DEFCON 2 ANNOUNCEMENT

LAGOS, Nigeria Police and civilians in Africa's most populous nation are
bracing for more deadly clashes between members of Nigeria's two largest
tribes.
New outbreaks of fighting between members of the Yoruba and Hausa
tribes were reported Saturday in the Kedu suburb of the commercial capital,
Lagos.
The ethnic fighting has claimed at least 30 deaths in Lagos since Thursday.
Police said they would take no chances of a backlash against Yorubas
resulting from violence earlier this week in Kedu.

OSIRE, Namibia Intensified fighting in Angola's civil war has pushed
thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, and aid officials
fear a new, large-scale wave of fleeing civilians.
U.N. refugee officials said Friday that in recent weeks about 2,400 Angolan
civilians have fled into Namibia and another 3,700 into Zambia. Nearly 2
million people have already been displaced by 25 years of fighting.
At a hot, dusty tented camp 435 miles south of the Angolan border, refugees
described clashes between government troops and UNITA rebels in the Cuando
Cubango district and the eastern part of Kunene province in southern Angola.
Some said they heard gunfire and others claimed to have witnessed fighting
in which one UNITA rebel was killed.
Moses Moyundu said thousands of fellow villagers had stayed behind. The
refugees, mostly women, children and old men, were forced to abandon their
cattle.

  Russia said it was launching a new phase in its campaign against Chechnya
on Friday to complete the elimination of Islamic militants in the southern
mountains. It says it has regained control over most
lowland areas in northern and central areas of the breakaway republic.
"The major part of the third stage of the operation in Chechnya is planned
to be carried out this year," said Valery Manilov, the first deputy chief of
the general staff. He has emerged as the main spokesman on the campaign.
Russian forces have renewed their onslaught against Grozny after launching
the fiercest artillery attacks on the Chechen capital since their
eight-week-old offensive began.
Shells could be seen crashing into the west of the city sending huge
clouds of orange smoke into the night sky in a bombardment that followed
attacks by warplanes.
Russian artillery crews on a position overlooking western Grozny said they
were carrying out the most sustained attack on the city so far.

In the first major counterattack since Russia launched its Chechen
offensive, Chechen militants on Saturday stormed and claimed to largely
retake an eastern town, even as Russian forces kept up a
relentless assault on the capital Grozny.
 
 

Sunday 28th November

Russian troops have offered civilians safe passage out of Chechnya's capital
as a senior Russian officer repeated Moscow's pledge to avoid a direct
assault on the city.
In nine weeks of fighting, the Chechens have steadily retreated as Russian
troops gradually encircled most of Grozny. Both sides have
avoided a major battle, and the commander of Russian troops in Chechnya,
Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, said he hoped to keep it that way.

LAGOS, Nigeria The government has shut down a suburban Lagos market and
imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area which was the scene of bloody
clashes between members of Nigeria's two largest ethnic groups.
At least 17 arrests have been made in connection with the fighting at Ketu,
12 kilometers (7 miles) north of Lagos, which killed scores of people
Thursday and Friday, authorities said.

Congolese rebels and government troops clashed anew on Saturday as U.N.
officers assigned to prepare for the policing of a weak ceasefire accord
began work in the rebel-held east of the country.
Rebel officials said fighting continued on Saturday near Bokungu, about
1,000 kms (620 miles) north of the capital Kinshasa in the northern province
of Equator.

The armed Basque separatist group ETA on Sunday announced the end to a
13-month truce, apparently ruining hopes for peace in this northern Spanish
region.
ETA made the announcement in statements published in Sunday's edition of the
Basque newspaper Gara that is sympathetic to the group's pro-Basque
independence aims, National Spanish Radio said.
ETA also said that with the ending of the truce it was now up to the group's
armed commandos to decide what actions they would take, the radio reported.
The group, blamed for nearly 800 deaths from bombings and shootings
carried out since 1968, called an indefinite cease-fire on September 16,
1998.
The cease-fire ushered in a tentative peace process that stagnated after and
initial round of talks in May between the Spanish government and
representatives of ETA failed to open the way for further dialogue.

Eight civilians were wounded Sunday when U.S. and British warplanes bombed
an elementary school in the city of Mosul, Iraq's official news agency
reported.
The news agency said that the eight injured in the late morning attack on
Al-Zanabeq school included three women and three children -- a 3-year-old
and two 4-year-olds.
U.S. and British jets have clashed repeatedly with Iraqi defenses since
Baghdad declared last December that it would challenge foreign warplanes
flying over its territory.

Paramilitary police have orders to shoot on sight after rioting between
Nigeria's biggest ethnic groups killed up to 40 people in the capital Lagos.
Witnesses reported bursts of gunfire from the Mile 12 market area where
fighting erupted between members of Nigeria's biggest ethnic groups, the
Hausa and Yoruba.

Russian forces say they have intensified their offensive in the breakaway
Chechnya region, attacking the capital Grozny and inflicting heavy losses
onIslamic fighters in a southern valley.
Russian news agencies quoted both federal and Chechen military sources as
saying "anti-terrorist operations" had been stepped up in recent days, with
Grozny coming under relentless fire from warplanes and artillery.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Koshman, the government's special
representative in Chechnya, told NTV commercial television that civilians
had been offered a corridor to escape the intensified attacks.
"I think there are still people there, but it is not a large number, and for
these people a corridor has been left in agreement with federal forces,"
Koshman said. Leaflets had been scattered around the city informing people
of this.
A Russian military source, quoted by Itar-Tass news agency, said several
rebels were killed and wounded in the Argun river valley leading into
mountains to the south.
"Armed militants are continuing to prepare multiple lines of defence of
Grozny and Argun," Tass reported, adding that small groups of fighters were
also launching sporadic raids behind federal lines.
The reports indicated no let-up in the nine-week-old offensive or a change
of tactics despite Western concern about civilian casualties and a flood of
more than 200,000 refugees.

The International Monetary Fund warned that negative world reaction to the
war could put Russia's IMF loans at risk.
"We cannot go forward with the financing if the rest of the world doesn't
want to," IMF head Michel Camdessus told reporters in Madrid on Saturday,
referring to a delayed $640 million loan.

Yeltsin ill again President Boris Yeltsin is working at his country estate
while he recovers from a viral infection and acute bronchitis.
"The president is undergoing medical treatment and working on documents at
Gorky-9," his secluded residence in the woods west of the capital, the press
service said.
Yeltsin's doctors sent him home from the Kremlin Thursday afternoon after
treating him briefly at the Central Clinical Hospital.
The president has canceled meetings with foreign leaders over the next 10
days, but plans to continue to work at his country residence.
Dr. Sergei Mironov, head of the Presidential Administrative Department
Medical Center, told the ORT television network Friday that "the condition
of Boris Nikolayevich is now satisfactory. Still, he is coughing and has a
fever."
Asked about Yeltsin's treatment, Yakushkin said: "he's using the same home
remedies that are used by every person - hot milk with honey or homemade
jam."
It was the 10th time that Yeltsin has fallen ill since he was re-elected in
1996. The doctors' decision to send him home rather than the hospital
indicated that the current illness is relatively mild.
Yeltsin canceled meetings with foreign leaders, including Belarusian
President Alexander Lukashenko, who was to have come to Moscow on Friday to
sign a controversial union treaty between Russia and Belarus.
Yeltsin, 68, has frequently suffered from respiratory infections,
particularly in winter. He has also suffered from a bleeding ulcer, double
pneumonia and unstable blood pressure. He came down with bronchitis in
October 1998 and had to cut short a trip to Kazakstan.

Russian forces have renewed their onslaught against Grozny after launching
the fiercest artillery attacks on the Chechen capital since their
eight-week-old offensive began.
Shells could be seen crashing into the west of the city sending huge
clouds of orange smoke into the night sky in a bombardment that
followed attacks by warplanes.
Russian artillery crews on a position overlooking western Grozny said they
were carrying out the most sustained attack on the city so far.

Monday 29th November

A bomb explosion has injured 48 people in a packed pizza restaurant in South
Africa.
Tourism authorities condemned the attack which rocked the tourist resort of
Camps Bay, south of Cape Town.

Northern Ireland will get down to the business of government on Monday as
Assembly members meet at Stormont to begin forming a power-sharing
executive.
But the nomination of ministers to Northern Ireland's first government for
25 years could be delayed by several hours.
Unionists opposed to sharing power with republicans are hoping to win enough
support to open a debate on a motion to exclude Sinn Fein.
Their opposition is just one of the challenges facingthe pro-Agreement
politicians on the day when they are to nominate 10 ministers to an Assembly
executive at Stormont.

Eight years of violence has left 100,000 people dead
Suspected Islamist extremists in Algeria are reported to have killed at
least 28 people in two separate attacks over the weekend.
Government security officials said 18 people were killed when rebels opened
fire in the village of Nfissa in Ain Defla province, some 130 kilometres (80
miles) southwest of the capital, Algiers.
Several of the victims died on the way to hospital, a television report
said.
In an attack on Saturday, a group of nine people and a soldier were killed
at a false checkpoint near Chebli, 35 km south of Algiers.

tueday 30 november

Minutes after a dusk-to-dawn curfew took effect, Seattle police in body
armor and riot gear fired tear gas into crowds and charged demonstrators who
refused to leave the downtown area of the city.
Mayor Paul Schell imposed the curfew from 7 p.m. to daybreak on downtown
districts after violent clashes during street protests Tuesday scuttled the
planned opening ceremonies of the World Trade Organization conference.

The convicted embezzler tapped to head the Moscow-backed government in
Chechnya collected and armed recruits for a paramilitary force during a tour
Tuesday of a Russian-held Chechen city.
Meanwhile, Moscow shrugged off mounting international pressure Tuesday for a
diplomatic solution to the fighting, showering bombs on the last rebel-held
route to Grozny in the ongoing battle for the Chechen capital.
The rebels retaliated by staging ambushes in small groups and firing at
Russian jets with large-caliber machine guns and shoulder-held rockets. The
militants have been resisting tenaciously on several fronts in recent days.
In a new move Tuesday, Russian commanders gave Kalashnikov rifles and
uniforms to a pro-Moscow militia composed of Chechens who say they will
fight alongside federal troops.
The group is led by Bislan Gantamirov, a former mayor of Grozny who was
serving a prison term for embezzlement before Russian President Boris
Yeltsin pardoned him earlier this month and chose him to lead a
Moscow-backed Chechen government.

Wednesday 1th December

As President Clinton prepared Wednesday to address the World Trade
Organization in Seattle, demonstrators who battled with police, throwing the
conference into chaos on its opening day, vowed to repeat the disruptions.
Authorities insisted that wouldn't happen.
Streets in downtown Seattle were littered with glass and other debris after
activists smashed storefront windows, sprayed graffiti, slashed
police car tires and set trash containers on fire. Police were clearing
protesters out of the city center.

Clearing up is under way in London following violent clashes between police
and anti-capitalist demonstrators.
Forty people were arrested and a police van set alight during the
disturbances, which were part of an international day of protest to mark the
opening session of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks
in Seattle. Seven people, including a policeman, were injured.
Violence in Seattle led the Mayor, Paul Schell, to declare a civil emergency
and call in National Guard troops, just hours before US President Bill
Clinton's visit to address the WTO.

Thousands of people are being evacuated from Kinshasa, the capital of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, ahead of what could become the "flood of the
century".
Kikoy Kikum, the head of DR Congo's waterways authority warned that the
overflowing Congo River is feeding a flood which "will last until January
and will probably surpass" two other major floods this century in 1903 and
1961-62.
The flooding has forced the authorities to move up to 16,000 people to
disused factories and government buildings.
Almost a fifth of Kinshasa's districts have already been hit by the rising
waters, and tens of thousands of people are potentially at risk.

A curfew went into effect late Tuesday, as Washington Governor Gary Locke
called up unarmed units of the state's National Guard to help keep a lid on
anti-World Trade Organization protests that turned violent. Police from
cities as far away as Spokane also are being sent to help.
Seattle Mayor Paul Schell has declared a state of civil emergency and
imposed a 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m (10 p.m. EST - 10:30 a.m. EST) curfew on
downtown areas of the city after violent scenes during street protests
scuttled the planned opening ceremonies of the conference.
Police said violators -- anybody that does not have "legitimate business" in
the downtown area where the WTO conference got under way behind schedule
Tuesday -- will be immediately arrested.

Russia's top military official stepped away Wednesday from earlier Russian
claims that its army would drive Islamic rebels from Chechnya by the end of
the year, instead saying the operation could take "one, two, three months."
Still, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said the Russians, battling militants
who twice this  summer invaded the neighboring Russian
republic of Dagestan, were winning the nine-week old campaign.
"The bandits' situation is getting worse," Sergeyev said while on an
inspection visit to an infantry division sent from Moscow, "and this is the
logical outcome of our Chechen operation, which we think will be completed
in the near future, one, two, three months."
Russian troops chased the militants into Chechnya after the summer's second
invasion of Dagestan and a series of deadly bombings inside Russia, which
the Russians blame on the rebels and in which the rebels deny any
involvement. At the time, the Russians vowed to rid Chechnya of what they
called "bandits" and "terrorists" by the end of 1999.

Nigeria is on the verge of an AIDS explosion that could kill millions and
wreak untold economic damage, a new report warned on Thursday.
The study released to coincide with World AIDS day showed overall HIV
infection rates in Africa's most populous nation of 5.4 percent, climbing as
high as 21 percent in the worst affected areas.
"Having reached prevalence of over five percent Nigeria has entered the
stage where the epidemic is likely to increase at an exponential rate if
adequate national response is not mounted," the study said.
Like other West African countries, Nigeria has been less severely affected
by the epidemic than eastern and southern Africa.
But its population of more than 108 million means that it already has more
people infected with the HIV virus which leads to AIDS than many other
African countries.

Thurday 2rd December

Chechen forces came under heavy fire in Grozny and two nearby towns
Thursday, but the Russian military acknowledged that the militants were
well-entrenched in the Chechen capital.
Chechen military commander Isa Munayev said a number of people were killed
in Grozny, and claimed the Russian side lost a large number of armored
vehicles and soldiers, the Interfax news agency reported.
The Russians concentrated their airstrikes and artillery shelling on Grozny,
Argun and Urus-Martan, three places that have been under sustained attack
for the past week. Munayev said the fighting was particularly intense at
Urus-Martain, where the militants came under "drenching fire."
As with earlier operations, the Russians have been bombarding the militants
from afar in the expectation that the rebels will retreat without a
full-scale infantry battle.

The area of downtown Seattle surrounding the World Trade Organization
conference is under an around-the-clock curfew until midnight Friday as
authorities move to prevent more violence and disruptions.
Outside the curfew area, in an overnight confrontation in a residential
neighborhood that ended early Thursday, police fired tear gas on a crowd
that was a mix of protesters and residents.
Throughout the city, nearly 500 people were arrested on Wednesday alone,
police said.
In imposing the curfew, Mayor Paul Schell -- who says he agrees with many
issues voiced by tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators who marched in
Seattle on Tuesday -- said the chaos brought on by a radical few forced his
hand.
In the aftermath of sometimes violent demonstrations and a downtown ripped
up and boarded shut, Schell on Wednesday ordered a second night of 7
p.m.-7:30 a.m. curfew for all of downtown Seattle.
He tacked on a 24-hour-a-day curfew in a 46-block area surrounding WTO
meeting venues until midnight Friday, after the conference ends.

WHILE the Western world busies itself with millennium preparations, people
in the Indian state of Orissa have more serious issues to contend with. Tens
of thousands of adults and children face a grim winter after the cyclone
that hit the coastal belt in October, leaving 12 million people homeless and
causing devastation in what was already one of India's poorest states.
Children are housed in temporary bamboo huts, exposed to the hazards of a
stagnant water supply polluted by salt and animal carcasses. In many areas,
schools have been destroyed and children are surviving on an inadequate
supply of rice.

Friday December 3rd

  Russian military commanders retracted earlier claims that they had taken a
key Chechen town outside Grozny on Friday, reporting instead that Russian
forces have surrounded Argun and shelled Islamic militants who are inside
the town.
The badly mismatched militants -- 500 rebels are reportedly battling 20,000
Russian soldiers -- have held off the Russians for three days on Grozny's
doorstep. Argun is just five kilometers (three miles) outside the Chechen
capital.
South of Grozny, where Russian forces have made little headway, a column of
Chechens fleeing the fighting reportedly came under Russian fire. Survivors
of the attack, on several cars and a bus, said at least 50 people were
killed. The report could not be confirmed either independently or by Russian
officials.

Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has re-ignited with ferocious
clashes between the government and rebels on several fronts, including
fighting in the economically strategic region west of Kinshasa.
A three-month-old cease-fire and plans to deploy a large United Nations
buffer force in the Central African nation, formerly known as Zaire, now
appear to be in tatters.
Forces from five neighboring countries have been sucked into the complex
conflict in the heart of Africa.
A military communique published in Kinshasa Friday said Angolan UNITA
guerrillas had linked up with Congolese rebels, already backed by Rwanda and
Uganda, in fighting in the west.
Clashes at the start of the war in August 1998 briefly shut down a land
corridor that includes Congo's lifeblood road and rail link to its main port
of Matadi. The massive Inga hydroelectric dam there
serving Congo and other regional states was seized by rebels, who switched
off power intermittently.
The area has been calm since Angolan, Namibian and Zimbabwean troops
backing Congolese President Laurent Kabila evicted the rebels within weeks
and ended a threat to the capital.

ETA, the Basque guerilla group, ended its 14-month ceasefire plunging Spain
into a renewed cycle of violence.
Security forces were on high alert as Spaniards anxiously wondered when and
where the separatists would strike next.
ETA are fighting for independence for the Basque region of northern
Spain.
"The truce is over," Spanish television announced solemnly

Firemen are battling a blaze at one of Thailand's biggest oil refineries
after an explosion killed two workers and destroyed millions of litres of
gasoline.
The blast at Thai Oil Co's plant in eastern Sri Racha overturned
parked cars and shattered windows of nearby houses, witnesses said.
It was felt in nearby towns several kilometres away.
It destroyed four of nine gasoline storage tanks, company officials at the
scene said.
Firemen were struggling to keep the fire from spreading to a fifth tank by
spraying it with foam, witnesses said.
 

Nasa engineers are searching for the Mars Polar Lander (MPL). The spacecraft
was supposed to have touched down on the surface of the Red Planet at
2015GMT.
Final data from the spacecraft suggested all systems were working properly
and the entry procedure would go well. But there was no signal from the MPL
at 2039GMT, the first opportunity it had to contact mission controllers at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, US.
The delay began what could be a long and anxious wait for scientists who
have spent years working on the $165m probe.

The environmental campaign Greenpeace says the site around the former Union
Carbide factory in Bhopal in central India remains severely contaminated, 15
years after the accident which killed at least 2,000 people.
The accident happened when the plant, which manufactured pesticides, leaked
poisonous gas into the surrounding area.
In its report into the condition of the site, entitled The Bhopal Legacy,
Greenpeace puts the number killed at "an estimated 16,000", with as many as
half a million injured.
Among the toxic chemicals it says remain there is mercury, which is highly
toxic to the central nervous system. Chronic exposure can cause eye and
kidney problems and memory loss, while acute levels may cause respiratory
problems and even death.
Greenpeace says the levels of mercury found in a sample taken in May this
year inside the factory were between 20,000 and six million times higher
than the background levels to be expected in uncontaminated soils.

The Dow industrials rose 247.12 to close at 11286.18 after a midday
300-point surge briefly lifted the blue-chip average above its record
11326.04, set on Aug. 25. Friday's stellar gains left the industrials up
2.71% for the week.
The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index climbed 24.29 to 1433.33 and the New
York Stock Exchange Composite Index rose 9.59 to 646.75.
On the Big Board, where a 994.2 million shares traded, 1,817 stocks advanced
and 1,252 declined.
The Nasdaq Composite Index topped 3500 for the first time, exactly one month
to the day after overtaking 3000. The composite finished Friday up 67.84 at
3520.62.
The composite is up 2.1% for the week, despite Tuesday's tech-sector
bloodbath.
 
 
 

Thank you.
Tia