AMERICA STRIKES BACK / Worldwide Reverberations Reuters QUETTA, Pakistan the Pakistani U.S. demonstrators who brandished pictures of Osama bin Laden and burned cars and a United Nations office in protests U.S. and British military strikes in Afghanistan. One person was killed. Seven others were wounded in gun battles in the western city of Quetta as…
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches STOCKHOLM – Three researchers whose discoveries of molecular elements that control cell division have opened dramatic new possibilities for early diagnosis and treatment of cancer were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday. The three Leland Hartwell of the United States and Tim Hunt and…
Angry Relatives Visit Black Sea Crash Site Reuters KIEV – Ukraine’s military on Monday clung to its denial that a rogue missile blew up a Russian airliner last Thursday, killing 78, as angry and grieving relatives visited the Black Sea crash site. But President Leonid Kuchma, facing pressure from Russia to disclose more about…
People trapped in the burning North Tower of the World Trade Center scramble to the windows in terror to escape the fire. Shortly after this photograph was taken, the tower collapsed. Two hijacked planes slammed into the twin 110-storey towers on Tuesday, demolishing a symbol of America’s financial might in the process. -REUTERS
CAIRO – The top authority for the world’s Sunni Muslims, the imam of Al Azhar, yesterday condemned the wave of deadly terrorist attacks in the US as against the Islamic religion. “To kill innocent men, women and children is a horrible and hideous act which no monotheistic religions approve of,” the imam, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed…
ATHENS In the good old days of the ancient Games, Olympia was the honorable playground of noble athletes, a theater of sacred peace, fair play and somber processions among white marble temples, right? Wrong. The ancient Games were loud, smelly, sometimes scandalous, every bit as political as their modern counterparts and once even saw a…
Reuters WASHINGTON – As the Secret Service widened its security perimeter around the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney was moved to the Camp David presidential retreat to ensure that America’s two senior officials were not in the same place, officials said. The step was taken Thursday amid concern about the possibility of new threats…
Reuters The French economy expanded in the second quarter at its weakest pace in two and a half years as the global economic slowdown chipped away at activity, the government said Tuesday. Growth in the second-largest economy in the 12-nation euro zone eased to 0.3 percent compared with the first quarter. when gross domestic product…
Reuters FRANKFURT – Talks on a takeover of Germany’s Reuters Commerzbank AG by UniCredito Italiano SpA fell apart Tuesday because of differences over valuation after shares in both banks fell sharply, the two sides said. The collapse is a blow to hopes for European cross- border banking consolidation and clouds the future of Commerzbank, Germany’s…
Reuters Following is a transcript of a videotaped statement by Osama bin Laden broadcast Sunday on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television: Here is America struck by God Almighty in on of its vital organs, so that its greatest Buildings are destroyed. Grace and gratitude to God. America has been filled with horror From north to south…
Reuters SOUSTONS, France President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said on Thursday that the Madrid peace conference had broken the ice between Middle East foes but that the international community must follow it up to ensure peace. “The ice was broken, we hope it will be completely broken,” he said here. M. Gorbachev was in southwest…
BERLIN – Germany has ruled out the possibility of shooting down hijacked passenger planes even if they appeared to threaten buildings with suicide attacks, the interior minister said Wednesday. “It isn’t helpful to consider this,” the minister, Otto Schily, told journalists. “How can I shoot down a passenger flight that comes near a skyscraper? I’m…
Reuters New York – Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir pleaded for American understanding in the hours before the Middle East peace conference opened, asking where Israelis would live if they traded land for peace. “It’s our land,” Mr. Shamir told CBS News in an interview in Madrid, where the conference began Wednesday. “How could we…
Berlin (Reuters) – Protected by the police and armed with a new court order, workers on Friday resumed the dismantling of Berlin’s giant Lenin statue, a survivor of the 1989 revolution that ended Communist rule in the former East Germany. Policemen scuffled earlier with 40 demonstrators who tried to prevent the workers from erecting…
Warsaw (Reuters) – President Lech Walesa of Poland will ask Bronislaw Geremek, a former Solidarity adviser and a leader of the Democratic Union party, to form a government, a presidential spokesman said Friday. “The president thinks Professor Geremek should start political consultations aimed at forming a government,” the spokesman, Andrzej Drzycimski, said by telephone…
Reuters LONDON – A rare edition of the first printed works of William Shakespeare made a brief appearance at the Globe Theatre here ahead of a sale next month where the book is expected to fetch up to $3 million. The leather-bound, 1,000-page compilation of plays was made in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death,…
Reuters JENIN, West Bank Israeli tanks moved into Palestinian-ruled Jenin early Wednesday and razed a Palestinian security headquarters in the heart of the West Bank city, which Israelis call a “terrorist nest.” The tanks withdrew after the two-hour operation. The raid came two days after a suicide bombing and amid a frustrating delay in convening…
Reuters Seoul – The crew of a South Korean ship is facing arrest for dumping the bodies of 25 Chinese illegal immigrants into the sea after they suffocated in a storage tank, police officials said Tuesday. The authorities were still searching for the corpses of the 25 immigrants, part of a group of 60…
Reuters Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia – The Yugoslav Navy on Wednesday searched a flotilla of Croatian relief boats for weapons before allowing it to pass through a blockade to the medieval port of Dubrovnik. The ferry Slavija, with the Yugoslav president, Stipe Mesic, aboard, was waiting at the eastern tip of Mljet Island for the fishing and…
Britain’s longest-serving member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell of the Labour Party, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday that he would unleash the most serious dissent among party members in decades if he supported a U.S. missile defense shield. (Reuters) A Swiss nurse who confessed in July to killing nine elderly women has admitted responsibility…
UNITED NATIONS, New York – The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to lift a three- year-old Yugoslavia, ending the last in a arms embargo on series of military and economic sanctions imposed on Belgrade during the past decade. The action Monday indicated the UN’s formal recognition that Yugoslavia has embraced democratic rule and has…
BERLIN – A senior figure in Germany’s Jewish community has attacked a proposal by a leading Christian Democrat to make national identity an election campaign issue. Michel Friedman, deputy leader of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a Christian Democrat himself, told Radio Eins on Tuesday that stirring up nationalist sentiments before next…
BONN (Reuters) Germany, in a subtle conciliatory shift, said Monday it was striving to develop a cheaper version of the European Fighter Aircraft in agreement with its partners in the project: Italy, Britain and Spain. Bonn stunned its partners in July when it dropped out of the multi-billion dollar project’s production phase and said it…
MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) – Liberia’s Roman Catholic primate said at a requiem Mass on Monday for five American nuns that he held the rebel leader Charles Taylor responsible for their deaths. The missionaries from the Illinois-based Adorers of the Blood of Christ order disappeared about two weeks ago. Archbishop Michael Francis and other church officials,…
SEATTLE (Reuters)- A Boeing Co. spokesman said Monday that the engine lost from a 747 cargo plane on its approach to Luxembourg airport had apparently fallen off by design to prevent greater damage to the wing. The plane, belonging to the Luxembourg freight carrier Cargolux, landed safely Sunday, and none of the four crew members…
Reuters BEIJING – A Chinese court has awarded the family of a woman who died from AIDS a record $1.2 million after she was infected with tainted blood during a transfusion, official news organizations said Tuesday. A state-run hospital in the central province of Hubei was ordered to give Chen Xiumei’s husband Shen Jieyong…
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches New Delhi — Hindu and Muslim rioters burned and vandalized mosques, temples, homes and shops Friday in some of the worst violence to hit the capital this week. The nationwide death toll from the religious violence passed 1,000. As the police reported that three people had been killed…
RAMALLAH, Israeli-Occupied West Bank – Palestinians poured into the streets after their chief delegate’s speech at the Madrid peace talks on Thursday, decorating Israeli army jeeps with olive branches as smiling soldiers looked on. “We let the world hear our cause,” Nasser Ibrahim, a Palestinian who works in Israel, said after hearing a broadcast of…
HAVANA (Reuters) – The Labor Ministry has ordered managers at many companies to cut back production schedules, resulting in wage cuts of up to 30 percent, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina said Thursday. Managers were ordered to revise operating schedules “taking into account the need to reduce cafeteria service at those labor centers experiencing…
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Traffic could increase by 1,000 percent on some European east-west routes in the next decade with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, transport chiefs said here Thursday. They called for a policy to integrate road, rail, air and water transport to meet the needs of increased traffic throughout Europe while protecting…
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A court on Thursday jailed four men for their role in the biggest art theft since World War II, Dutch radio said. The four Dutch nationals had pleaded guilty to stealing 20 works worth about $500 million from the Van Gogh Museum here last April 14. The paintings, which included “Potato Eaters,”…
Fighting Follows Attack on Opposition Chief Reuters KABUL – The Taleban has begun a major offensive north of the capital after suicide bombers tried to kill the movement’s key military opponent, anti-Taleban sources said Tuesday. The Taleban militia, which has denied any link with the attack Sunday on the guerrilla commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, had…
NEW YORK – Northwest Natural Gas Co, said Monday it would buy Enron Corp.’s Portland General Electric unit for $1.8 billion in a deal that would combine Oregon’s largest natural gas utility with the state’s largest electric utility. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close by the fourth quarter of…
JERUSALEM – Roger G. Harrison, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, was injured Monday is an automobile collision on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, the Israeli police said. A woman in another car was killed. The police said Mr. Harrison was undergoing surgery at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. A police spokeswoman said three other men in the…
ANKARA-Car bombs killed an American serviceman and seriously injured an Egyptian diplomat here Monday in attacks directed at the Middle East peace conference. A group calling itself Turkish Islamic Jihad took responsibility and said the attacks were to protest the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference that opens in Madrid Wednesday, the Anatolian News Agency reported. …