EVENTS
OIL CLEANUP PROGRESSING IN TEXAS Gooey crude oil and gasoline, some of it burning, stretched 20 miles down the flood-swollen San Jacinto River, keeping cleanup crews busy yesterday. Coast Guard Capt. Richard Ford estimated the cleanup would take at least a week. The continued burning of oil and other fuel leaking into the river from punctured pipelines was aiding cleanup crews, since less had to be contained with booms and vacuumed with skimmers. Federal officials said they believed debris in the river, overflowing after torrential rains earlier in the week, punctured the pipelines, spewing gasoline, diesel fuel, and crude oil into the waterway. The river was measured Saturday at 30.1 feet, more than 6 feet over flood stage but down more than a half-foot from Friday's record levels. N. Korea welcomes pact
North Korea yesterday hailed as a ``milestone'' the US-engineered nuclear deal it signed last week and denied once again international suspicions that it is making nuclear weapons. The pact, signed Friday in Geneva, obliges North Korea to freeze its nuclear program and allow inspections after five more years of secrecy. In exchange, it gets replacement reactors less dangerous than its current ones and a supply of conventional energy until the new reactor is complete.
A first for Mozambique
Mozambique will hold its first multiparty election on Oct. 27 to 28. Mozambicans have known only leftist one-party rule since they became independent from Portugal in 1975 and civil war for almost as long. Its 6.3 million registered voters must choose from among 14 political parties for a new legislature and among 12 presidential candidates. President Joaquin Chissano and his party are expected to defeat the former rebel movement Renamo.
Rightists in Austria
Thousands of chanting leftists and a daunting police presence forced rightists to cancel a march Saturday through Innsbruck, Austria, and to restrict their activities to an indoor meeting. More than 1,000 members of revanchist organizations in Austria, Germany, and the Italian-governed southern Tyrol region met to commemorate the anniversary of Austria's loss of southern Tyrol to Italy 75 years ago.
UN pushes Angolan peace
UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi appears ready to accept a new power-sharing deal that could bring peace to Angola after 19 years of civil war, a UN envoy said Saturday.
``There are strong indications UNITA will sign the Lusaka agreement,'' UN envoy Alouine Blondin Beye told reporters on his return from a three-hour meeting with Mr. Savimbi in the rebels' Angolan headquarters. The UN official helped shepherd the 11 months of stormy negotiations in Lusaka, Zambia.
Colombian police fired
In one of Colombia's largest corruption sweeps, authorities have fired 174 police, including many top officers, for links to the Cali drug cartel, the government said Friday. The probe began after a raid on a cartel member's home uncovered lists of police officers and the bribes they were apparently being paid. The Cali cartel reportedly supplies nearly 80 percent of the world's cocaine.
