WASHINGTON: The U.S. State Department declared today [April 28] that it had received information that People`s China was preparing to carry out its third test explosion of a nuclear weapon.

Earlier, unofficial sources said last night that this information was gleaned by American Intelligence, but did not say how American spy satellites are believed capable of providing relatively precise information of this kind.

China tested its first atom bomb on October 16, 1964, and its second on May 14, 1965.

Sources here said it was unlikely China would be able to make long-range nuclear missiles for several years yet.

But the `father` of the hydrogen bomb, American physicist Edward Teller, warned in an interview published yesterday in Dusseldorf that People`s China would soon have nuclear missiles capable of striking 2,200 miles from Chinese shores.

The Hungarian-born scientist, currently an American Defence Adviser, told an interviewer of the German economic weekly `Handles Blatt` that bombing China was out of the question.

Since the dissemination of atomic arms is `an irreversible phenomenon`, he went on, the only way to `ward off the Chinese peril` was to set up a vast joint anti-missile defence system covering the United States and western Europe`. Agencies [Meanwhile, as reported by our Correspondent from Karachi,] beggary, though a nationwide problem, has assumed menacing proportions in the sprawling city of Karachi. There are, according to reliable estimates, no less than 25,000 beggars on the rampage in the City, an all-time high number. The number still continues to increase.

The beggars in Karachi choose their haunts with care, usually preferring crowded places.

They swarm mosques, shops, restaurants and cinema houses, where they find a large number of `victims` A good number of these beggars are suspected to be thieves, child-lifters, drug-traffickers, while some others are themselves the victims of crimes like abduction. They have been deformed by the abductors or otherwise made to beg for the `beggar kings`.