News Currents

UNITED STATES Now that President Bush has said he will renew preferential trade status to China to lessen that nation's isolation, the focus shifts to Congress, where there is legislation in the works to derail the proposal. Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell of Maine has said a majority in Congress views the president's trade step as wrong. Congress has 90 days to pass legislation blocking most-favored-nation trading status, but Bush could veto it.... A US military adviser said in a videotaped interview that h e

withheld prior information about the killing of six Jesuit priests because he feared the US government would halt aid to the Salvadoran Army in its fight against leftist rebels. Maj. Eric Warren Buckland told an FBI investigator Jan. 12, 1990, in Washington that Salvadoran Col. Carlos Armando Aviles told him of a plan to kill University of Central America Rector Ignacio Ellacuria several weeks before the Nov. 16, 1989, slayings. But Buckland kept the information to himself. He claimed to have forgotten ab o

ut the plan until a week or two after the murders. A transcript of the interview was obtained by United Press International May 27.

AFRICA

Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi said he would fly to Lisbon May 28 to sign an accord ending 16 years of civil war in his country and could move his headquarters to the capital, Luanda, in June. He told reporters he expected the cease-fire signed two weeks ago between Angolan government forces and his National Union for the Total Independence of Angola to hold.... In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, government soldiers, who have not been paid for four months, looted the presidential palace as t h

e rebels took over the city. In London, a cease-fire was agreed upon during US-mediated peace talks between rebel groups and the government. (Story, page 1.)

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Suspected Sikh separatists killed two candidates running for election to the state assembly in Punjab in northern India, bringing the total of those killed in election violence to 11 this month, the United News of India reported May 28.... Heavy rain flooded low-lying areas of the Bangladesh capital May 28 and weather forecasters warned the nation, still recovering from a devastating cyclone, that worse was still to come.... An airliner that crashed in Thailand May 26 could have been bombed on the order s

of Asian drug barons who wanted to kill a British narcotics agent - Donal McIntosh, who was among those killed - British newspapers said May 28.... Concerned that the Japanese space program will be impaired, Japan has protested a possible cutoff in funds by the US Congress for an international space station. Japan, the US, Canada, and the European Community signed an agreement in 1988 to help fund the space station.... An official in charge of women's rights in southwest China has been arrested for abduct i

ng and selling women and dealing with a slave trader, a newspaper in the region said.