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The New
York Times
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August 16, 2000, Wednesday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column 4; Foreign
Desk
LENGTH: 991 words
HEADLINE: WORLD BRIEFING
BYLINE: Compiled by Savannah Waring Walker
BODY:
EUROPE
NORTHERN IRELAND:
OMAGH REMEMBRANCE -- A ceremony commemorated the second anniversary of 29 deaths
in a bombing carried out in Omagh by the Irish Republican Army splinter group
the Real I.R.A. Prime Ministers Bertie Ahern of Ireland and Tony Blair of
Britain pledged continued support for the investigation into the bombing. In
March the Irish police commissioner, Pat Byrne, said the police knew those
responsible but lacked evidence to bring charges. Brian Lavery
(NYT)
SPAIN: POLICE DETONATE CAR BOMB -- The police used a robot
to blow up a car carrying 220 pounds of explosives, which was found abandoned on
a highway near Huesca at the foot of the Pyrenees. Police officials suspected
that the car bomb had been prepared by the Basque separatist group E.T.A., four
of whose members died last week when explosives blew up in their
car. (AP)
ITALY: POPE AND YOUTH -- John Paul II
opened a six-day World Youth Festival, one of the largest events of the Roman
Catholic Holy Year, by greeting more than 700,000 young believers crammed in
front of St. Peter's and the Basilica of St. John Lateran. When the crowd
chanted, "Long live the pope," the frail John Paul, buoyed by the exuberance,
joked that although he had already been alive 80 years, youth wanted him always
to be young. "What to do?" he asked. Alessandra Stanley (NYT)
THE AMERICAS
COLOMBIA: CHILDREN DIE IN SHOOTOUT --
Four children were killed and seven wounded when their school group was caught
in the cross-fire of Marxist rebels fighting the army near the town of Pueblo
Rico in Antioquia province. An army officer accused the rebel National
Liberation Army of using the children as human
shields. (Reuters)
ASIA
TAIWAN:
CHARGES IN TOXIC-WASTE CASE -- Three chemical company executives and 19 workers
were charged with dumping tons of toxic waste into a river that serves as a main
source of drinking water in southern Taiwan. Authorities in Kao-hsiung shut down
the water supply for four days last month after three men were caught pouring a
cancer-causing solvent, dimethyl benzene, into a tributary of the Kaoping River
from a tanker. (AP)
CHINA: DISSIDENT RELEASED --
Liu Wensheng, who founded a democratic party and was active in the 1989 student
movement, was released last week after serving eight years of a 10-year
sentence, Mr. Liu and a Hong Kong-based rights group announced. "Had there not
been outside pressure on my behalf, I would not have been released," Mr. Liu
said. His name was on a list that American labor groups had submitted to
Congress in an effort to deny China permanent normal trade
status. (Agence France-Presse)
JAPAN: A NEW
WIRETAP LAW -- Japan's first wiretapping law went into effect, allowing
authorities to use wiretaps when investigating crimes involving narcotics, guns,
gang-related murders and large-scale smuggling of people into the country.
Arguing for the law last year, the police had described it as an essential tool
in their fight against organized crime. Critics -- mindful of Japan's history as
a police state before and during World War II -- had said the wiretapping could
be used against political rivals. (Reuters)
SOUTH KOREA: AMNESTY RECIPIENTS -- Among the 3,586 inmates freed in a
general amnesty to mark the anniversary of liberation from Japan's rule, in
1945, were Chung Soo Il, 63, a North Korean spy who had posed as a college
professor, and Hong In Kil, an aide to former President Kim Young Sam who was
serving a corruption sentence. Almost 24,000 people already released after
serving time for minor offenses, regained their civil rights, which means they
can run for election and vote. One was Kim Hyun Chul, above, son of former
President Kim, who served six months in 1996 on corruption
charges. (AP)
INDIA: CHRISTIANS DEMONSTRATE --
Hundreds of Christians, including nuns and schoolchildren, marched in Calcutta
to protest a series of church bombings and attacks on Christians over the past
year. Some Christian leaders have blamed the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party, which leads a coalition government, for failing to rein in its hard-line
supporters, but party leaders deny involvement. Celia W. Dugger
(NYT)
SRI LANKA: TAMIL TIGER ATTACK -- The government said Tamil
Tiger rebels attacked troops with mortar fire on the Jaffna Peninsula in the
north, but the soldiers held on to their defensive positions. The army is
bracing itself for a rebel offensive expected before national parliamentary
elections to be held by November. Celia W. Dugger (NYT)
AFRICA
NIGERIA: 18 DIE IN PIPELINE BLAST -- In the
latest in a series of Niger Delta explosions, eighteen people scooping fuel from
a leaking pipeline were killed near the southeastern city of Calabar over the
weekend. Hundreds have died in recent weeks in similar accidents as a result of
black-marketeers' rupturing pipelines to siphon fuel. Norimitsu
Onishi (NYT)
SUDAN: RELIEF IN SIGHT -- The United Nations is to
resume aid in Sudan after receiving assurances that flights will not be targets
of government bombers. United Nations aid operations there were suspended last
week after several bombings on flights in the rebel-controlled
south. Ian Fisher (NYT)
MIDDLE EAST
IRAN: BILL ON NEWSPAPERS -- After an order from Iran's supreme leader to
drop a debate on press freedom, reformist lawmakers presented a bill that aims
to block the hard-line judiciary from closing reformist newspapers. The
legislators sought a debate on whether it was legal to close papers under the
Security Measures Law, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a
lawmaker as saying. "Several courts have closed the dailies on the basis of this
law," the legislator, Gholam Heidar Ebrahimbai Salami, said, adding,
"Clarification in this case would remove many
ambiguities." (AP)
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