Cable briefs

Press, 30 December 1988, Page 8

Cable briefs

C.I.A. appointment

President-elect Bush has designated the deputy C.I.A. director, Robert Gates, as deputy assistant for national security affairs. Mr Bush’s transition office said that he nominated Richard Kerr, now deputy director for intelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency, to replace Mr Gates, who was named acting C.I.A. director in December 1986, when William Casey was incapacitated with a brain tumour. — Washington.

Warm Christmas

Those who had been counting on a white Christmas in England this year were sorely disappointed as Britons experienced the warmest Christ-f

mas in years. With a maximum of 12deg on Christmas Day, and temperatures over the fourday break reaching 14deg, it was the mildest Christmas holiday since records began in 1940. The Meteorological Office said the muggy conditions would persist until the end of the week, which is bad news for early season skiers. Conditions in Scotland, where the temperature reached 9deg, were described as “hopeless.” — London.

Snorer moves A man whose loud snoring has blasted him into the record books is moving to a quiet country spot where his slumbers are less likely to keep everybody else awake. Mel

Switzer set the record for the loudest snore with a pillow-pulsating 87.5 decibels one night at Hever Castle, Kent. The 50-year-old van salesman, who lives in a semi-detached house on an estate at Totton, near Southampton, is moving into a bungalow at Dibden, on the edge of Hampshire’s New Forest. — London. Warnings ignored Teenagers in the United States are having more sex in spite of Government warnings of the danger of getting the deadly A.I.D.S virus, the SurgeonGeneral, Everett Koop, said. Infectious syphilis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhoea spread faster in 1987 than any time in 16 years she said, and

three of every 1000 college students tested positive for A.I.D.S. according to a study this year. “Teenagers are risk takers,” he said. “They feel they are immortal. They don’t like any admonition that begins with the word ‘don’t’,” he said. — Washington. Peking protest Some 300 students from China’s Muslim Uygur ethnic minority marched illegally through Peking, demanding human rights for minorities, Chinese officials said. The Uygurs, from the remote central Asia province of Xinjiang, were protesting against Chinese films that they said distorted Uygur history and culture, officials said. — Peking. r