Rio De Janeiro, Brazil ___ A strike by 25,000 bus drivers and fare collectors entered its second day Saturday with tourists complaining of taxi fare ripoffs and of beaches crammed with parked cars.
“This is absurd, I was charged $12.60 from Copacabana to Ipanema,” complained Argentinian tourist. Armando Perez after a 1.2mile ride that normally costs around $1.50.
Many taxi drivers negotiated offtheclock fares for groups of passengers.
The bus drivers are seeking pay increases.
Port Au-Prince, Haiti — Former Minister of Police Roger Lafontant has been sent into exile in the United States, government officials said Saturday.
Lafontant boarded a plane for Miami Friday afternoon, the officials said.
The former minister of interior and police was fired Sept. 10 in what was believed to be a power struggle between him and new Justice Minister Theodore Achille. Lafontant oversaw the imprisonment of several journalists and political opponents during his stint as police minister, which began in 1982. He was fired from the same position in 1973 after only one month in office.
After several years in exile in Montreal, Lafontant returned to Haiti in 1980 after receiving special permission to attend the funeral of his father.
Manila, Philippines — One of the largest opposition parties broke into two factions Saturday, leaving President Ferdinand Marcos’ rivals divided in their bid to unseat him after 20 years in power.
Delegates of the Liberal Party, which elected the country’s first president following independence from the United States and the last before Marcos, met in two locations Saturday to elect two party presidents after lastminute unity efforts failed.
Jovito Salonga, the 64yearold former senator who returned in January from three years of exile in the United States, and former Sen. Eva Estrada Kalaw, also 64, were elected by their respective supporters. Both are regarded as presidential aspirants.
Naples, Italy — An explosion at a clandestine fireworks factory killed a 10yearold boy and _ seriously injured four other people, Italian police said Saturday.
The blast at the small factory, which was apparently in full production for the Christmas season, collapsed a wall in the building and started a fire that threatened to spread to nearby structures before it was brought under control.
Accident investigators theorized that at least three of the injured victims were constructing fireworks at the time of the explosion. The cause of the blast was unknown, police said.
Frankfurt, West Germany — Two people were slightly injured, including a policeman, as riot police clashed Saturday with about 1,000 protesters defying a government ban on demonstrations.
For the eighth straight day, youths took to the streets to protest the death of a liftwing demonstrator during a march a week ago protesting a rightwing party rally in Frankfurt. The demonstrator Guether Sare, 36, was crushed by a police water cannon.
A police spokesman said the crowd refused to disperse Saturday and was charged by hundreds of police with night sticks. One demonstrator and one police officer were slightly hurt, but there were no arrests.
Cairo, Egypt — The Supreme State Security Court Saturday ordered the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a Moslem fundamentalist leader who was arrested in July for allegedly attempting to reorganize the clandestine group blamed for the assassination of the late President Anwar Sadat.
The court also ordered the release of 11 other fundamentalists who were arrested in August for distributing antigovernment leaflets in the southern provinces of Al-Minia and Assiut. Abdel Rahman, a blind preacher from Assiut, was arrested for allegedly attempting to reorganize the Islamic Jihad, or Holy War, group under the new name
of the “Islamic Society,” the Middle East News Agency said.
The Jihad organization was blamed officially for assassinating Sadat during a military parade on Oct. 6, 1981.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 11, 1985
