Seven persons — three policemen and four villagers — were killed when about 200 armed Naga hostiles attacked an Andhra Pradesh police camp at Kiumlon in Ukhrul sub-division on January 17, according to an official report received here [Imphal] to-day [January 19]. The report said six people including two policemen have been admitted to hospital with bullet injuries and the condition of some of them is serious. A strong contingent of security forces has left here [Imphal] for Kiumlon, about 30 miles north-east of this town. The report said that the Naga hostiles belonging to Sema tribe reached the site of the camp early in the morning [January 19] and fired indiscriminately, using automatic rifles and machine guns. Two policemen and three villagers were killed on the spot. Two more died in hospital. The camp would have been wiped out had not security forces led by an Assistant Commander rushed to the site. There were some casualties on the side of the hostiles who fled into the nearby jungles. But details are not known. The report said that several hundred armed Nagas were on their way to Kiumlon. The hostiles also burnt down 80 huts in the neighbourhood of the camp which has been attacked about a dozen times in the last six weeks.
Mao’s effigy burnt in Canton
A group of about 100 Chinese burned an effigy of Chairman Mao Tse-tung of China in Canton yesterday [January 18], a Chinese traveller from that southern China city reported. Hundreds of spectators stood around, cheering and applauding as the effigy burned, Mrs. Tse Juen (37), told newsmen upon her arrival in Hong Kong to-day [January 19]. “I was passing a metal factory yesterday,” she related, “when I saw a group of people shouting and cheering. I stopped to see what was going on. In the middle of the crowd was a life-size figure labelled Mao Tse-tung. The crowd surged around the effigy and then some one shouted ‘burn it.’ “A young man with a burning torch pushed through the crowd and set fire to the figure. The people kept on shouting and cheering. Some were singing anti-Mao songs. It took about 15 minutes before the figure toppled over. “Then some of the crowd moved in and started kicking apart the pieces that were still burning.” After that the woman said, the crowd rapidly dispersed “because some one shouted that Red Guards were coming”. Followers of Chinese President Liu Shao Chi, recently repulsed a series of attacks from supporters of Mao with heavy losses to the latter at Urumqi and Kashgar cities in the remote far western Chinese province of Sinkiang on the Sino-Soviet border, according to the Peking correspondent of the Tokyo newspaper Asahi Shimbun .
Newspapers in U.K. facing crisis
Three of Britain’s eight major national daily newspapers could die in the next five years, an independent survey warned to-day [January 19, London]. Predicting serious difficulties for the newspaper industry in the next few years, the report departed from the almost traditional practice of blaming most of the trouble on trade union restrictive practices. It said these were not as bad as generally believed, and mentioned instead lack of training among management and trade unionists as the industry’s great weakness. The 150,000-word report — which caused a Press furore two weeks ago when one newspaper published extracts while it was still supposed to be secret — was requested by the joint board of the national newspaper industry, which groups management and unions.
The independent Economist intelligence unit, which has prepared the report, makes no recommendations for improving the situation. But it has offered to make them, and the joint board has accepted this offer. The report said fewer than half the national dailies were operating at a profit, and a substantial proportion of the industry was in no position to face a period of increasing costs. Unless the present cost structure was altered, three national dailies and one Sunday newspaper — not named by the report — might be forced to stop publishing. If the industry failed to solve its long-term difficulties, the national daily Press could be reduced to three Papers. The report also forecast an increase of one penny in the price of national dailies — six of the big eight currently cost four pence — during 1968.
