News Currents

MIDDLE EAST

Two Germans, the last Westerners held hostage in Lebanon, were handed over to a joint Lebanese-Syrian committee June 16, Syria's official news agency reported.... Iraq said June 16 it is halting all domestic flights indefinitely because of a lack of spare aircraft parts caused by UN sanctions. UNITED STATES

Housing starts jumped 11 percent in May, the government said June 16.... Vittorio Amuso, boss of the Lucchese crime family, was convicted in New York June 15 of murder and racketeering.... Hughes Aircraft Company was convicted June 15 of conspiring to defraud the government by falsifying test data on planes, missiles, and tanks.... The Supreme Court June 15 rejected a pair of challenges to Idaho's capital punishment law, which gives convicted murderers sentenced to death only 42 days to appeal, and ruled

that murder defendants in capital punishment cases must be allowed to ask potential jurors if they automatically would vote for the death penalty if the defendants are convicted. EUROPE

Romania and the European Free Trade Association decided June 16 to negotiate a free-trade agreement, an EFTA spokesman announced.... A bomb left in a hijacked taxi exploded in central London June 16.... Britain June 15 said it will destroy the tactical nuclear weapons it removed from navy ships and aircraft last year. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Protesting government reforms that threaten jobs, millions of Indian workers went on strike June 16.