EVENTS
RUSSIA BREAKS OFF TALKS WITH LITHUANIA Russia said yesterday it had broken off talks on withdrawing its remaining troops from Lithuania and warned Vilnius that its response would be "swift and decisive" if the Russians suffered any intimidation. The Russian Foreign Ministry statement said the pullout, scheduled under a bilateral deal to take place by Aug. 31, would still go ahead but "at a time convenient to the Russian Federation, of which the Lithuanian side will be informed." Some 2,500 troops remain out of the 30,000 originally stationed in the Baltic state. The Foreign Ministry said Russian troops, their families, and other Russians had been threatened recently. Japanese student killed
A Japanese exchange student who was shot in the head in a San Francisco suburb, died in the hospital Saturday after his parents decided to turn off a life support system, a hospital spokeswoman said.
It is the second time in a year that a Japanese exchange student has been shot to death in the US. In October 1992, a Louisiana man shot and killed a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student, Yoshihiro Hattori, when the teen mistakenly knocked at the door of the wrong house while looking for a Halloween party. The Louisiana man, Rodney Peairs, was acquitted of manslaughter charges by a Baton Rouge jury last May. Navy revisits Tailhook
The Navy is starting new investigations into the Tailhook scandal after dropping charges against half of the aviators suspected of wrongdoing because of weak evidence, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Saturday.
The panels will target five Navy aviators who weren't charged. They also may look into the unresolved cases of about a dozen other officers accused of fondling women at the 1991 Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, defense lawyers and Navy sources told the newspaper. Four officers face courts-martial in connection with the convention. Karabakh official named
Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan appointed a politician from the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh as Armenia's new defense minister Saturday, Itar-Tass news agency said. Serzhik Sarkisyan is a deputy in both the Armenian parliament and the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is nominally an enclave inside neighboring Azerbaijan.
Armenia officially denies taking part in the five-year-old war with Azerbaijan over the territory. But it supplies diplomatic and moral support for the enclave's independence bid, and the Karabakh Armenians get arms and volunteer soldiers from and through Armenia proper. Haiti's premier delayed
Haiti's lower house of parliament postponed debate Saturday on the ratification of Robert Malval, ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's choice for prime minister. The Senate approved Mr. Malval last week. Debate in the House is scheduled to resume today.
Malval's appointment must be approved before a worldwide oil embargo on Haiti is lifted. Nearly all of the impoverished country's oil reserves have been depleted. Peru rebel attack
In an apparent revenge attack, a column of Peruvian rebels identified by Peru's military as from the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) swept through seven villages in the Ene River Valley, 250 miles east of Lima, killing 62 Ashaninka Indians between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
It was the worst attack since Shining Path mastermind Abimael Guzman Reynoso was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment last fall. His capture left the rebels in disarray in Lima, but they are believed still strong in rural areas. Fishermen blockade Valdez
More than 60 fishing boats bottled up the Valdez Narrows on Saturday, preventing oil tankers from reaching the trans-Alaska pipeline terminal in a protest of the area's oil-spill recovery effort.
The blockade was aimed at underscoring unprecedented weak returns of pink salmon in Prince William Sound. Some fishermen blame that, and a weak run of herring this spring, on the after-effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.