Deutsche Welle
English Service News
July 6th, 2001, 16:00 UTC
A NATO-brokered ceasefire appeared to be taking hold on Friday in
areas of Macedonia where a battle for territory tailed off around
midnight however, unidentified gunmen fired at a convoy of German
troops this morning. Noone was injured in the attack, which took
place on a main road just 12 km (eight miles) west of the capital
Skopje. In Tetovo, Macedonia's main Albanian city, people went
shopping on streets which just yesterday reverberated with artillery
and machinegun fire in the hills above. Germany has about 400
soldiers in Tetovo, to support NATO's KFOR mission in nearby Kosovo.
A Yugoslav court jailed Rade Markovic, the feared chief of the
Serbian secret police. He was sentenced to one year in jail for
revealing state secrets. He is the first major ally of former
dictator Slobodan Milosevic to be convicted and imprisoned since
reformers ousted the former Yugoslav regime in a mass uprising last
October.
The former campaign manager of Zambian President Fredrick Chiluba
has been murdered in a pre-dawn attack. Paul Tembo was shot in
front of his wife. He had been scheduled to testify on Friday at a
tribunal investigating corruption and abuse of office by three
cabinet ministers. Political tensions are high in Zambia ahead of
presidental elections due before the end of the year.
The United States has handed over a 24 year old American, air force
Staff Sergeant to Japanese authorities to face rape charges. Timothy
Woodland has denied the accusation, saying the sexual contact he had
with a 20 year old local woman was consensual. It's only the second
time US forces in Japan have handed Japanese authorities custody of
a serviceman before formal charges have been filed.
Thousands of angry farmers booed Renate Kuenast, Germany's Minister
for Agriculture and Consumer Protection when she addressed the
annual German Farmers Convention in Muenster on Friday. The farmers
association greeted the minister with the slogan, "Farmers fight
back". Gerd Sonnleiter, President of the Deutsche Bauern Verband
criticised the government plans which focus on competitiveness. He
said "I am convinced that we do not require a new agricultural
system, but rather a lasting one." Kuenast's ministry has been
working under the motto, "Quality not Quantity", in trying to
convince farmers to use more environmentally friendly farming
techniques.
Typhoon Utor hit Hong Kong and southern China Friday morning. The
city of 7 million came to a virtual standstill as heavy rains and
winds lashed the city. The storm, has now been downgraded to a
tropical storm, left a path of destruction through the Philippines,
Taiwan, and now southern China. In Vietnam, another Typhoon, caused
the worst flooding in recent memory. The death toll officially rose
to 33, and scores are still missing. Vietnam television showed
pictures from the Mekong Delta were water levels were almost a metre
higher than normal and rising. Last year, about 500 people were
killed in the Mekong Delta by flooding.
Slovakia's ethnic Hungarian party, the SMK on Friday announced that
it had temporarily stopped participating in the governing
coalition. The centre-right SMK said it took the action because of
the defection of two leftist coalition parties during a vote on
regional reform, a key step in the legislative process towards
acession to the European Union. The move leaves the government of
Premier Mikulas Dzurinda without a majority, and will likely hold up
the government's legislative agenda.
On the first day of the summer holiday season, pilots at Italy's
national airline, Alitalia, went on strike to back contract
demands. The one day strike forced the airline to cancel at least
200 flights and thousands of other flights have been delayed. The
situation was compounded as the country's air traffic controllers
also walked off the job. The two strikes forced foreign carriers
including British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France to cancel
flights to Italy. Airline officials hope to resume full service late
Friday.
Final preparations are underway in Aberdeen, Scotland aboard the
ship "Mayo" which will attempt to salvage the Russian nuclear
submarine "Kursk". British and Russian divers will work to secure
the hull of the sub in preparation of lifting it to the surface. The
Kursk sank last August in Barents Sea with the loss of 118 crewmen.
Raphael Gray a teenage computer hacker who stole credit card
information from thousands of people, including Bill Gates's whom he
sent Viagra billed to his own credit card, escaped a jail sentence
in a Welsh court on Friday. The judge ruled that, the 19 year old,
who was arrested in March of last year should instead undergo
psychiatric treatment. The court heard that Gray, the self-styled
"Saint of E-commerce" had hacked into websites from his bedroom and
displayed credit card details of thousands of people to show how bad
computer security was. He had pleaded guilty to 10 counts of
computer fraud although he had not gained financially from his
crimes.
Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Berlin office has announced that a
funeral service will be held next week for his wife Hannelore, who
committed suicide on Thursday. The service will take place in Speyer
Cathedral on Wednesday. Meanwhile tributes and condolences have
poured in from around the world, including messages from the Moscow,
Paris, Washington and elsewhere.
It's been a rough day on the world bourses. Numerous high tech
companies announced that corporate earnings will not meet
expectations and the much anticipated U-S jobs report also
disappointed. In Europe, the major indices are all down including
Germany's DAX which is off over 100 points, while the technology
index, the Nemax All Share has hit a new record low today by
dropping over 4 percent. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial
Average is off almost 200 points and the tech heavy NASDAQ is down 3
percent, hovering just over the psycologically important 2000 point
level.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
