Starving Ethiopians might have to wait even longer for food because their
government refuses to allow aid to be shipped through the ports of
Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea, U.N. special envoy Catherine Bertini said on
Friday.
The United Nations estimates that more than 12 million people are threatened
by food shortages in Ethiopia and the Greater Horn of Africa, a region from
Ethiopia and Eritrea in the north down to Tanzania and Burundi. Most of
those affected, about 8 million, are in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, which is landlocked, is embroiled in a 23-month border war with
Eritrea and Bertini said she had not been able to convince the country's
leaders to use Eritrea's port of Assab to receive some of the 800,000 tons
of sorghum, wheat, maize and cooking oil.
"The prime minister was not willing to entertain that request," she told a
news conference, the day after meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi.
Ethiopia has boycotted the ports of its Red Sea neighbor Eritrea since a
border war broke out in May 1998, five years after Eritrea won its
independence from Ethiopia. Before the conflict broke out, 75 percent of
Ethiopia's relief food needs came in through Assab.
Meles says the ports of the country of Djibouti and the city of Berbera in
Somalia are capable of processing enough food to satisfy Ethiopia's needs.
"We disagree on the capacity," Bertini said.
Bertini, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Program, has been
sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to respond to the famine. She is
on a weeklong tour of the Horn of Africa, and will also visit Eritrea,
Djibouti and Kenya. She will not visit Somalia, which is also suffering from
drought and food shortages.

A toxic gas attack on a Lisbon, Portugal, nightclub  early Sunday has left
seven people dead and about 65 injured, according to police.
Spanish Consul General Fernando Gonzalez Camino, envoy to Portugal, quoted
Portuguese security police as saying that seven people were killed and 65
injured in the attack. Eight people remain in the hospital on Sunday
morning; the rest were treated and released.
Gonzalez said the attack was caused by a smoke bomb that released toxic gas.
He said that according to Portuguese police, about 1,000 people were inside
the club, called the Luanda after the capital of Angola. Many patrons were
thought to be immigrants from Portugal's former African colonies of the Cape
Verde Islands and Angola.
According to the police, electricity inside the club had been cut off just
before a canister containing the gas was lobbed into the building.
The injured, some suffering from intoxication, shock and injuries received
during the ensuing panic, were taken to three Lisbon hospitals.
A young Spanish woman was among those killed, Spain's foreign ministry
reported.
"There was a lot of panic and many people were crushed," a police official,
who declined to be identified, said.
It was unclear if victims died from the gas, or in a crush from the stampede
prompted by the attack.
Although the four exits in the club were in working order at the time of the
incident, police said the exits could not accommodate the estimated 1,000
people who were trying to escape following the attack.
Images on Portuguese television showed several dozen people standing outside
the disco in the rain after the attack and some high-heeled shoes left
scattered in the street.

A day after black land squatters killed a white farmer, President Robert
Mugabe on Sunday urged the squatters to defend the takeovers of white farms
as Zimbabwe's two-month land-grab crisis turned deadly.
"Don't kill, but hit back wildly," Mugabe said, adding that the country's
white farmers were on their own now.
"We warned the white farmers: We cannot protect you if you provoke the war
veterans. You must accept the consequences," Mugabe said after returning
from an economic summit in Cuba. "There is an expectation I will say to the
war veterans they must get off the land. I will not do that until we start
redistributing the land."
In a separate incident, two government opposition party members also were
killed Saturday when their car was firebombed by suspected supporters of
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.
David Stevens was the first farmer killed since squatters led by men
claiming to be war veterans started taking over hundreds of farms owned by
whites in Zimbabwe, formerly the British colony Rhodesia.
The squatters claim the land was stolen from their ancestors by the British
colonists. More than 900 white-owned farms have been invaded by thousands of
squatters armed with clubs, axes and guns. Some farmers have been beaten and
forced to sign away their land.

Asian equity markets crumbled at Monday's opening with Friday's savaging of
U.S. stocks sparking selling across the region. "The key thing is that
investor psychology has changed from greed to fear," said HSBC Australia
equity strategist John Banos, suggesting there was more pain to come for new
economy stocks.
"I think the trend for new economy, or technology, stocks will not only be
weaker this week, but over the next three months."
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index fell more than five percent in early trade,
Australia's benchmark S&P-ASX 200 index slumped 5.94 percent while Seoul's
over-the-counter Kosdaq reached its daily limit of a 12 percent drop in the
first four minutes of trading. The main stock dived more than 11 percent,
and New Zealand's NZSE-40 fell 4.6 percent. On Saturday in Taiwan, the
Weighted Index shed 5.42 percent.

Asian stock markets plummeted Monday, reacting to the record losses on Wall
Street last week that left many investors wondering if the bull market is
over.
In the world's second largest economy, Japan's benchmark Nikkei Stock
Average fell a staggering 1,793.62 points, or 8.8 percent, to 18,641.06.
Dropping far below the key 20,000-point mark, the Nikkei stood at its lowest
level since Jan. 12, with high-technology stocks being hit the hardest.
In other closely watched markets in Asia, stocks in Hong Kong and
Singapore also plunged sharply. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index did
even worse, down 89.35 points, or 11 percent, to 711.54. The Korea Stock
Exchange said it was a record fall, in both points and percentage. The
Korean index recovered slightly later in the day, but analysts said the
bearish trend was expected to continue.

Nearly a third of Eritrea's population will need food aid this year, as the
government struggles to feed its people in the face of war with neighboring
Ethiopia, according to a new U.N. report.
Agricultural production in the key grain-producing highlands has been
disrupted by the conflict, while the situation has been compounded by
drought in the northern lowlands, it said.
The report, prepared by the U.N. children's agency UNICEF for the weekend
visit of U.N. special envoy Catherine Bertini, said 850,000 Eritreans would
need food aid, out of a population of just three million.
In the small northwestern village of Giset, Bertini talked to villagers
about three years of drought which have left them perilously short of food.
Bertini is touring the Horn of Africa to respond to the threat of
drought-related famine in the region which could affect up to 16 million
people this year.
But Giset's problems are not just about a lack of rain. What nobody says,
but everybody knows, is how the war has magnified the villagers' problems
and stretched their ability to cope to the limit.
"These (lowland) regions are vulnerable to drought... primarily occupied by
pastoralists who even at the best of times rely on grains from surplus
areas," the UNICEF report said.

Europe's leading markets mostly posted losses of 2 percent or more Monday
afternoon, after higher prices on Wall Street at the start of U.S. trading
helped pull major European stocks off earlier lows. Media and financial
stocks were among the region's biggest decliners, while tobacco shares
advanced. London's benchmark FTSE 100 was down 209.8 points, or 3.4 percent,
at 5,931.3, the biggest casualty among Europe's key bourses.
The Xetra Dax in Frankfurt was 2.1 percent lower at 7,065.23, up from an
earlier low of 6,890. A successful debut for shares of Deutsche Telekom's
Internet unit T-Online, which were up 24 percent to 33.40 in Monday
afternoon trade, bolstered sentiment among German tech shares.
The CAC 40 in Paris was off 1.9 percent, or 116.61 points, to 5,901.57,
after the index, more heavily weighted towards technology and media shares
than others in the region, plunged 5.2 percent earlier in the session.
Zurich's SMI dropped 200.6 points, or 2.7 percent, to 7,293.8.

Asian stock markets crumbled Monday as investors dumped equities to seek
safety in cash and bonds in reaction to record losses on Wall Street Friday.
Tokyo ended down 7 percent while Hong Kong closed 8.6 percent lower,
recording its second-largest points drop. Technology-related shares suffered
the sharpest falls, but the selloff
extended across the board as traders expressed little confidence that the
market had bottomed out. Investors anticipated further declines in U.S.
stock markets, weakened by higher-than-expected inflation numbers released
last week. The carnage on U.S. markets Friday saw the blue-chip Dow Jones
industrial average plunge 5.7 percent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite
fell 9.7 percent in its worst-ever one-day decline.
Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 closed down 1,426 points, or 6.98 percent, at
19,008.64, its lowest close since Jan. 25, as falls extended far beyond the
vulnerable technology sector. The slide prompted the Japanese government to
outline plans to prop up the market by pumping in as much as ¥1 trillion
($9.65 billion).
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng ended down 1,380 points, or 8.55 percent, at
14,762.37 as a mid-afternoon rally quickly faded, to leave the market's
telecom and technology shares nursing heavy losses.
Singapore's Straits Times lost 8.7 percent to end at 1,999.39, some 20
points above its session floor. In Seoul, the Kospi index was the region's
biggest casualty, closing down 11.63 percent at 707.75.

Japan is considering intervening in the stock market following the big falls
in Tokyo on Monday.
In common with most world markets, Japanese shares fell sharply in the wake
of the huge losses in New York on Friday.
The key Nikkei index dropped more than 8% in early trading, but recovered to
end down 1,426.04 points at 19,008.64 - a fall of 6.98%.
Now leading members of Japan's ruling three-way coalition are to ask the
government for up to one trillion yen ($9.7bn) to support stocks if needed.
Government spokesman Mikio Aoki said it was too soon to decide if this
course of action should be followed.

U.S. stock markets bounced higher Monday afternoon as margin selling and
bargain hunting played tug-of-war with the technology sector, after both the
Dow and Nasdaq indexes suffered under heavy selling pressure.
"What this is all about is margin selling," said Peter Cardillo, research
analyst at Wesfalia Investments. "Any relief rallies are going to be
temporary but if we close up today that would be a positive."
Around 3:00 p.m. ET, the Nasdaq composite index rose 84.57 points to
3,405.86. That's up nearly 3 percent, but still more than 32 percent below
its March 10 highs, sitting deeply in what Wall Street defines as bear
territory.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 169.70 points to 10,475.47. The
broader S&P 500 index gained 0.97 to 1,358.28.
Analysts said market breadth was a sign the selling was not finished.
Decliners outpaced advancers on the New York Stock Exchange 1,956 to 1,047
as more than 892 million shares changed hands. Losers beat winners on the
Nasdaq 2,934 to 1,049 on volume of more than 2 billion shares.
The dollar was slightly stronger against the euro but weakened versus yen.
Treasury securities edged lower.

Lisbon police said on Monday they had identified suspects involved in the
gas-bombing of a crowded African nightclub, where seven people died and 65
were hurt in the ensuing chaos.
The attack on the crowded "Luanda" discotheque at 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) on
Sunday horrified Lisbon residents in what is normally one of Europe's
quieter capitals.
Wreaths of flowers appeared on the steps of the "Luanda." Shoes and clothing
abandoned by fleeing dancers still lay at the entrance where cobblestones
were stained with blood.
A spokeswoman for the Judicial Police declined to give a possible motive for
the attack on the club named after Angola's capital, but said police were
examining evidence to prepare for possible arrests.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe met Monday with leaders of the African
nation's Commercial Farmers' Union, expressing regret over the death of a
white farmer in weekend violence and promising to bring the chaotic
situation under control.
"The president has given an undertaking to get things back to normality,"
CFU president Tim Henwood told reporters just hours after the talks.
Mugabe did not, however, say that he would order thousands of veterans of
the former Rhodesia's war for independence which ended 20 years ago to leave
the white-owned farms they have taken over in recent weeks.
Henwood said the president "indicated that something like that would happen"
without expressly saying he would order police to comply with a High Court
ruling that they must evict the squatters.
Mugabe supports the land grab, saying it is unfair that 4,000 whites own
one-third of Zimbabwe's productive land, while most blacks have little land
and live in poverty.
"We warned the white farmers, 'We cannot protect you if you provoke the war
veterans,' " Mugabe said on Sunday after returning from a conference in
Havana for developing nations.
Mugabe defended the takeovers, portraying the armed squatters as heroes
fighting inequality of land ownership.

Landslides caused by six days of nearly nonstop rain have killed 15 people,
wrecked homes and forced the evacuation of dozens of residents in this
Andean capital, authorities said Monday.
"We have a total of 15 people dead as a direct result of rain and
landslides, close to 25 people injured to varying degrees and nearly 30
homes completely destroyed," Red Cross representative Rody Camino said.
The rains, coming near the end of the region's September-May rainy season,
started Wednesday and continued nearly nonstop through the weekend, causing
about 150 landslides and prompting the evacuation of some 180 people.
"We have had rain before, but not like this, with landslides inside the
city," said Quito Mayor Alfonso Lasso.
Lasso said 200 city workers with bulldozers, tractors and other heavy
machinery were working to shore up hillsides and dig out neighborhoods.
Ecuador's Meteorological Institute said precipitation in the first half of
the month  had already reached 5.5 inches and was at a pace to set a record.
Average rainfall for April over the last 15 years has never exceeded 6
inches.
With more rain forecast for coming days, eight city districts were
considered at "high risk" of being hit by avalanches, Camino said.

  International aid workers say the drought that has brought famine to parts
of Ethiopia is not as severe as the one that devastated the country in
1984-'85, but, they say, the situation has changed since then both for the
better and the worse.
Lessons learned from the disaster 15 years ago led to the establishment of
an early warning system that began signaling the seriousness of the food
shortage last November.
"Really the situation would be like '84-'85 because if the early warning
system were not in place, even the severity of the problem may not come out
clearly, and the intervention will be started after the situation has
reached a really serious situation," said Teshome Erkineh, of the Ethiopian
Early Warning Department.

Mexico's interior secretary has declared nine drought-stricken states
disaster areas, clearing the way for federal aid, the government news agency
Notimex reported Monday.
States across northern Mexico have been suffering from prolonged droughts
and have experienced less than half of the average rainfall, according to
Notimex reports.
The declaration was for the states of Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila,
Durango, Guanajuato, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa y Zacatecas. Last
week, Sonora was also declared a disaster area.
Similar drought conditions spread across the region last year, killing
cattle, parching crops and forcing some communities to truck in drinking
water.

Zimbabwe's high court convicted an African war veterans' leader of contempt
of court Wednesday for inciting his followers to occupy white farms after
the invasions were declared illegal.
After the verdict was rendered, Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi went to the home
of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe for a meeting.
White farmers who had brought the charges against Hunzvi also went to
Mugabe's residence but were not allowed to attend the meeting.
Since the war veterans began to occupy the land  intended for redistribution
to landless blacks with no compensation for white farmers a policeman and
two white farmers have been murdered and several people injured in numerous
clashes.
Thousands of government supporters have squatted on white-owned farms since
late February, backing Mugabe's plans to take land he says was stolen during
British colonial rule.
The murder of two farmers and the burning of some farms near the capital
Harare have led to panic among the 1 percent white minority. Some families
have left their farms and moved to towns.
Political analysts believe Mugabe is sponsoring the farm invasions to divert
public attention from a severe economic crisis, which has fueled support for
the opposition, and to garner backing for upcoming elections.
Mugabe blames Britain for Zimbabwe's land crisis, saying it has been
refusing to honor its historical responsibility to pay for land reforms
needed to correct colonial injustice.
He says Zimbabwe's 4,500 white farmers occupy about 70 percent of the
country's best farmland.

Cholera compounded by drought has swept through villages in southern
Somalia, leaving more than 110 people dead in the last two days, local
authorities said Wednesday.
More than 70 people have died of the highly infectious disease in southern
Bay Region's Ufatest commune in the last two days, said commune chairman
Madey Mukhtar Ali. At least 40 residents of the nearby village of Bulo Addey
have died of the ailment since Tuesday.
Local authorities in the Bay Region said the search for food and water amid
the three-year drought has weakened thousands of people, making them
vulnerable to the disease, which is spread by contaminated water.
A 30-member delegation of mainly businessmen and traditional leaders was en
route to the Bay Region's hard-hit Qansahdhere district on Wednesday to
deliver medicine.
Bay region Gov. Mohamed Ali Aden Qalinleh pleaded Wednesday for outside
assistance to stem the epidemic. Few international aid organizations operate
in conflict-ridden Somalia, which has had no central government since 1991.

The international response to drought in the Horn of Africa is still not
enough to avert the threat of famine facing up to 16 million people, U.N.
special envoy Catherine Bertini said on Wednesday.
Bertini, executive director of the World Food Programme, said European
nations, the United States and Japan had promised some money in response to
a U.N. appeal, but much more was needed.
"We are most grateful to donors who have made contributions but this is
absolutely nowhere near enough for us to be able to feed people in the
region, to be able to provide food, medicines and other items," she told a
news conference.
Bertini was sent by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to respond to the
threat of famine in the Horn of Africa. She was speaking in the Kenyan
capital at the end of a four-nation tour which also took her to Ethiopia,
Eritrea and Djibouti.
Bertini talked to drought victims in the countryside as well as three heads
of state and other government officials.

A powerful explosion ripped through an apartment block in a small town near
the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Thursday, killing at least three people and
injuring four, an Emergencies Ministry official said.
A ministry duty officer told Reuters the blast in the center of Brovary,
some 12 miles north of Kiev, had ripped through the second to ninth floors
of the nine-floor building.
"So far the bodies of three people have been recovered, but we expect the
death toll may rise quickly," the officer said. He declined to say how many
residents lived in the block or how many might have been there at the time.
"We do not exclude that this might be an explosive device," he said. Rescue
officers from the Interior Ministry and security service were on the scene.
Gas leaks also routinely cause explosions in apartment houses all across the
former Soviet Union.

Taiwan and China traded barbs on Thursday with the island's vice
president-elect, dubbed by Beijing as "the scum of the nation," telling a
visiting Chinese academic to behave himself.
Annette Lu, who swept to power with president-elect Chen Shui-bian in
elections last month, said Taiwan residents have shown"maximum tolerance"
towards Beijing.
Lu accused Yu Keli, an expert on Taiwan affairs at Beijing's Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences currently visiting the island, of being "unbridled."

Air force jets bombed Tamil Tiger rebel positions Thursday amid reports that
the guerrillas overran several military camps and captured part of a
strategic northern highway.
The bombing came as the army withdrew from certain areas after losing 32
soldiers in fierce fighting that began Tuesday, the Defense Ministry said.
Officials said another 134 soldiers were wounded.
"Troops readjusted the forward defense lines," the ministry said in a
statement.
The military was planning to launch counterattacks.
The rebels have been battling to capture the 25-mile stretch of the highway
that links the Tamil city of Jaffna, a former rebel capital, with the
mainland.
The guerrillas have also been trying to take back Jaffna, 185 miles north of
Colombo, whose capture by government forces was a big blow for their
campaign for a separate homeland for the minority Tamils.

He may be only a hunter in Canada's remote Arctic, but Steven Kooneeliusie
certainly knows as much about the practical effects of global warming as any
environmental scientist.
He and the other Inuit whose job it is to brave snow and ice to find
caribou, seal and other animals say the signs of a gradual increase in
temperature are everywhere.
"When I went hunting years ago I used to wear a full-length caribou skin
coat, but now I just wear a light parka. It is so hot these days my
snowmobile often overheats," Kooneeliusie said in the small town of
Pangnirtung, some 1,500 miles (2,450 km) north of Ottawa nearly on the
Arctic Circle.
"We're seeing animals here we've never seen before, and last year I spotted
a swan. The sun is very hot, too hot. For the first time ever people are
actually getting sunburned."
While arguments rage about whether global warming is primarily caused by
pollution, the effects on the ground are all too real in the Arctic. One of
the best places to observe them is the new territory of Nunavut, home to
27,000 people dotted across 750,000 square miles (2 million square km).

Fresh violence on Thursday reduced hopes that a meeting between Zimbabwe's
white farmers and black veterans would ease the tense stand-off in the
country's land occupation crisis.
Veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi told farmers in Marondera that while farm
occupations would continue, the violence would stop and veterans would not
obstruct the work of the farms.
But in a different part of the country, 30 houses were burned and animals
were beaten to death on a farm identified by attackers as a headquarters of
an opposition party.
"Your security on the farms is given and it is given not only by me but by
the president. All other things should stop," Hunzvi said at the meeting.
"There have been aggressions from the war veterans and aggressions from the
farmers. There should be a cessation of hostilities," he added.
Farmers hailed Hunzvi's comments as a "great breakthrough."
"The vets being on the land has never been a problem. It is the fact that
they have stopped us working," said one farmer who declined to be named.
Also on Thursday, a group of about 200 youths rampaged through a white-owned
farm, kicking in doors, smashing windows, beating dogs to
death and setting fire to about 30 farm workers' homes.
The farmer had already left the farm in Arcturus district following threats,
but a leader of the attack said that the farm was targeted because it was a
headquarters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s war of independence began occupying white-owned
farms in February. They say they are reclaiming land stolen under British
colonial rule.
The veterans now occupy between 500 and 1,000 commercial farms mainly around
the capital Harare.

Regional presidents were scheduled to meet Friday in the Zimbabwean resort
town of Victoria Falls to discuss the Congo civil war and the political
violence across Zimbabwe that has left four people dead in the past week.
The participants who arrived for the summit were President Robert
Mugabe, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, President Sam Nujoma of
Namibia and President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, saidGeorge Charamba, a
spokesman for Mugabe.
Angola and Rwanda were sending senior officials to represent President
Eduardo dos Santos and President Paul Kagame at the meeting aimed at
building contact between warring forces in the Congo, he said.
"We hope to set out the parameters for disengagement," Charamba told
reporters.
He said South African President Thabo Mbeki was scheduled to arrive later in
the day for a second regional meeting on Zimbabwe that would not be attended
by Rwandan or Ugandan officials.
The British government has approached regional leaders about mediating
between Britain and Mugabe over the land crisis in Zimbabwe.