Cable briefs

Press, 4 July 1985, Page 10

Cable briefs

Slave ring broken The Peruvian police say they have “neutralised” a gang that lured hundreds of men, women and children into slave labour on palm tree plantations in the heart of the Amazon jungle. The police said they had caught two brothers as they were about to take a consignment of 103 people from Huancayo, 312 km east of Peru, to Uchia, on the River Huallaga, 600 km north of the capital. Workers who had managed to flee the plantations said they worked in conditions of near-slavery and had been told they would be denounced as drug traffickers or terrorists if they dared to reveal what went on there. — Lima. L.A. fire A fast-moving fire raged through a Los Angeles neighbourhood yesterday, killing two people and destroying at least 40 homes,

and an epidemic of brush fires burned vast areas of California. Four people were taken to hospitals with injuries after a small brush fire raced up a hillside and quickly engulfed large homes in the Baldwin Hills area. Helicopters dropped fire-retardant chemicals on homes near Los Angeles International Airport as 100 fire-fighters worked in temperatures above 38 deg. — Los Angeles. Imitators killed A young boy fell of a cliff and drowned while attempting a kung fu feat he saw on television, and another boy has a broken leg after making a kung fu leap from a second-floor balcony. The accidents in central China’s Anhui province have led to a local outcry and demands that television authorities ban the unbelievable feats performed by kung fu stars. — Peking.