Cable Briefs

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 8

Cable Briefs

‘Deal’ denied Executives of Canada's} two big publishing companies, Thomson Newspapers and Soutliam Inc., have rejected suggestions that they had colluded in the closure of two daily newspapers. On grounds of unprofitability, Thomson has closed the 94-year-old “Ottawa Journal”' and Southam shut down the “Winnipeg Tribune,” putting about 750 people out of work. In a separate SUS 57 million dollar (SNZ 49.5 million) deal, Thomson sold interests in newspapers in Vancouver and Montreal to Southam, in effect giving Southam a monopoly on English-lang-uage newspaper publication in those two cities — Ottawa. Seven executed

Iranian executioners have killed five Iranians and two Pakistanis and Amnesty International said the number of executions in the first 18 months of the Islamic revolution now totals well; over 1000 and could top 1200. Teheran Radio, monitored in London, said the seven' latest prisoners to die were sentenced by Iran’s special revolutionary antidrugs court and were executed in Teheran. It said the five Iranians had sold drugs and that the two Pakistanis had smuggled drugs into Iran in collaboration with big drug rings in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan. — London.