ABROAD

JOHANNESBURG Flight Economic sanctions and the increasing violence in South Africa are driving white South Africans with British passports—or claims to them—to leave the country in increasing numbers. There are 800,000 such South Africans, many of them highly qualified professionals. Recent monthly figures show 1,354 emigrants, as opposed to 523 immigrants, with nearly all those leaving going to Britain or Australia. All told, six thousand whites are expected to leave South Africa this year. Many more would probably leave were it not for currency restrictions. Each family is allowed to take out 100,000 rands in assets, but only in the so-called financial rand, worth half the regular rand, which has itself fallen drastically in value in the past two years. The financial rand is now worth less than twenty cents U.S.

BELGRADE A Train That Did Neighboring Albania has ceased to be the only country in Europe without a railroad. A 16-mile stretch of track between Titograd in Montenegro and Shkodra in northern Albania was inaugurated recently, and Albanian raw materials such as chrome ore can now be shipped to world markets. Under the longtime rule of the Communist tyrant Enver Hoxha, Albania had been the most isolated country in the world. It continued to follow a strict Stalinist line after Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union in 1948, and then, in 1961, switched to an alliance with Red China, the only European Communist country to do so. Now that Hoxha is dead, the successor government is cautiously investigating what lies beyond its frontiers. The official Yugoslav news agency commented that if the Albanian leadership had not chosen Stalin over Tito, this piece of railroad could have been inaugurated 35 years ago.

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JOHANNESBURG Flight Economic sanctions and the increasing violence in South Africa are driving white South Africans with British passports—or claims to them—to leave the country in increasing numbers. There are 800,000 such South Africans, many of them highly qualified professionals. Recent monthly figures show 1,354 emigrants, as opposed to 523 immigrants, with nearly all those leaving going to Britain or Australia. All told, six thousand whites are expected to leave South Africa this year. Many more would probably leave were it not for currency restrictions. Each family is allowed to take out 100,000 rands in assets, but only in the so-called financial rand, worth half the regular rand, which has itself fallen drastically in value in the past two years. The financial rand is now worth less than twenty cents U.S.

BELGRADE A Train That Did Neighboring Albania has ceased to be the only country in Europe without a railroad. A 16-mile stretch of track between Titograd in Montenegro and Shkodra in northern Albania was inaugurated recently, and Albanian raw materials such as chrome ore can now be shipped to world markets. Under the longtime rule of the Communist tyrant Enver Hoxha, Albania had been the most isolated country in the world. It continued to follow a strict Stalinist line after Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union in 1948, and then, in 1961, switched to an alliance with Red China, the only European Communist country to do so. Now that Hoxha is dead, the successor government is cautiously investigating what lies beyond its frontiers. The official Yugoslav news agency commented that if the Albanian leadership had not chosen Stalin over Tito, this piece of railroad could have been inaugurated 35 years ago.