January 26, 1996
Web posted at: 1:50 p.m. EST (1850 GMT)
NEW YORK (Reuter) -- For the second consecutive year, Algeria remains the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, a press freedom group reported.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said that 24 of the 51 journalists killed last year died in Algeria. Russia came in a distant second with seven deaths, Brazil third with four and Colombia fourth with three.
Since May 1993, when Islamic rebels began targeting local reporters and editors, 52 journalists have been assassinated in Algeria -- the largest number the committee has recorded in any country in the last 10 years.
"Six confirmed deaths -- one each in Azerbaijan, Burundi, Croatia and Somalia and two in Chechnya-- were combat casualties. The other 45 cases, including the 24 in Algeria, all appear to have been homicides," the committee said.
NEW DELHI, Jan 26 (Reuter) - A bomb blast which killed two soldiers and wounded three others marred India's Republic Day celebrations on Friday.
A bomb planted by suspected separatist militants exploded in the northeastern state of Manipur, killing at least two paramilitary troopers and wounding three others.
The Press Trust of India said two separatist groups recently appealed to people not to take part in the Republic Day celebrations, which were held across India.
An early morning explosion in the northwestern city of Jaipur delayed the start of a parade celebrating the 46th anniversary of India's constitution. One man was hospitalized.
And security forces foiled an attempt by separatists to attack a parade in Srinagar, in Jammu and Kashmir state, police said. Only hours before celebrations were set to begin, a rocket fitted with a time device was recovered 200 yards from the stadium where Republic Day was celebrated, they said.
TOKYO (AP) -- While the trial for three U.S. servicemen accused of raping an Okinawan schoolgirl continues, the Air Force confirmed Friday that another U.S. enlisted man has been charged with rape -- this time of a 14-year-old American girl.
The latest charges come amid widespread calls in Japan for the withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Japanese island following the September rape and abduction of a 12-year-old girl.
Two U.S. Marines and a sailor are on trial in a Japanese court for that crime, and a verdict is expected next month. In a full-page ad in Friday's New York Times, a Japanese women's group appealed to the United States to remove military bases from Okinawa.
Friday's charges are the third report of rape involving American servicemen since the September sexual assault.
No charges have been filed in the other two cases. One involves a Marine who allegedly raped another Marine. In the second incident, a suspect has not been identified, but the victim claims she was raped at knifepoint by a Marine.
NICARAGUA (CNN) -- A leading candidate for president in Nicaragua narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Thursday.
A bodyguard was killed and three others were wounded when gunmen opened fire at a convoy of vehicles carrying Arnoldo Aleman near the Nicaraguan-Honduran border.
Aleman helped President Violetta Chamorro in her 1990 election defeat of the Sandinistas.
Nicaraguan authorities have been bracing for violence in anticipation of presidential elections this fall.
Police and the army searched the area for the attackers, whose identities were not known.
STRASBOURG, France (Reuter) -- Russia is to join the Council of Europe in a boost for President Boris Yeltsin, but the 38-nation group expects a struggle to get Moscow to embrace its human rights ideals.
In a landmark vote confirming the end of the Cold War, the council's parliamentary assembly voted 164-35 for Russian membership on Thursday despite savage criticism of Moscow's military crackdown in Chechnya.
Moscow will accede to the council, set up in 1949 to help safeguard democracy and human rights, in February or March following ratification by member governments, which is seen as a formality.
As a member, Russia's obligations will include ratification within a year of conventions guaranteeing human rights, protecting minorities, and outlawing torture.
Parliamentarians also voted to urge Russia to end executions "from the day of accession" rather than within three years as originally planned, the official deadline for it to abolish the death penalty under European conventions.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Critics denounced President Ernesto Samper's call for a referendum on whether he should resign over charges of accepting drug money, saying Thursday that such a vote would cost millions of dollars and maybe even provoke civil war.
Trying to stave off political ruin, Samper continues to deny any knowledge of drug money entering his 1994 campaign -- even after his jailed former campaign chief, Fernando Botero, insisted that Samper knew.
The president's proposal Wednesday was widely rejected as a ruse to dodge justice. In the worst case, critics said, a vote could lead to bloodshed. "A popular vote of that kind would engender a confrontation close to civil war in which it's possible the armed forces would have to intervene to restore peace," said Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, president from 1974 to 1978.
Attorney General Orlando Vasquez Velasquez said the constitution forbids a popular referendum on the future of the president.
VIENNA, Austria (Reuter) -- About half a dozen foreign atomic experts helped Iraq develop its secret nuclear program but a German scientist was crucial to Baghdad's race for the bomb, a U.N. nuclear agency source said Thursday.
The German smuggled into Iraq before the Gulf War drawings and technology of a much more advanced nature than had previously been believed, a senior source at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters.
The IAEA forms part of a U.N. Special Commission set up by the Security Council after the Gulf War to root out data on Iraq's plans to develop weapons of mass destruction. The agency was responsible for ridding Iraq of its nuclear arms capability.
Although the agency does not publicly issue the name or nationality of individuals cited in its reports, it passes on details to authorities in their country of origin.
An IAEA official said earlier that new evidence on the scientist had been sent to prosecutors in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Security sources in Germany said the scientist had gone underground and was presumed to be living in Baghdad, but a separate IAEA source said he was neither in Germany or Iraq.
LONDON (CNN) -- Hungry North Koreans are bartering coats for food as famine grows worse in the Communist country, a U.N. official said Thursday.
Trevor Page, head of the World Food Program office in Pyongyang, said children had "wolfed down" special food enriched with vitamins and minerals when it was distributed earlier this month near the Chinese border.
Meanwhile, in South Korea Thursday, North Korean defectors gave dramatic accounts of a widening threat of famine, but their reports could not be independently confirmed. One defector said she saw starving prisoners eating mud.
The World Food Program said last week that several million people are at risk of starvation, including two and a half million women and children.
A disastrous harvest last summer was followed by severe floods -- all of
which created a shortfall of some 1.2 million tons of grain.
BEIJING (CNN) -- China has mounted a campaign to ban tobacco advertising by the year 2000 and slow the growth of its cigarette-smoking population, health experts and Chinese media said Thursday. Thirty-five percent of Chinese over 15 -- or one quarter of the world's smokers -- smoke.
That rate is growing by 2 percent a year.
The nationwide campaign may bring higher taxes to raise funds for anti-smoking campaigns, the official China Daily said.
SINGAPORE (CNN) -- Jacques Cousteau's legendary research vessel Calypso, which sank after being hit by a barge, was dragged from the murky waters of Singapore Thursday.
The 66-foot fragile wooden ship was lifted to the surface by a 230-foot crane, patched, and pumped dry. It was then towed to a shipyard for repairs.
Calypso was featured in Cousteau's long-running television series about the world's oceans. It sank January 8 in the shipyard's shallow waters after it had arrived in Singapore after a research and filming mission in China and Vietnam in 1994. Its next mission was to China.
Cousteau had long planned to replace the Calypso and has been raising funds for Calypso II. He said last month he planned to equip the Calypso II with the latest technology, including a marine laboratory and a television studio, to help children explore the underwater world.
The $20 million craft will also use solar energy and house a helicopter and satellite transmission facilities.
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