News Digest
Four more
dead from
Tibet riots
BEIJING - Police opened fire on
Tibetan protesters who marched
through Lhasa and burned Chinese
businesses Monday in a second
straight day of violence. Four Tibet
ans were reported killed.
Security forces moved into the
city’s Tibetan section and pulled
people from their homes, taking
some away in jeeps, American tour
ists said. Chinese troops also beat
Tibetans, said the travelers, who
spoke on condition of anonymity for
fear of police reprisal.
“One boy’s face was completely
bloodied,’’ said a man from New
Orleans. “He was no older than 10.
Blood was coming from his ears, his
eyes.’’
The Americans and other tourists
were contacted by telephone in the
Tibetan capital from Beijing. As they
spoke, automatic weapons fire and
exploding tear gas canisters crackled
in the background. Bonfires burned
in the streets, they said.
The official Xinhua News Agency
reported one Tibetan was killed and
eight others, including two police
men, injured in the violence Monday.
Xinhua had said 10 Tibetans and
rvnn Phinpcp wnw tillpH in
anti-Chinese demonstrations Sun
day. Western travelers quoted Tibet
ans as saying that many more had
died on Sunday and that at least four
Tibetans had been slain Monday.
The U.S. State Department on
Monday deplored the use of weapons
on pro-independence protesters in
Tibet and called for a restoration of
order.
Police in Lhasa fired from
rooftops near the city’s main square
late Monday afternoon, killing at
least two Tibetans, an American tour
ist quoted Tibetans as saying.
Several hours later, security forces
fired on a group of 40 independence
activists as they threw rocks at a
building near the Jokhang Temple,
another tourist said. He quoted Tibet
ans as saying at least two protesters
were killed in that incident.
On Monday morning, thousands
of Tibetans Hooded the old city,
breaking into the small Chinese- and
Moslem-run stores that fill the area,
pulling out their contents and burning
them in bonfires along the main thor
oughfare in the city.
The protests began Sunday when
13 Buddhist monks and nuns started
marching near the Jokhang, shouting
“Independence for Tibet.” Police
opened fire. A crowd of Tibetans then
began ransacking Chinese buildings.
The bloodshed occurred days be
fore the 30th anniversary of a failed
Tibetan uprising against the Chinese
on March 10. It marks the fourth
violent outburst in 18 months against
Chinese rule.
i Complaints up
onrats in London] I
LONDON - Wintertime, and
the living is eaSfy in the kingdom of
Rattus norvegicus, the common
brown rat which has become un
commonly numerous around Brit
ain.
Complaints about rats are up as
much as 70 percent in parts of
London, which has had just a touch
of slush during a very mild winter.
Similar increases have been re
ported in Bristol, Manchester and
other large cities.
“I’ve never, never known such
a year,” said Stuart Slater, chief
environmental services officer of
Babergh District Council north
east of London. ‘‘I haven’t had a
Saturday off since the end of No
vember.”
Norman Foster, health officer
for the Mid-Suffolk Council, said
he received 1,323 rat complaints
last winter. This year, he had
matched that total by late Decem
ber - before winter had officially
begun.
Rcntokil, one of Britain’s larg
est exterminators, has doubled its
sales of poisons this winter, said
Peter Bateman, the company’s
director of public relations.
With the increase in rats, there
has been a growing concern about
Weil’s disease, which is spread by
rat urine in water. The ailment
used to be seen mostly in miners
and sewer workers, but cases have
cropped up among water skiers
and canoeists.
The reasons for the rat’s pros
perity are various.
“We’ve had mild winters be
fore, without having more rats,”
said Graham Twigg, retired senior
lecturer in Zoology at Royal Hol
loway College at the University of
London and author of scholarly
books on vermin.
‘ ‘Certainly in towns, one aspect
of it is the lack of good hygiene,”
said Twigg, who has done research
on rats in coal mines and Carib
bean canefields.
“It’s one of those things, a
general lack of attention. This
country is pretty scruffy,” he said.
Hilary King, spokeswoman for
the Institution of Environmental
Officers, said decaying Victorian
sewage systems in big cities have
contributed to the problem. She
also blamed the illegal dumping of
garbage, and the spread of fast
food restaurants.
Efforts to poison rats have
been frustrated by the rich
menu of trash and de
bris, especially
from fast-food
restaurants,
said Angela
; Moon, envi
ronmental
health officer
for the borough
of Lambeth in
south London.
“They would rather
cat that than our poi
son,” she said.
The sewers, at least, have their
defenders.
“There have been a lot of sto
ries around recently, a story which
comes up year after year after year,
that rat populations are increasing
and sewers are decaying. I just say:
prove it,” said Brigette Daniels,
spokeswoman for Thames Water,
which is responsible for a thousand
miles of sewers in and around
London.
If there are more rats about, she
said, “we believe they are above
ground rats.”
In Bristol, an industrial city in
western England, the sewers are
taking the blame without dispute.
“The sewers are crumbling
because of lack of upkeep, and the
rats are finding it increasingly easy
to get out,” said Peter Archer,
Bristol’s assistant chief environ
mental health officer.
“Also, there is a great deal of
redevelopment going on, and if the
drains arc not property sealed
when the old buildings arc
knocked down the rats can find
their way up them and appear, to
everyone’s horror, on the nice
piece of landscaped garden outside
the gleaming new office blocks.” 1
“We can control rats in two
ways - by blocking up the holes in
the sewers so that they cannot get
out, and by poisoning them. We
want to do both, but the govern
ment’s spending limits mean that V
we cannot do either properly,” he
said.
Muscovites flock for rock from western world I
MOSCOW - Hundreds of enthu
siastic young Soviets lined up in a
snowstorm outside record stores
Monday to buy a new album by two
dozen of the West’s biggest rock
stars, and authorities erected steel
barricades and dispatched police to
control the crowd.
The hoopla was especially great
on Kalinin Prospckt outside the
Melodiya store, where British rocker
Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox of
Eurythmics autographed copies of
“Breakthrough.”
A police guard was posted at the
door, and a steel barricade was set up
on the sidewalk as Soviets wearing
traditional Russian fur hats and West
ern-style ski caps massed.
Melodiya, the name of the state’s
record company as well as record
stores, is notorious for small press
ings of popular albums, especially
rock, and the initial pressing of
500,000 copies of “Breakthrough”
was likely to last just a couple of days
- if not hours. Melodiya plans to re
lease 3 million copies, as well as
500,000 cassettes, in this country of
285 million people.
A black market for Western rock
recordings thrives in the Soviet Un
ion, and even Melodiya Director
Valery Sukharado admitted to report
ers, "I don’t know how many (cop
ies) will be released on the black
market.”
The two-record album, a compila
tion of songs previously issued in the
West by individuals and groups, was
produced by Greenpeace, the interna
tional environmental group. Interna
tional release is scheduled April 25.
Some of the rock stars told a news
conference they were surprised at
how well rock is known in the Soviet
Union, where the music was once
condemned as ‘‘decadent” and kept
underground. Now, the sounds of
Dire Straits or Soviet pop stars like
Black Coffee arc heard on oncc-staid
official Radio Moscow.
Jerry Harrison, keyboard player
for the Talking Heads, said he and
several other Western musicians vis
ited a rock music center Sunday night
in Gorky Park and saw Soviet musi
cians who had made their own instru
ments.
‘ That shows how much the kids in
the Soviet Union want to play rock
music and are interested in it,” Harri
son said.
Gabriel said he liked several So
vict rock groups and quipped, This
is the best way to conquer the West.
He said he learned during his visit
that an album of his had been released
in the Soviet Union and “found the
fans here very warm, friendly and
generous.” Gabriel said he would
like to perform in the Soviet Union
next year if his band is ready.
bukharado said Meiodiya win
donate about $16 million from record
sales to a Moscow-based charily lhal
is working with Greenpeace on envi
ronmental problems in the Soviet
Union. Peter Bahoulh, the executive
director of the Greenpeace branch in
the United States, said his organiza
tion plans to open an office in
Moscow.
East - West talk arms issues I
VlfcNNA, Austria - roreign min
isters from 35 countries met Monday
for East-West conventional arms
control talks that may bring sweeping
reductions in troops and military
hardware from the Atlantic to the
Urals.
During a three-day conference at
Vienna’s former Hofburg imperial
palace, the ministers also will review
prospects for a conference to build
confidence and security between
East and West bloc nations of Eu
rope.
The ministers were in Vienna in
January to wrap up the Helsinki fol
low-up Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, which agreed
on the new arms control talks and
landmark human rights provisions
for the Soviet bloc.
A new man on the scene this time
is Secretary of State James A. Baker
III, who will meet Tuesday with his
Soviet counterpart, Eduard A.
Shevardnadze.
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