Cable briefs

Press, 1 May 1984, Page 10

Cable briefs

Good heart news Doctors had good news on the conditions of both hearttransplant patients at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, yesterday. A spokesman said that cardiac biopsies had showed that treatment had arrested the slight heart rejection afflicting 14-year-old Fiona Coote. Dino Beilina, aged 22, was showing no signs of rejecting his new heart—Sydney. Climbers killed Two French climbers attempting the 8091 metreshigh Mount Annapurna were killed in an avalanche on April 21. The climbers were identified as Philippe Dumas, aged 33, a salesman from Paris, and Patrick Tagliamut, aged 28, a technician of La Reveire.—Kathmandu. Ulster car-bomb A Catholic businessman has been killed by a carbomb only hours after warning his family to check their vehicles. Thomas McGeary, aged 48, died instantly when the bomb ripped his silver Mercedes apart as he drove along a quiet country road to his home 7km outside Armagh city. The Irish Freedom Fighters — rarely heard of and believed to be an I.R.A. cover name — later said that they had murdered him because he was an informer “of the highest order.” But his family denied that Mr McGeary, who had business interests on both sides of the Irish border, was a collaborator.—Belfast. Italian ’quake More than 2000 people have been made homeless by strong earth tremors, measuring up to seven on the 12-point Mercalli scale, which hit central Italy, police said. The tremors, with an epicentre a few kilometres to the north-east of Perugia, damaged several hundred houses and many of the public monuments in surrounding Umbria, one of the most popular tourist areas in Italy.—Perugia. Blast kills baby A baby and an elderly woman died when a bomb, which a Portuguese Leftwing extremist group claimed to have planted, destroyed the home of a landowner in the southern village of Sao Marcos. The police said that the baby was not a member of the landowner’s family, and the woman, aged 79, was a neighbour who died of heart failure when the blast ripped through the home of Dionisio Cirola. In a statement sent to the Portuguese news agency, Anop, the “FP2S” group asserted that the bomb was an act of revenge to repay Mr Cirola for having “stolen land from the workers.”—Lisbon. Refugees rescued A British supertanker has rescued 92 Vietnamese refugees whose tiny vessel was spotted foundering in the South China Sea, a United Nations refugee agency official says. The Vietnamese — 66 adults and 26 children — were taken ashore at the week-end from the tanker Turquoise, which picked them up in the middle of last week. The official said that the Turquoise, bound for Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, with a cargo of crude oil, made a special trip to the Philippines.—Manila. Train deaths A goods train ploughed into a group of illegal aliens on a Texas bridge, killing a man, two women and a young boy, and injuring eight others. The aliens, all Salvadoreans, were walking along the open bridge above a creek about 100 km north of the Texas-Mexico border, said the Kennedy County Sheriff, Mr Jim Chandler. The aliens had paid smugglers SUS6OO ($Nz9lB) each to take them across the border from Mexico to Houston, where they had jobs waiting. They were crossing the bridge in an effort to bypass a border control check-point, Mr Chandler said. The smugglers escaped.—Houston. China's ‘Mousetrap’ A Shanghai theatre troupe will stage “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s celebrated whodunnit which has been running in London’s West End for more than 30 years, the “China Daily” reports. The Chinese-language production will have its premiere this month, and the director, Yuan Guoying, is on tenterhooks over whether Chinese audiences will share her enthusiasm for the play. “Detective plays are an unfamiliar genre, not only to myself and the actors and actresses, but to most of the audience in China,” she said. “I really don’t know how it will be received by the public. I’m nervous. Agatha Christie was a master at using suspense. Can our performance do her justice?”— Peking. Plane tragedy A single-engined aircraft disintegrated in mid-air and slammed into a wooded area, killing all five people aboard. Authorities said the Piper Cherokee-Six was flying to the Shenandoah Valley Airport in north-west Virginia from Huntsville, Alabama, when the accident happened. The cause of the crash has not yet been, detern^ed.— Maynardville. *•