In the Saigon suburb of Gia Dinh, police arrested about 150 Buddhist monks and nuns who were protesting against the Government of Mr Tran Van Huong. In the city itself, a mob armed with sticks and bottles of petrol tried to set a market and bus on fire. They fled when police arrived.

The latest incidents followed the Government's imposition of martial law in the city of Hue and the extension of martial law in Saigon. A Government announcement said that saboteurs would face the death penalty.

London, January 27

Britain began her long and sad farewell to Sir Winston Churchill today. As Big Ben intoned 11am, the great door of Westminster Hall swung wide. Two lines of people, some of whom had been waiting all night, began a slow walk past each side of the 10-foot high catafalque where Sir Winston lay in state. For three days, 23 hours each day, Britons who owe so much to Sir Winston will repay their debt to him. When St Stephen's door opened, there were already 4,000 people waiting in line. They were old and young, feeble and healthy, rich and poor. One of them was Mrs Ellen Lewin, 81, who had walked two and a half miles from her home in Notting Hill.

'I'm just proud to have been born in the Churchill period,' she said.

Hongkong, January 29

Just before Typhoon Ida early in August, a hungry wild piglet weighing about ten pounds wandered into the kitchen of the bungalow of the Hongkong Clays and Kaolin Co Ltd, in Chakwoling, in search of food. Cared for since at the bungalow, it grew into a full-sized boar weighing nearly 200 pounds and now, too big to handle in the grounds of the bungalow, it has been given to the Government for the zoo at the Botanical Gardens.

Sydney, January 28

Five people were charged in a Sydney court with failing to undergo a compulsory chest X-ray. One of them decided to go to jail for 33 days rather than pay a fine of #10 plus costs. Three others paid their fines and a fifth, given the option of having an X-ray, accepted it. They were the second group of people prosecuted since mass compulsory tuberculosis X-rays were introduced in New South Wales in 1953.

Luton, February 2

P.J. Proby, an American pop singer, was ordered off stage when his trousers split. Teenage girls in the audience of 1,700 screamed when the trousers split, first near the knees then higher up the seams. Authorities brought the curtain down after Proby's first song, just three minutes after his second performance of the evening began. 'Proby was warned to clean up his act before the show started,' said a spokesman for ABC Cinemas, which controls the Ritz Cinema at which Proby was performing. 'This follows incidents in other towns.' A girl in the audience said: 'It was most embarrassing.'