News Currents

MIDDLE EAST AND GULF A US military convoy rolled into northern Iraq from Turkey Sunday, heading for the site of the first American-built haven for Kurdish refugees. Witnesses said 50 vehicles moved across a damaged border bridge into Iraq at 9 a.m. local time. About 17,500 US, British, French, Dutch, and Italian troops have joined in an effort to build and protect camps inside Iraq to encourage up to half a million refugees to return home.... Iraq Saturday extended a 15-day-old amnesty for Kurds to all rebels, including Shi ite Muslims who took part in a failed rebellion against President Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi News Agency reported. The amnesty has been dismissed by rebel leaders.

UNITED STATES

White House chief of staff John Sununu has used military jets more than 60 times over the past two years at a cost of more than $500,000, in many instances for what appeared to be personal or partisan political travel, the Washington Post reported yesterday. A presidential spokesman said policy required Sununu to use military planes in order to stay in "immediate voice contact with the White House at all times." ... A majority of Americans oppose publication of a rape victim's name and believe the truth about the alleged assault of a woman at the Kennedy family compound in Palm Beach has been covered up, a Newsweek poll released Saturday shows. The poll was taken after NBC News, the New York Times, and other news organizations last week broke precedent and identified by name the woman who claimed to be the victim.... Critics of Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates have launched a signature-gathering campaign to have voters decide if the chief should be fired over a police brutality scandal. Hundreds have gathered weekly in front of police headquarters to demand Gates's ouster for a March 3 police beating.

EUROPE

In Iceland's parliamentary elections Saturday, dominated by concern about ties to the European Community and a sluggish economy, the right-wing opposition Independence Party made the biggest gains. But politicians said Sunday it could take weeks to work out which parties would form a new government... Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti's new four-party coalition won a confidence vote in the Senate Saturday, formally installing it as Italy's 50th government since World War II.... Reporters Sans Fron ti 143>res, or Reporters Without Borders, said Saturday in Paris that 41 journalists around the world who vanished or were killed while doing their job last year, while 200 were thrown in jail. The group declared April 20 International Day of Press Freedom and called upon every media group in France to "adopt" a jailed journalist.... Conservative Soviet deputies demanded in Moscow over the weekend that Mikhail Gorbachev impose a six-month state of emergency throughout the Soviet Union.