DUBLIN: Robbery Ruckus Fallout from Ireland’s largest cash heist ever has officials and security personnel fending off allegations of bumbling. On Jan. 24, two jeeps burst through the fence of the Brink’s-Allied depot in northern Dublin. The five masked occupants, encountering no resistance, bagged $4.2 million and sped away. Following Justice Ministry assurances that all precautions had been taken to prevent such a raid, embarrassing revelations emerged. Not only did police fail to beef up surveillance after a warning that a security-company robbery was being planned, but when the theft took place, most of the Brink’s-Allied security staff were caught off guard in the canteen. The fiasco nearly turned tragic a week later, when journalist Veronica Guerin, who had written a profile of the chief suspect, was wounded at her home by a gunman; police believe the attack was linked to her report. Says actress Catherine Punch, 27: “People tend to glamourize criminals and say, `Whoa, they got away with it.’ If the police make a mess of things, then the robbers look even better.” SYDNEY: Public Private Lives Ever since former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke separated from his wife Hazel, 65, in November, rumors have been flying that he was in love with Blanche d’Alpuget, author of the 1982 biography Robert J. Hawke. Now Hawke, 65, and d’Alpuget, 51, are telling all–for a price. The weekly Woman’s Day and the Sydney-based TV show 60 Minutes reportedly paid them $150,000 for their story. The two plan to marry, reports the Woman’s Day cover story, headlined “Our love wouldn’t die.” Gushes d’Alpuget: “He’s got the stamina of a man of 40. Am I smiling or what?” Western Australia’s Premier Richard Court was disgusted: “When former Prime Ministers are selling stories about their private lives for money, I think it is as low as you can go.” CALCUTTA: Arsenic Agony When villagers in the Indian state of West Bengal began drilling tube wells in the 1960s, they thought they would be drinking pure artesian H2O. They were mistaken. Since 1983, more than 100,000 cases of arsenic poisoning have been reported; the consequences range from skin discoloration to cancer–and death. The source of the poison? Apparently chemical changes in the bedrock caused arsenic, a naturally occurring element, to dissolve into the groundwater. The central government recently stepped in with $31 million for research and new, deeper wells. Last week Dipankar Chakraborty, an environmental scientist at Jadavpur University, held a seminar to publicize the mass contamination. Said a worried suburbanite: “What we really need is not seminars but urgent action to arrest the menace.”
ABIDJAN: Homeward Bound Fearing racial violence in Gabon, migrant workers are fleeing by ship to this Ivory Coast port. Beset by recession and unemployment, Gabon in December cracked down on its 75,000 foreign workers by introducing a nationality-based fee scale for work permits. The fees range from $1,520 for Mauritanians and $1,160 for Malians down to $95 for French or U.S. nationals. Foreigners must pay up or leave by Feb. 15. With petitions signed by thousands of unemployed Gabonese who threaten to “kill and burn” illegal immigrants, western and central Africans are spending their savings for a ticket home. Said Tankara Ibrahima, a merchant who disembarked at Abidjan to continue overland to Mali: “They were not nice about the new decision. They did not treat us well.”
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