News Currents
EUROPE
Russia has moved to heal a rift with Ukraine by awarding part of the disputed Black Sea fleet to Kiev, a joint statement published by Tass news agency yesterday said.... Georgia's new military leaders held talks yesterday on a promised transfer to civilian rule after toppled President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was granted temporary exile by Armenia.... Croatia and Yugoslavia's federal Army agreed Saturday to hold regular talks to help maintain a nine-day-old cease-fire in the breakaway republic.... British Prim e Minister John Major called on other world leaders to sign a treaty to combat global warming and support an "Earth Charter" that would provide the basis for environmental legislation. MIDDLE EAST AND GULF
United Nations diplomat Aga Khan has said that Iraqis were committing many murders to get food, according to a French magazine. "The Iraqi people see themselves as a victim of a plan coming from outside their country," he said.... Israeli Jews dislike Germans and Palestinians more or less equally, according to a survey of prejudice conducted by the German magazine Der Spiegel to mark the 50th anniversary of Nazi genocide. Pollsters also found that 32 percent of Germans were still so prejudiced that they would agree with the statement: "Jews partly have themselves to blame if they are hated and persecuted." UNITED STATES
Even more graphic film exists showing President Bush when he collapsed in Japan, but it has so far been kept from the screen. ABC News said yesterday it had acquired a second video sequence, taken by the same camera that took footage already broadcast, but had no intention of airing it.... Amid criticism by Democrats that the Bush visit to Asia was a failure, US Trade Representative Carla Hills said Saturday it nailed down "dramatic changes" toward removing trade barriers and opening Japan's markets to U S products.... The US government has approved shipment of components of the Patriot missile system to Taiwan to help stave off any possible surprise attack by China, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
El Salvador's armed forces announced major leadership changes Saturday, removing two hard-line colonels from their commands as the military prepares for peace after 12 years of civil war.... The presidents of Peru and Ecuador ended a three-day meeting Saturday without resolving a decades-old border dispute, but agreed to continue their discussions. The meeting ended without a response from Ecuador to a Peruvian offer of access to the Amazon River for navigation and economic integration along their fronti er.... A Cuban court Saturday sentenced three Cuban exiles from the US to death for planning terrorist attacks on the communist-ruled island.