World IN BRIEF : AUSTRIA : Aide Admits Giving Patient Lethal Dose

One of the four nurses’ aides who are accused of killing 42 patients in a Vienna hospital admitted that she gave a lethal injection to a former prima ballerina at the city opera to help the elderly woman die. Julia Drapal, once a star at Vienna’s famed opera, died in Vienna’s Lainz Hospital in December, 1988, after two strokes, Christian Reiter, a medical expert, testified. Irene Leidolf, 29, admitted injecting Drapal with the tranquilizer rohypnol “to free her from her pain and to make it easier for her to die.”