Cable briefs

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 6

Cable briefs

Ferry in tow The ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, which went adrift while being taken to a Taiwanese scrapyard, has been towed into a South African port. Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized off Belgium last March with the loss of 189 lives, and another British .ferry, the Gaelic, broke free of their tug during a recent storm. — Port Elizabeth. Mrs Ford stable A former First Lady, Mrs Betty Ford, remains in stable condition while recovering from surgery. Dr Jack Sternlieb had said in a statement last Friday that Mrs Ford was walking and was feeling very well. She had surgery last week to reclose a slow-healing incision from coronary bypass surgery done at the hospital in November. — California. Cruel joke A girl, aged 13, was crushed to death and dozens injured when a practical joker who escaped raised a false fire alarm in a Philippines cinema, the police say.— Manila. Climbers attacked Four men wearing ski masks and wielding machetes attacked two West German mountain climbers as they slept on Peru’s tallest mountain and killed one of Uhem, the police say.—Lima.

Aftershock A small aftershock of the big October 1 earthquake shook parts of the San Gabriel Valley early yesterday but no damage or injuries were reported, authorities said. The quake at 3:52 a.m. local time measured 3.2 on the Richter scale, said Mr Bob Finn, spokesman for the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The October quake measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. — California.

Unlucky bounce Two Dutch women, both aged 25, playing with a pistol while watching “Miami Vice” on television accidentally shot a boy in an apartment across the street. The police said: “They fired a 9mm pistol through a closed curtain ... the bullet went straight into the apartment across the street, bounced against a wall and then hit the boy behind the ear.” — Amsterdam. Freighter sinks Twenty-five crewmen were rescued after an Indonesian freighter sank in the South China Sea but six are missing, feared dead from the KLM Laut Lancar. — Jakarta. Fatal glance A father was decapitated in from of his two young children when he leaned out of a speeding train to Eastbourne and his head struck a bridge. — London.

House collapses A five-storey building housing eight families in south Bombay collapsed in heaps of concrete and twisted steel today, killing at least 16 people. — Bombay. Epic run After 2500 km of sore feet, thirst, and vicious dogs, a Briton has become the first foreigner to run along all but about 500 km of closed sections of China’s Great Wall. William Lindesey, aged 31, resting in Peking after covering desert and rugged mountains in scorching summer heat and winter snow, took eight months to complete the run, a feat previously matched by only two Chinese athletes with support teams.—Peking. Player defects A Rumanian rugby union player, son of the vice-president of the Rumanian Rugby Federation, has applied for political asylum in France after defecting during a tour by his club side. French rugby officials said Octavio Morariu, aged 26, of the Givita Rosie team, feigned a head injury during a friendly match in southwestern France on December 26. He disappeared on his way to hospital and reappeared on Saturday sporting the rugby shirt of Saint-Medard-en-Jalles, an amateur team in the suburbs of Bordeaux which had m«t the Rumanian team a few days earlier. — Paris.

Balloon scare The American VicePresident, Mr George Bush, said, "Oh God,” and a Secret Service agent hurriedly stepped toward him after a loud bang momentarily stunned a campaign audience, according to published reports. It was a popping balloon. The New Year’s Eve incident happened at a mock living room in a Main Street clothing store during Concord’s First Night celebration. The "Boston Globe” and “Concord Monitor” reported. — Concord. Beach bash A group of whites punched and kicked blacks who tried to walk across a whites-only bathing beach on New Year’s Day, eyewitnesses said. The witnesses said there were at least four racial incidents on , Durban’s South beach, one of two beaches in the Indian Ocean city where bathing is still reserved for whites although blacks are allowed to use the beach itself. — Durban. Afghan advisers The official Soviet Communist Party newspaper, “Pravda” said yesterday that 85 foreign advisers from the United States, France and several other countries were helping rebel forces in Afghanistan. It said in a report from Kabul that two of, them had apparently died in recent fighting around the town of Khost in east- — Mpscow?