News In Brief

Indian Foreign Secretary K.P.S. Menon arrived yesterday for talks expected to pave the way for the first Sino-Indian summit in 28 years. Indian Embassy officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that bilateral issues, including a proposed visit by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, would be on the agenda during Mr. Menon's five-day stay in Peking.

Relations between the world's two most populous nations have long been cool because of India's pro-Soviet slant, China's close ties with Indian rival Pakistan, and an unresolved border dispute.

Record list of offenders issued by rights group

Amnesty International today accused a record 135 nations of human rights abuses ranging from the jailing of draft evaders in Western Europe to the massacre of unarmed civilians in Iraq and Sudan. The international human rights group said the list of offenders in its annual survey was the longest it has published since its establishment in 1961.

But Amnesty said it was encouraged by the emergence of more than 1,000 human rights groups in recent years and the proliferation of laws to protect prisoners' rights.

Suspects in massacres rounded up in Pakistan

Police have rounded up about 150 people as they investigate ethnic-related shooting sprees that began Friday in Hyderabad and spread to Karachi, a newspaper reported yesterday. The official Pakistan Times said foreigners were included among those arrested. They were not identified.

More than 215 people died in Hyderabad and Karachi, 100 miles to the southwest, during five days of violent clashes between Indian immigrants called Mohajirs and Sindhi separatists seeking independence for the southern province of Sind.

Saudis sign nuclear pact

Saudi Arabia acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Monday, vowing not to acquire atomic weapons and drawing strong praise from the US. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal presented the documents certifying Saudi adherence to the treaty at a ceremony attended by Secretary of State Shultz and United Nations officials.

Signatories agree not to build nuclear weapons in return for help in developing peaceful nuclear energy industries.

Yugoslav workers end protest for higher pay

Three thousand Yugoslav workers marched to parliament yesterday in a renewal of labor protests over low pay, but they dispersed after Serbian Communist Party leader Slobodan Milosevic promised to tackle their complaints. Workers from several enterprises, including an engine and tractor factory at Rakovica, six miles south of Belgrade, staged the march, demanding higher wages and the resignation of the Yugoslav government.

Soviet trains crash, causing explosion

Four people were killed and 280 injured yesterday when a train carrying explosives crashed into another freight train and blew up at Sverdlovsk, the Soviet news agency Tass said. The accident happened at a switching yard in the Sverdlovsk region, just east of the Ural Mountains, Tass said. The government newspaper Izvestia said the accident happened when brakes were released on the train carrying explosives, allowing it to slide into a coal train on an adjoining track and explode.

US is past 245 million, Census Bureau reports

The combination of continued strong immigration and an increase in the natural growth of the US population pushed the US past 245 million people, the Census Bureau reported yesterday. As of Jan. 1 the nation was home to 245,110,000 people, the Bureau said, up from 242,825,000 a year earlier. Contributing were natural growth of 1.7 million last year. In addition there were an estimated 600,000 immigrant arrivals in this country, the bureau said.

Filmmakers ask review of Solzhenitsyn expulsion

The Soviet Union of Film Makers said yesterday it has asked the government to review the legality of the 1974 deportation of Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The author was deported and stripped of his Soviet citizenship after publication in the West of his book ``The Gulag Archipelago,'' which documented the horrors of Soviet prison camps.

The filmmakers' union is seeking a response from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, by Solzhenitsyn's 70th birthday on Dec. 11, Arkady Vaksberg, a prominent lawyer and writer, said.

Police in Atlanta arrest anti-abortion protesters

Police began arresting anti-abortion activists in front of an Atlanta clinic yesterday, moments after the opening round of what protest organizers said would be a four-day ``Siege of Atlanta'' got under way. About 80 demonstrators arrived at a midtown abortion facility, and about 30 were arrested shortly afterward.

Operation Rescue, a New York-based anti-abortion group, vowed to send hundreds of demonstrators to blockade the city's seven clinics that perform abortions this week.

Ducky love

Tess, a 21-month-old beagle, has a lot on her mind, not to mention a tiny duckling called Libby. Tess, who cannot have puppies of her own, adopted Libby after the duckling walked into the home of the dog's owners in Donvale, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne.

For the record

The US will provide $125 million in long-term aid to help Jamaica cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Gilbert, President Reagan told Jamaican President Edward Seaga Monday. Fofo I.F. Sunia, American Samoa's former delegate to Congress, drew a five-to-15-month prison term yesterday for participating in a payroll-padding scheme.

In Oregon, loggers were threatened by a forest fire burning in the hills of west-central part of the state, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry said.