News Currents

GULF AND MIDDLE EAST

Hungry Iraqis fought for food after US and Saudi military leaders changed their policy over the weekend and began issuing food to civilians trapped in southern Iraq on the allied side of the Gulf war cease-fire line.... Heavy rains and a 39-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Holy Land caused cancellation of a traditional Palm Sunday procession through Jerusalem for Palm Sunday, the start of Easter Week holidays.... Israel said Sunday it would deport four Palestinian activists from the occupied Gaza S trip. They are accused of fomenting violence and being members of the mainstream Fatah group of the banned PLO.... Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent his new prime minister, Baath Party veteran Saadoun Hammadi, a Shiite in a Sunni-dominated government, on a tour of southern hotspots Sunday, seeking to demonstrate that revolt there had been crushed. Baghdad Radio on Saturday said that Saddam appointed Hammadi as prime minister in a Cabinet reshuffle. Saddam had previously held the job himself.... Kurdish re bels in baggy pants and turbans waved Kalashnikov rifles and danced in the streets of the northern Iraqi city of Zakho, captured from the forces of Saddam Hussein, in TV film shown in Syria over the weekend.

UNITED STATES

The Democratic National Committee ended its spring meeting Saturday the way it started - without a clear message or a candidate emerging to face Republican President Bush in 1992. West Virginia's Sen. Jay Rockefeller said he would not run in 1992 but would keep his options open for 1996.... Jurors in a New Hampshire case who convicted Pamela Smart of seducing a schoolboy and then convincing him to kill her husband said Saturday tapes containing remarks by Smart, secretly recorded by a teenager, led them to find her guilty.... Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Saturday called for the nation to make the street slaying of a Persian Gulf veteran its battle cry in a fight against crime and discrimination as fierce as Operation Desert Storm. Army Spec. Anthony Riggs, whose unit fired Patriot Missiles, was shot to death a week ago, less than 24 hours after arriving in Detroit from Saudi Arabia.

EUROPE

Soviet cosmonauts have failed in their second attempt to dock a cargo vessel with the orbiting Mir space station, Tass news agency reported Sunday.... British Prime Minister John Major, while discarding some of the more unpopular remnants of Thatcherism, is not climbing in opinion polls. A Mori poll in the Sunday Express newspaper put support for the ruling Conservatives at 38 percent compared to 44 percent for the main opposition Labor Party and 15 percent for the centrist Liberal Democrats.... Six Wes tern European countries will lift visa requirements for Poles effective April 8, the Polish news agency PAP said Saturday. Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Luxemburg, Italy, and Germany are the countries.