EVENTS
US AUTOMAKERS REACH AGREEMENT General Motors Corporation and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement yesterday on a three-year contract that follows the pattern set at Ford Motor Co. The 241,000 UAW-represented hourly workers will receive a 3 percent wage hike in the pact's first year and lump-sum bonuses equal to 3 percent in each of the next two years. Workers will still receive fully paid health care and be paid up to their full take-home pay when laid off, a provision that cost the firm nearly $3.35 billion in the 1990 contract. The key sticking point was pension benefits. Union and firm sources said GM agreed to a hike in the $2,030 monthly benefit for a worker who retires after 30 years by the end of the agreement in 1996. Quake shakes Mexico City
A quake measuring about 6.8 on the Richter scale struck Mexico City early yesterday, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. It caused power outages in parts of the city, and radio reports said some power lines were down. The quake was centered 228 miles south of the capital off Mexico's Pacific coast. IRA bombing went awry
The outlawed Irish Republican Army set off a bomb in a Belfast shopping district Saturday, killing nine people and injuring 59 in an attack it said went ``tragically wrong.'' Two disguised IRA men were seen carrying a box into a shop located below offices of Northern Ireland's largest Protestant paramilitary group, the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters. The IRA said its target was UFF headquarters. Judge targets plea bargain
A judge said Saturday he will try to throw out the plea agreement that Oklahoma Gov. David Walters (D) reached in his campaign finance indictment. Mr. Walters pleaded guilty in Oklahoma County to a single misdemeanor in exchange for dismissal of eight felony counts. Under the agreement, Walters paid a $1,000 fee and was put on unsupervised probation for a year. He must pay all current campaign funds or at least $135,000 to the state Ethics Commission. Walters's plea conceded that he urged a contributor to go above state contribution limits in his 1990 race. US-North Korea agreement
Washington and North Korea have agreed in principle on a deal that could lead to United States diplomatic recognition of the Communist North in exchange for international inspection of its secretive nuclear sites. Reports of the agreement, allegedly reached during secret talks in New York City, were carried in yesterday's major South Korean newspapers. Klansmen protest
Hundreds of spectators shouted obscenities as 21 Ku Klux Klan members rallied outside the Ohio state house in Columbus Saturday. Police used a chemical spray to stop about 20 demonstrators who tried to push over a fence. Six people were arrested and two slightly hurt, police said. Arabs killed in Lebanon
Two Arab guerrillas were killed and an Israeli soldier seriously hurt in a clash in Lebanon yesterday. Israeli military officials said the clash occurred in the Sujoud area in Israel's self-declared border security zone. In Lebanon, security sources said pro-Iranian guerrillas wounded three Israeli soldiers in mortar bomb attacks. Forces head for Georgia port
Government troops captured two villages from rebels in western Georgia yesterday and crossed a bridge on a road to the key Black Sea port of Poti. A Defense Ministry spokesman said troops were also battling forces loyal to ex-president Zviad Gamsakhurdia near rebel-held Senaki. The government says the rebels are blocking the supply route, and has asked Moscow to help secure it. Three Frenchmen kidnapped
Three French nationals working for France's consulate-general in Algiers have been kidnapped, an embassy spokesman said yesterday. This follows the kidnapping and killing of two other Frenchmen, two Russians, and three Latin Americans in the first such incidents in two years of Muslim fundamentalist unrest in Algeria.
