Cable Briefs

Press, 3 December 1979, Page 8

Cable Briefs

Submariner* rescued James Ringrose said he and seven-year-old Nicole Rowley sang song-- and made up a Christmas shopping list to pass the time at they drifted in the Pacific for 20 days in a home-made submarine. Speaking from the freighter Chave which picked them up. Mr Ring, rose, aged 37. of Newport, Oregon, said they survived ■ on a gallon and a half of water and few cans <>t tuna and crackers, he -aid They also caught fish that swam . alongside — they just reached over and stooped them up — and drank the moisture that condensed inside the submarine. , Seattle. ‘Refugees shot' Communist Laotian soldiers shot dead nine fleeing refugees, most of them students. as they tried to cross the Mekong River to Thai. I land last week. 1 hai newspapers have reported. They [quoted Rath Choumpha. the only survivor among the group of It) Laotians, as saying the Laotian troops opened fire on the group’s bamboo rafts last Friday, killing eight people immediately. The ninth died after reaching the Thai bank of the river, which forms the [border between the two countries. Rath was quoted as saying. — Bangkok. Talks adjourned The Soviet Union and China have ended two months of preliminary talks on normalisation of their relations without results but , have agreed to resume negotiations later in Peking, according to Chinese officials. When the discussions would resume in Peking was not known, but the Chinese officials said the change in venue was all that had been agreed on in the talks. Both sides have been reluctant to talk in detail about the sessions, held in .secrecy more or less weekly. — Moscow.

Launcher found The Thai police in- ; vestigating two explosions [at the American Embassy ■last Friday night have found i fingerprints on an anti-tank i rocket launcher found nearby, embassy officials have said. They said the police [were trying to trace the fin[gerprints found on ihe loadled M 72 launcher discovered on a building site across the • busy central Bangkok street from the embassy. There have so far been no claims of responsibility for the explosions, which went off harmlessly in the embassy grounds causing only slight damage to palm trees, — Bangkok.