News In Brief

Angered by the shooting death of an infant girl and bomb attacks in Jerusalem that hurt dozens of other people, new Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet agreed on measures to counter "terror" at the hands of Palestinians. The measures weren't specified, but Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said: "We will react to prevent other acts like this. They will get nothing from us through force." One of the blasts killed a bus passenger found to have been carrying explosives attached to his belt.

Only distant shooting could be heard from Macedonia's capital amid signs that the clashes between government forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas were largely over. But, claiming by phone to be "in our positions and waiting," a guerrilla leader told journalists his followers were ready to fight on if dialogue between moderate Albanian political leaders and the government was unproductive.

Almost 10,000 security police were being deployed to guard against violence in Jakarta, Indonesia, as embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid prepared to respond today to his official censure by parliament. He is expected to apologize for "lack of cooperation" in a probe of his involvement in two financial scandals and perhaps even acquiesce to criminal prosecution. But political opponents say they expect a second formal rebuke, a necessary prerequisite to impeachment, to be approved afterward.

By a narrow 220-to-210 vote, members of Mexico's Congress agreed to hear a direct plea today from Zapatista rebel leaders for passage of landmark Indian rights legislation. The vote followed a threat by the Zapatistas last week to return home from their high-profile march on the capital to the impoverished state of Chiapas for "other forms of struggle" when it appeared they'd be denied the opportunity to address Congress.

At least a dozen people died and six UN aid workers were abducted in a surprise attack on the Doctors Without Borders compound in Mogadishu, Somalia. The fate of about 20 local employees of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization who were not accounted for after the incident was not immediately clear. The attack was blamed on heavily armed loyalists of faction leader Musa Sudi Yalahow, whose forces control much of the capital despite the installation of a new national government last year.

A heavily guarded freight train carrying 60 tons of nuclear waste was nearing a site in Germany where thousands of environmental protesters waited to block its path. Reports said police, in the largest peacetime security operation in German history, already had arrested about 40 demonstrators as the Monitor went to press. The highly radioactive waste from power plants was reprocessed in casks in France and is to be placed in storage near Hamburg.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

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