Cable Briefs

Press, 6 November 1978, Page 8

Cable Briefs

‘Spy’ sentenced Laimos Niedre, a 54-year-old Latvian-born Swedish citizen, has been sentenced to 10 years at hard labour for espionage by a Soviet court at Riga, the Swedish Consul in Leningrad has reported in a radio interview. According to the lengthy sentence from the court in the capital of Soviet Latvia, Niedre had collected top-se-cret military information for nine years and transmitted the information to an unnamed country. — Stockholm. Independence The Commonwealth of Dominica has celebrated its first day of independence with bands, boy scouts, and the continuation of a weeklong party. The new country ! achieved independence from Britain at one minute past I midnight on Friday, when ! the Union Jack was hauled down for the last time. — Dominica. i Siamese challenge | Doctors are to carry out a complicated series of operations, possibly lasting , years, to try to separate I Siamese twin sisters joined at the head. One-year-old Lisa and Elisa Hansen, of 'Ogden, Utah, apparently have brains resting next to one another, although there is no evidence of direct communication between them. — Salt Lake City. Pipeline to d 41 Forty-one people died in ' Wednesday night’s gas pipa- ■ line explosion in southern ' Mexico, not 52 or 54 as pre- ! viously announced, the State I oil company, Pemex, has I said. It added that of the 32 ' injured initially taken to j hospital suffering from i burns, 23 were still being 'treated Six of them were in a critical condition. — Mexico City.