Cable briefs

Press, 1 March 1982, Page 8

Cable briefs

D’Oyly Carte bid

Dame Vera Lynn will be chairperson of a committee set up to form a new D’Oyly Carte Company. The committee will also include Lord Delfont, Mr Norman St JohnStevas, Sir Anthony Tuke, and Mr Louis Benjamin. More than 100 well-known people have agreed to become sponsors of the new company. The D’Oyly Carte, which has been forced to close through lack of cash, gave its last performance, “H.M.S. Pinafore” during the week-end. — London. Z.A.P.U. to stay . Zimbabwe’s minority Z.A.P.U. party of the veteran nationalist, Joshua Nkomo, has decided to stay in the Government despite the expulsion of its leadership from the coalition Cabinet, according to a spokesman. The decision was taken after a seven-hour meeting of the party’s 150-member central committee at the week-end. Z.A.P.U. would remain in the Government for the sake of national unity. — Bulawayo. Beirut bomb A car bomb exploded at the week-end near a checkpoint manned by Syrian peace-keeping troops on the southern-edge of Beirut, and hospital sources said four people had been killed and 30 injured. Eyewitnesses said the bomb badly damaged a timber warehouse by the road, which runs along the coast, and reduced a dozen cars to burnt-out shells. The blast, about 100 m from the Syrian checkpoint, came only four days after two car bomb explosions' killed seven people and injured about. 60 in a seafront district of Beirut. — Beirut. Lebanon talks The United States special envoy, Philip Habib, has had new talks in Lebanon on shoring up a shaky cease-fire between Palestinians in the south of-, the country and Israeli forces. The Lebanese. Prime Minister (Mr Shafiq al-Wazzan) said that he and Mr Habib had discussed ways of strengthening the cease-fire which Mr Habib

helped to work out between Palestinians and Israelis in July last year. - Beirut. Lady Lucan ill Lady Lucan, wife of Lord Lucan who disappeared over seven years ago, is recovering in hospital after a drama outside’her London home. Ah ambulance was called to Lady Lucan's cottage after she stumbled into. the street to ask neighbours for help. The “News of the World” newspaper said a neighbour found her lying in a pool of ■ blood at her home. She had slashed her wrists r w’ith a razor blade and an empty pill bottle lay beside her. - London. Attack on Gadaffi The American Central Intelligence Agency says it has evidence that the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, was the target of an assassination bid two months ago and he apparently escaped with a bullet nick in the jaw, the “Washington Post” reports. The reported attack was . carried out late in December by “one or more officers” of Colonel Gadaffi’s • Army, probably after they returned from the Libyan invasion of Chad, and the attempt received no external support from any foreign country, the newspaper said. — Washington. Pope’s hope for visit Pope John Paul .has said again that he feels he “cannot miss” a visit to Poland in ' August for the 600th anniversary of the, Glasha Gora shrine. “Each’' of us knows what Giasna Gora means to a Pole,” he told a Rome newspaper. Giasna Gora is the “Hill of Light”, outside Czestochowa in southern Poland that houses the 'nation’s holiest icon, a dark- - coloured painting of. the Madonna on wood. The shrine is known as the Black Madonna or Our Lady of Czestochowa. The Polish Government invited the Pope to attend the shrine’s anniversary celebrations before martial law was imposed on Poland in December. — Rome.