EVENTS

MIDDLE EAST PEACE TALKS THREATENED

Palestinians suspended all peace talks with Israel Jan. 12 until it allows home more than 400 people expelled to south Lebanon. But Syria is arguing that some talks are vital to the Arabs and should continue. The Palestinian decision, announced by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, throws the year-old Middle East talks into crisis. The Palestinian position was explained immediately to an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo. The foreign ministers reportedly are already urging the United Nations Se curity Council to impose sanctions on Israel if it refuses to let the 400-plus Palestinians go home. Iraqi missiles in north

Iraq is moving around antiaircraft missile batteries in the country's southern and northern no-fly zones in an effort to confuse and provoke the United States-led allies flying patrols there, US officials say. A US Army general said Jan. 12 that the missiles are on operational status in northern Iraq. With the UN Security Council rejecting military retaliation against Iraq for cross-border incursions into Kuwait since Jan. 10, the White House renewed its veiled threat of a response of its own to the miss ile situation. Honecker can't be tried

Berlin's Constitutional Court said Jan. 12 that former East German leader Erich Honecker was too ill to stand trial but refused to order his immediate release. The court said a decision on Honecker's possible release must be taken by a Berlin criminal court where the former communist leader and three associates are being tried for manslaughter. `Harvard Mouse` hit

The decision to grant a patent for the "Harvard mouse," an animal genetically engineered to develop cancer, was contrary to morality and should be revoked, a coalition of animal welfare groups said Jan. 12. Representatives of the coalition, led by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Compassion in World Farming, said inventions that were "contrary to morality" broke the European Patent Convention. Women in combat

Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Jan. 11 he believes there will have to be more openings for women in combat planes and on warships but not in ground combat. He also said that if President-elect Clinton and Congress decide to allow homosexuals in the military, then "we as professional members of the military must conform to that policy." GM `won't go broke'

An independent audit of General Motors Corporation's books shows the ailing auto giant is "not going broke" and is on target to break even in 1993, the company said Jan. 11. Speaking to reporters at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, GM Executive Vice President William Hoglund said the review, conducted by J. P. Morgan & Co. and presented to GM's board of directors, confirmed the automaker's own internal financial assumptions. Toxic waste suit starts

The Stringfellow hazardous waste dump was an unregulated site that leaked toxic chemicals into a nearby community, an attorney said as a trial got under way Jan. 12 in Riverside, Calif. The dump, which operated from 1956 to 1972, polluted the town of Glen Avon's water supply, and chemicals sprayed into the air to evaporate polluted its air, attorneys argued. Killings in Bombay

Army units in Bombay tightened their grip on the city Jan. 12 to halt what one newspaper described as a virtual pogrom against Muslims, but scattered cases of arson looting and killing continued for the seventh day running. Police said 10 more people were killed on Jan. 12 in the Hindu-Muslim clashes that have paralyzed India's business capital, including a councilwoman on the Bombay Municipal Corporation who was shot dead as she was leading Hindu rioters. Over 200 people have beeen killed.