News Currents

ASIA AND EUROPE

President Ion Iliescu led his centrist challenger in Romania's presidential race, but a runoff appeared inevitable, preliminary results showed Sunday.... Resentment over shrinking welfare funds has boiled over into riots in an Osaka, Japan, slum, where unemployed laborers are demanding that they be protected by the country's much-vaunted employee safety net.... The ruling Burmese junta is seeking a new constitution that would further solidify the military's control of the country.... A man upset by his wife's refusal to quit the Jehovah's Witnesses church set a chapel near Seoul, South Korea, on fire Sunday, killing 13 people and injuring 20 others. NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA

A riot in Latin America's largest prison in Sao Paulo, Brazil, left 111 inmates dead and injured 34 riot troops sent to put down the uprising.... Swiss Businessman Werner Rey, wanted in Switzerland for alleged embezzlement, is fighting a move by authorities to have him deported from Nassau, Bahamas.... Negotiators in the US Congress tentatively agreed Saturday on a $27 billion catch-all tax bill that would liberalize Individual Retirement Accounts and provide incentives for job creation in blighted areas .... President Bush vetoed a bill Saturday to regulate cable-television prices, setting up another pre-election veto-override fight.... Congress on Saturday sent Mr. Bush a $245 billion spending bill for social programs and a defense bill that slashes money for the Strategic Defense Initiative.... Defense contractor Teledyne Inc. will pay $17.5 million to settle federal criminal charges that it falsified reliability tests of electromagnetic relays used in the Patriot missile and space shuttle.