DEFCON 2 ANNOUNCEMENT

Saturday 20th November

China has taken a major step toward joining the United States and Russia in
space, successfully testing an unmanned spacecraft that soon could carry the
country's first astronauts into orbit.
The launch took place early Saturday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch
center in northwest China, the state news agency Xinhua reported.
Controllers brought the craft -- dubbed "Shenzhou," or "Vessel of the Gods"
-- down safely in Inner Mongolia about 3:41 a.m.
Sunday (1941 GMT Saturday), Chinese television reported.

Russian commanders say their troops are within three miles (5 km) of Grozny,
as federal forces tighten the noose around the Chechen capital and pound
villages across the breakaway republic.
Clear skies Saturday allowed Russian warplanes to renew bombing raids on
Grozny. Meanwhile, Russian officials began restoring basic utilities to
areas occupied by federal troops and urged residents who fled Chechnya to
return.
According to the ITAR-Tass news agency, military officials said that Russian
forces had nearly surrounded Grozny, which Russian aircraft have been
shelling for weeks.
Saturday's resumed airstrikes came amid intense international criticism of
Russia's military campaign in Chechnya. At a summit in Turkey last week,
President Boris Yeltsin angrily rejected calls for negotiations to end the
seven-week conflict.

Bulldozers have started to clear away the wreckage of Turkey's earthquake
last week, a day after the search for survivors was called
off.
The official number of those killed by the quake has risen sharply to 705 -
an increase of almost 100 since Friday.
All foreign rescue teams are reported to have left the country, or to be on
the point of doing so.
The earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, hit the north-west
of the country on 12 November.

Sunday 21th of November

Russia said its forces have surrounded 80 percent of the Chechen capital,
Grozny, where more than 5,000 guerrillas are preparing to resist the federal
offensive.
Russian forces were moving into Achkhoi Martan, a town they easily seized
last week, and were preparing to take the rebel stronghold town of Urus
Martan, near Grozny. That will complete the encirclement of the city, a
Defense Ministry spokesman in Moscow said. He said 5,000-6,000 militants
were barricading themselves inside Grozny as the Russian troops approached
the city.
In some places, the Russians have taken positions as close as five
kilometers (3 miles) from Grozny, the press center of the Russian command in
the northern Caucasus said.
On Chechnya's border with western neighbor Ingushetia, the flow of refugees
has appeared to have reversed as many Chechens took Russian advice to return
to their villages, with assurances they would not be bombed.

Sri Lanka
At least 38 people were killed when artillery shells fell on a Catholic
church in which they were sheltering from the latest fighting
between government troops and Tamil Tigers separatists.
More than 3,000 people had taken refuge in the compound of the church - one
of Sri Lanka's holiest shrines - in the pilgrim town of Madhu.
The local Roman Catholic Bishop, Dr Rayappu Joseph appealed for soldiers on
both sides to withdraw from the area, which is supposed to be a
demilitarised zone.
Several hundred government troops were in  the vicinity.

A reported call by US President Bill Clinton for Britain to return the Elgin
Marbles to Greece has been angrily rejected.
Government officials insisted there was no question of giving up the
2,500-year-old sculptures displayed at the British Museum.
And Sir Patrick Cormack, Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Heritage
Group, warned Mr Clinton to stay out of the diplomatic row that has rumbled
on for decades.
"This is quite extraordinary. The ownership and custody of the Elgin Marbles
is no business of the President of the United States of America," said Mr
Cormack, Tory MP for Staffordshire South.
"As he enters his lame duck period, he should concentrate on issues which
unite the Alliance and not on issues which are divisive.
Greek officials said the US President had promised to support their claim
after touring the Acropolis in Athens this morning as part of a state visit.
"He said if it would be me, I would give them back immediately," said
Elisavet Papazoi, Greece's minister of culture, who accompanied Mr Clinton
and his daughter, Chelsea, on the tour.
She said Mr Clinton pledged to raise the matter with Prime Minister Tony
Blair during a weekend conference in Florence, Italy.

London England
LORD ARCHER'S political career ended in disgrace last night when he was
forced to withdraw from the race to be mayor of London after admitting that
he lied 13 years ago.
He had asked a close friend to falsify an alibi at the time when he was at
the centre of a scandal about an alleged relationship with Monica Coghlan, a
prostitute.

THE captors of four British-based engineers who were beheaded in Chechnya
last year made a "snuff movie" of the executions and forced a group of
fellow hostages to watch it, the survivors have revealed.
Former hostages who spent two months with the engineers in a rat-infested
cellar have given The Sunday Times a detailed account of their final days.
The severed heads of the three Britons and a New Zealander were found last
December in a sack by the roadside. First reports suggested the men had died
during an attempt to free them by force, but the survivors' accounts make it
clear they were killed in cold blood.
All the hostages expected a similar fate, said LaMagomed Chaguchiyev, 60, an
economics professor and former Chechen deputy prime minister. "Everybody in
the cellar lived with that fear," he said.
The account emerged as the latest conflict in the breakaway republic
intensified. Russian troops yesterday advanced to within a mile of Grozny,
the capital, and resumed a ferocious bombardment. A member of the Chechen
government admitted that Islamic separatist rebels were withdrawing in the
face of the assault but threatened a long guerrilla war.

Monday 22th November

Several soldiers were killed when Nigerian troops moved onto the offensive
in the oil-producing Niger Delta at the weekend, storming a hideout of armed
ethnic Ijaw youths, local officials said on Monday.
Military sources said several soldiers were killed and wounded in the
assault on the village of Odi, the base for a band of youths believed
responsible for killing at least a dozen policemen.

Authorities across Europe are taking action to tackle the spate of bad
weather that has been plaguing much of the Continent.
In southwest France, hundreds of drivers were stranded in lay-bys
and at service stations on Sunday after freezing weather and snowstorms
blocked off major roads in the Rhone Valley.
There was up to 4 inches of snow in some southern coastal regions and
several train services were disrupted.
Power was cut off in at least ten thousand homes between Loriol and
Montelimar.
The cold snap also stretched to Spain, trapping thousands of people in the
mountainous regions of Castille and Leon.
The chilly conditions also whipped along the Catalan coast - severe
snowstorms forced Barcelona's Airport to close for several hours.
Even the Balearic islands have been blighted by blizzards, with up
to5 inches of snowfall.
There was no escape in Italy's northern regions. A surprise snow
flurry fell on Venice, already under more than a metre of water following
last week's heavy rains.
Last week, stormy seas tore through Trieste and have halted numerous ferry
services between Naples and the Gulf islands.

Sinn Fein has called a special meeting for Wednesday to discuss the
political situation now that U.S. mediator George Mitchell has wrapped up
his review of the Northern Ireland peace process, officials said on Monday.
The party said the Dublin meeting, at which Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams
will give a keynote speech, would address conditions following the
conclusion of 11 weeks of talks chaired by the former U.S. senator.
It will be attended by party members from Dublin, elected representatives
and some members of Sinn Fein's national executive, party.

Russian forces are closing in around the Chechen capital Grozny.
As troops searched for rebels Monday fearful civilians kept up their exodus
from the breakaway region.
Nearly a quarter of a million refugees are reported to have fled Chechnya
since Russian airstrikes began in late August.
Weary-looking people, mostly women and children, piled out of pick-up trucks
at the border with the neighboring Russian region of Ingushetia, and began
their trek to find shelter in tent camps or private homes.
It was the only one of five crossing points between Chechnya and the rest of
Russia that was open Monday.
The only other route out of Chechnya is south, across a snowy mountain
range, into Georgia.
Russian officials have been urging Chechens to return to the
Russian-controlled northern part of Chechnya, promising that salaries and
pensions will be paid and gas and other utilities restored.
Interior Troops and riot police continued house-to-house searches for
militants in territory already controlled by Russian troops.
Meanwhile, they were preparing for initial sweeps of the towns of Argun and
Bamut, which Russian soldiers have surrounded.
Russian forces control most of the approaches to Grozny, and military
officials said Sunday that 5,000 to 6,000 rebels had barricaded themselves
in the Chechen capital in anticipation of a Russian assault

Reports are that must of the militants that are fighting are not the same
one's that fought when Chechnya broke away from Russia. The militants fought
in that war are saying that the militants who are fighting now are in the
wrong and have brought the Russian assault on them self's.
Reports are also saying that some of the veteran's from the last war are now
fighting with the Russian's
At the time when this report was written I was unable to confirm this report

Tuesday 23th November

Russian mortar rounds relentlessly hammered the Chechen city of Urus-Martan
on Tuesday in an effort to drive out militants and allow
the Russians to tighten their ring around the capital, Grozny.
With Grozny 80 percent surrounded, Russian aircraft and artillery have
concentrated their fire in recent days on the southern approaches to the
capital --the last escape route for militants.Urus-Martan is 12 miles
southwest of Grozny.
The main road leading south through the mountains to Georgia has been
empty by day, but after nightfall cars and tractors carrying refugees have
ventured out passed burnt-out houses and bridges that have been blown up by
bombs and mines.

U.S. President Bill Clinton urged Kosovo's schoolchildren to help end ethnic
hatred and later told U.S. peacekeeping soldiers their example can help
overcome the sectarian violence that still grips the region.
Addressing several hundred American troops in a tent on Tuesday, Clinton
said hatred and dehumanization form "the most important issue in the whole
world today."
To the Kosovar children and their parents, Clinton urged greater tolerance.
"You can never forget the injustice that was done to you," Clinton told
them. "No one can force you to forgive what was done to you. But
you must try."
Speaking to the children in a chilly school gymnasium, Clinton drew round
after round of cheers as he recounted the leading role the
United States played in the 78-day air war against Yugoslav government
troops. Military fighting stopped five months ago.
'Only you can win the peace'
"You cheered for us when we came in because when you were being oppressed we
stood by you," Clinton said. The crowd was more subdued as Clinton
continued: "We won the war, but listen -- only you can win the peace. The
time for fighting is passed."

The number of HIV-positive women in Africa has surpassed infected men for
the first time, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS announced
Tuesday.
Worldwide, an estimated 33.6 million people, including 1.2 million children,
are carrying the virus that causes AIDS, program officials said.
About half of all people who acquire the AIDS virus become infected
before they turn 25 and typically die before their 35th birthdays, according
to the UNAIDS report.
Some 2.2 million people died of AIDS last year, UNAIDS officials said.And
more than 16 million people have now died of the disease, which destroys the
body's immune system.
The AIDS virus continues to spread at a growing rate, UNAIDS officials said.
In 1999 alone, 5.6 million people will have become
infected with HIV. The rate of infection in the former Soviet Union is
skyrocketing.
This year also will see 2.6 million deaths from AIDS, the highest annual
global total since the disease began to take hold in the late 1970s,
reported UNAIDS officials.

Wednesday 24th November

An outlawed pro-British group announced Wednesday it will not talk to
position at odds with the latest plans to make Northern Ireland's peace
accord work.
The announcement by the Ulster Defense Association -- the biggest
paramilitary group in Northern Ireland with more than 1,000 members in
hard-line Protestant districts -- was certain to complicate and confuse
efforts to persuade others to compromise.

Russian forces say the capital will surrender in a few weeks Chechen
military leaders have denied Russian assertions that rebel fighters are
abandoning the capital, Grozny, for the mountains in the south.
Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov has said resistance against the Russians will
continue, and is reported to have deployed 3,500 fighters to keep open the
remaining southern routes out of Grozny.

A number of civilians have reportedly been killed in Nigeria's oil-rich
Niger Delta region following a clampdown by the army.
The region remained sealed off as the military operation to restore peace
continued.
Some of the 2,000 soldiers involved said they had killed many youths and
that the town of Odi had been destroyed.
Earlier, anonymous government officials in the Delta city of Port Harcourt
were quoted as saying 43 people had been killed since the army entered the
oil-producing region late on Friday.

U.N. relief agency officials are requesting more than $2 billion from the
international community to help what they call "the forgotten people," those
suffering in humanitarian crises from the Balkans to North Korea.
For only the second time, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the
office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have banded together to
make the joint appeal, which seeks to help 34 million people in 14 regions.
"The $2.3 billion we are asking you for today is a large figure, but it is
far less than what the world spends on military purposes in a single day,"
said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking in Geneva to
representatives of donor nations.
Annan said he was dismayed that while some crises grab the world's
attention, others go on for years practically unnoticed.
U.N. programs to help victims of the civil war in Sudan, for example, were
90 percent funded this year.
But not far away, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, similar programs have
only received 18 percent of the needed funding.

A failed surprise attack by government-allied Mayi-Mayi fighters in
rebel-controlled northeastern Congo ended in the deaths of about 200
combatants, an Italian missionary news service said Wednesday.
The MISNA report gave the first casualty figures on Tuesday's battle, which
Ugandan security sources had described Tuesday as fierce.
Forces allied with Congo President Laurent Kabila signed a peace accord in
August with rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Congo's Mayi-Mayi fighters
are not party to the peace accord and have been   According to both MISNA
and Ugandan security sources, the Mayi-Mayi
tribal fighters launched Tuesday's fighting, attacking a camp of Uganda
soldiers and their allies at a small airport outside the town of Butembo
near the Congo-Uganda border.
The rebels had been expecting the attack and were able to repel it, MISNA
said. The Mayi-Mayi gained control of the airport only briefly.

November 25

Russian troops skirmished with Chechen militants Thursday near the town of
Urus-Martan, a key gateway to the Chechen capital, while jets flying
high-altitude combat missions roared overhead.
Russian planes and artillery have been bombarding Urus-Martan, 12 miles
southwest of Grozny, for days in an attempt to force an estimated 3,500
rebels from the town. Occupation of the town, one of the largest in
Chechnya, would give the Russians a staging point for an assault on Grozny
from the south.
Russian troops were trying to advance on Urus-Martan from the west,
engaging militants in small clashes along the way. The streets of
Urus-Martan were deserted, with window panes in almost every house shattered
by the relentless Russian shelling.
 

Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanajo says that 27 bodies have been found
after ethnic violence flared in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos.
He warned that suspected rioters would be shot on sight if they did not give
themselves up.
"When people decide to behave like animals then they must be treated like
animals," the president said on state television.
Police found the bodies in the main Mile 12 market in the Ketu district, a
densely-populated suburb on the northern outskirts of the city.

Two bombs have exploded on the Mediterranean holiday island of Corsica.
At least eight people were injured following an anonymous phone call to a
radio station.
Two additional bombs failed to go off.
The blasts happened after a Corsican Nationalist Leader was given a 28 year
prison sentence for killing a French soldier.
An Interior Ministry spokesman in Paris said the wounded were not seriously
hurt.
One powerful blast caused severe damage and started a blaze at an office
collecting payroll taxes.
No one immediately claimed responsibility. French television showed footage
of one blast and said a Corsican radio station had received advance warning
of the attacks.
The blasts came as a state prosecutor asked a Paris court to sentence a
leading Corsican separatist to 28 years in prison. Charles Santoni is on
trial on charges of killing a policeman in Ajaccio three years ago.

Russia is planning a merger with ex-Soviet Belarus, according to Russian
news agencies.
President Boris Yeltsin summoned Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and
top ministers to discuss the military drive into Chechnya and a planned
"union treaty" with Belarus,  its Slav neighbour to the West.
The Kremlin could give no immediate details of the meeting.
The treaty is to be signed in the Kremlin on Friday by Yeltsin and
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The treaty is backed by the majority of population in both countries but
vigorously opposed by nationalists in Belarus and liberals in Moscow.
It provides for gradual integration and the creation of supranational
bodies.
Both countries have made it clear that Belarus and Russia would fully
maintain their sovereignty.
Itar-Tass news agency quoted Kremlin sources as saying the meeting also
focused on Chechnya, where Russian troops are fighting separatist rebels.

Russia's President Boris Yeltsin is ill with bronchitis together with a
viral infection, according to Kremlim officials.
His doctors say he will be out of action for a couple of weeks.
Yeltsin is said to be resting at his country home west of Moscow which is
believed to mean his illness is not serious.
"The doctors say from one to two weeks, not taking into account the
president's irrepressible character," the first deputy head of the Kremlin
administration, Igor Shabdurasulov, told a Russian television company.
"I do not think it is so serious," he added.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told reporters the president "has just lost
his voice and has a cold".
Yeltsin's fresh bout of ill health, part of a series of problems including
heart attacks, stomach ulcers and colds over several years, forced the
postponement of the signing of a union treaty with Belarus, scheduled for
Friday.

CHECHNYA'S President Maskhadov vowed yesterday to defend the strategic town
of Urus Martan all winter if necessary, raising the likelihood of a long
war.
Russian army commanders have said they expect Urus Martan to fall in days.
For that to happen a 3,500-strong defence force would have to withdraw, but
yesterday Mr Maskhadov's Chief-of-Staff, Mumadi Saydayev, dismissed reports
of a withdrawal into the mountains as rebel fighters strengthened defences
west of the town.
There were more signs throughout southern Chechnya that Russia's so-far
steady progress into the region may be about to grind to a halt. In Grozny,
outlying streets are being mined and oil tanks buried to be set alight,
creating walls of smoke to stymie the advancing forces, Russian sources
claimed. Fierce clashes were reported on the
outskirts of Urus Martan, and evidence emerged of a setback for Russian
forces last week on the mountainous Chechnya-Dagestan border.
A Chechen official claimed that 200 Russians were killed when two
reconnaissance platoons were ambushed last Friday on the border near
Botlikh, 60 miles southeast of Grozny. The number of dead was impossible to
confirm, but an Agence France-Presse cameraman said he had seen video
footage from the area of 43 bodies in Russian uniform.

Russian troops are preparing to resume the fiercest attacks so far on
beleaguered Grozny.
The Chechen capital was slammed Thursday with hundreds of Russian
rocket shells, launched from several points surrounding the city.
From outside Alkhan-Kala, a village overlooking western Grozny, shells were
seen crashing into the capital, sending huge clouds of orange smoke into the
night sky. Most of the shells appeared to be hitting the industrial
Staroprimoslovsky district in western Grozny.
Meanwhile, Russian units in Alkhan-Yurt, 5 miles southwest of Grozny,
unleashed four 20-second barrages of 100 rockets at the city.

Friday 26 November

Chechen refugees say increasing numbers are being detained at the border.
Russia says it is starting a new phase of its offensive in Chechnya that
will destroy rebel bases in the breakaway republic's southern mountains.
Up to now, the Russian army has concentrated most of its attacks on
towns and villages on the approaches to the capital, Grozny, which it is
attempting to encircle.
Overnight, Grozny itself suffered the fiercest bombardment since the
beginning of Russia's campaign in the breakaway republic three months ago.

                           Analysis
The war in Chechnya is often seen as a war against Islam, or at least a war
against Islamic extremism. It may seem surprising, then, that Russia's
campaign has received its strongest support from some of the
traditionally-Muslim areas of the former Soviet Union.
Indeed the Chechen war has had the effect of bringing most of Central
Asian republics much closer to Russia.
There may be some sympathy for the Chechens, as Muslims, among the
populations there. But among the ruling elites, such is the genuine fear and
loathing of what's seen as Islamic fundamentalism that officials in places
like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have found it difficult to
conceal their very real pleasure that Russia is, as they see it, hitting
back at the religious fanaticism.
Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov, for instance - who only a few months
ago was talking of quitting the Russian-led CIS Security Pact - now seems
only too happy to co-operate in joint military exercises with troops from
Russia and the other Central Asian republics.
The recent emergency in Kyrgyzstan, where Kyrgyz forces for weeks battled
against a mainly Uzbek force of Islamists, has seriously rattled the secular
authorities in all these republics.
But elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, with the notable exception of
Belarus, which is just about to sign a union treaty with Russia, there's
been little official enthusiasm for the Chechen war.
In Ukraine, for example - though many citizens, particularly in the
'Russified' east of the country, may support Russia's action - the newly
re-elected president Leonid Kuchma has assured his people their republic
will not get involved. No "Ukrainian lads", he said, risk being sent there.
And in the Caucasus region the mood, both official and popular, is even less
pro-Russian.
Azerbaijan and Georgia have both clearly been offended by Russian
suggestions that they are wittingly or unwittingly giving the Chechen rebels
support, and see it as an attempt to intimidate them.
Russia has said it will introduce visas for people travelling from its two
southern neighbours. Georgia, meanwhile, has accused Russian forces of
several times infringing Georgian territory in its attempts
to seal the mountainous border between Georgia and Chechnya.
As for the third Caucasian republic, Armenia, it does have close military
ties with Russia and given its strained relations with its mostly Muslim
neighbours there is a degree of anti-Islamic feeling there.
And yet its leaders know that if they want to build up their country's
fragile economy, they'll have to develop relations with the West - and that
means restoring relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan. If that happens,
Armenia's reliance on Russia for 'protection' may
well be seriously reduced.

Indonesian Government investigators are reported to have discovered a mass
grave in East Timor, containing the bodies of at least 25 people.
The dead are thought to be the victims of a pro-Jakarta militia attack on a
church in the port of Suai, following East Timor's overwhelming vote for
independence at the end of August.
A member of the investigation team told the Jakarta Post that three priests.

These are Just a few areas that we are covering.You might call them hot
spots.
But these are pretty much just run of the mill on what is going on.
A few things that seem unimportant are in this report.But If you have been
following my reports over the weeks you will see that I have in the past put
in things that seem unimportant and a few days or weeks laters they are head
line's on your planet.
One thing that I have not put in is that Bill Clinton at a private fund
raise claimed that he had been a life time member of the NRA.
This is a lie.The NRA said that Bill Clinton has never been a member of the
NRA.

Thank you.
Tia