February was 2900, giving an adjusted total of 211,200. — Dubliqj.