[Grapevine] Weekly International Roundup

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____Weekly International News_____
(Politics and Business)

A summary of the world events from various news sources. For complete
details, visit - CNN http://www.cnn.com, The NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com, The Economist http://www.economist.com, The BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk and others.


____Political News______

    THE REBELS WIN

  + Rebels fighting the government in SIERRA LEONE entered the capital,
    Freetown. They already hold most of the country. The president fled the
    capital and international UN staff pulled out.
 

  + Some 500 people, many of them women and children, were said to have
    been murdered in villages near Lake Tanganyika in CONGO. Missionaries
    said rebels opposed to President Laurent Kabila were to blame.


  + Fierce fighting continued in Angola's central highlands between
    government and rebel forces. After a second UN AIRCRAFT was shot down,
    the UN secretary-general was expected to recommend withdrawal of the UN
    peacekeeping force.


  + American and Iraqi military aircraft clashed over the no-fly zone in
    southern Iraq. SADDAM HUSSEIN called on "the Arab nation" to back Iraq,
    rising up against Arab leaders who failed to do so. Several American
    newspapers suggested that UN inspectors in Iraq had spied for the
    United States.
 

  + Iran's intelligence ministry admitted that its agents had been directly
    implicated in the recent murders of political and intellectual
    DISSIDENTS. This unprecedented honesty will boost President Khatami's
    fight for a more open society.



    THE FINAL STAGE

  + The IMPEACHMENT trial of President Clinton, the first such trial for
    130 years, opened in the Senate. William Rehnquist, the chief justice,
    was sworn in to preside amid much confusion. Trent Lott, the Republican
    leader in the Senate, said the trial would probably last until mid-
    February, and that each side would have to argue its case if it wished
    to call witnesses.


  + Mr Clinton, insisting on business as usual, said that he proposed to
    INCREASE DEFENCE SPENDING by $110 billion over the next six years,
    allowing for the biggest military pay increase since 1984. He also
    announced a projected 1999 federal budget surplus of at least $76
    billion, up from an earlier White House forecast of $54 billion.


  + The White House eased restrictions on CUBA: greater freedom to send
    money, more charter flights, a direct mail service, sales of food to
    non-government bodies. But it offered no olive branch to the regime,
    and rejected the full-scale review of policy backed by some senators.


  + COLOMBIA's government and left-wing FARC guerrillas formally opened
    peace talks-about-talks.


  + In MEXICO, the PAN (right-wing) governor of Guanajuato state, Vicente
    Fox, said he would step down in November to pursue the PAN candidacy
    for the presidential election in 2000.


  + Peru's President ALBERTO FUJIMORI appointed a new prime minister,
    Victor Joy Way, giving him the economics portfolio as well.



    SAVAGE STATE

  + Violence flared in PAKISTAN as 17 Shia Muslims were shot dead while at
    prayer in a village in Punjab. The day before, on a road near Lahore, a
    bomb exploded killing four people. Officials believed it was an attempt
    to assassinate the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was due to use the
    route.
   

  + Malaysia's chief of police resigned, saying he took full responsibility
    for injuries received by ANWAR IBRAHIM, the country's former deputy
    prime minister, after his arrest in September.


  + The Supreme Court in the Philippines ordered a six-month STAY OF
    EXECUTION for a convicted rapist. The decision came three hours before
    what would have been the country's first execution in 23 years.


  + The governments of Russia and America both indicated that two KHMER
    ROUGE leaders should be put on trial for the deaths of more than 1m
    people in Cambodia.



    ALIEN GERMANS

  + In response to plans by Germany's ruling Social Democrats to give
    foreigners living in the country DUAL CITIZENSHIP, the opposition
    Christian Democrats and Social Christians said they would draw up a
    protest petition, arguing that the idea would cause social conflict.
    Their plan was called "dangerous" and "irresponsible" by ministers and
    Turkish groups, and criticised even by some Christian Democrats.


  + General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, gave
    warning that full-scale civil war could resume in the Serbian province
    of KOSOVO, home to an ethnic-Albanian majority, within weeks. He blamed
    Serbia for provoking military tension in the province.


  + In a fit of concern about FRAUD in the EU, the European Parliament put
    pressure on several commissioners to resign. If the row is not resolved,
    the parliament could dismiss all 20 commissioners.


  + After Yalim Erez failed to form a government, the Turkish president
    again asked Bulent Ecevit, a hawkish former prime minister, to try to
    form a coalition. TURKEY has had no government since November.


  + Police arrested 12 Mafia suspects in SICILY, after five people were
    shot dead in a bar. It was Italy's worst mob massacre in eight years.


  + FINLAND's communications minister, Matti Aura, resigned amid a scandal
    over the privatisation of Sonera, the state telecoms operator.


  + Two Greek Cypriot ministers resigned in protest at their government's
    decision to bow to pressure from the West and cancel an order for
    RUSSIAN ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES.


[And a couple of must-reads...]
 
 British dozen return from Amsterdam, Thailand enhanced by Viagra - Agence
 France-Press
   LONDON - A dozen British men who took the anti-impotence drug Viagra 
   while vacationing in Amsterdam and Thailand have been returned to 
   their home countries as "casualties" under their travel insurance, The 
   Daily Telegraph reported Friday. 
   
   The paper said the 12 bought the drug to enhance their performance, but 
   panicked when it had not worn off the next day. 
   
   The Telegraph quoted a spokesman for their insurance firm Primary 
   Direct, of Manchester, as saying: "They returned with cushions 
   strategically placed." 
    
  
  
 Man bites dog in sweet revenge - AFP
   Sydney -  A man harassed two years ago by Fatso, a blue heeler dog, 
   has finally got his revenge --by biting him twice on the
   neck, a report said today.
 
   Fatso's owner Marilyn Bathern was driving back to her home in the
   outback town of Elliot, 850 kilometres east of Darwin, when she saw a
   man in the front yard acting suspiciously.
 
   *He said to the dog, *You love people do you?. You love that?*, and
   picked Fatso up and started biting him*, she told the Melbourne Age.
 
   *He was ranting and raving and said *If you try to bite me, I'll bite
   you back*.
 
   Fatso, she said, didn't stand a chance. 
   He was tied up in the yard, which was fenced, with a sign warning
   people to *Beware of dangerous dog*.
 
   The man was being questioned by police.
 



____Business News______

    THE EURO LANDS

  + The EURO -- a single currency for 11 countries of the European Union --
    emerged smoothly on world markets amid restrained trading that left it
    a little stronger. There were few trading glitches. Stockmarkets in
    Frankfurt, Paris, Milan and Madrid rose by more than 5%. Markets in the
    sceptical "out" countries, Sweden and Denmark, were less bubbly. In
    Britain, the Bank of England cut interest rates by a quarter point to 6%


  + The DOLLAR slid against the YEN, but the reason was less the euro and
    more a pronouncement by a top Japanese official that the American
    economy looked bubble-like. Rising yields on Japanese bonds also sent
    investors from dollars to yen. The Dow Jones, on the other hand, soared
    to yet another record, pulling up Asian markets on its coat-tails.


  + A new EUROPEAN STOCKMARKET ALLIANCE between the London exchange and the
    smaller-but-striving Frankfurt came into operation. Several other
    European bourses are likely to join during the year. The eventual aim
    is to create a single trading area for 300 blue-chip European shares.


  + There were more marriages in EUROPE'S FINANCIAL SECTOR. Norway's
    biggest insurer, Storebrand, made a NKr1.6 billion ($215m) bid for
    Finansbanken, a small Oslo bank. Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank,
    made another foray into Italy, taking a 0.75% stake in the country's
    third-largest bank, UniCredito, for about 350 billion lire ($212m).



    PROFIT STRUGGLE

  + After American antitrust officials scuppered the sale of its Tioxide
    chemical unit to DuPont and NL Industries, Britain's ICI is to
    restructure its paints division, cutting 1,000 jobs.
 

  + PHILLIPS PETROLEUM said it would cut 1,400 jobs, 8% of its workforce,
    and take a charge of $339m that will push it into loss in the fourth
    quarter. More than half the job cuts would come in the United States.


  + NORTHROP GRUMMAN issued a profits warning for 1999, saying that its
    earnings will be 15-20% below market expectations, largely because of 
    a fall in its work for Boeing. The aerospace and defence giant also said
    it would take $125m in new pre-tax charges that will cut its fourth-
    quarter profits.


  + Britain's LUCASVARITY, which failed recently to persuade its
    shareholders of the case for a listing in New York rather than London,
    confirmed that it is talking to several firms -- rumour says America's
    Tenneco and TRW -- in the car-parts business, hoping for anything from
    an alliance to a merger.


  + Italian officials have extended until May an antitrust investigation
    into COCA-COLA that should have ended last month.


  + LVMH, the world's biggest maker of luxury goods, ranging from Louis
    Vuitton luggage to Moet & Chandon champagne, said it has bought a 5%-
    plus stake in a fellow luxury-goods maker, GUCCI. Shares in both, which
    have sagged in the wake of belt-tightening in Asia, rose; it is unclear
    whether LVMH plans a takeover.


  + Loss-making AMAZON.COM said sales in the fourth quarter had risen to $
    250m, nearly four times higher than a year earlier. But low-profit
    music and video sales were high in the run-up to Christmas, as were the
    costs of sending products to customers. The online bookseller gave no
    clue as to the loss it would report later in the month. Its shares
    soared.


  + PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS, the world's biggest accountancy and consulting
    firm, said it was planning a big expansion into legal services. It
    hopes to become one of the world's five biggest law firms within five
    years.



    ROAD WORKS

  + CAR AND LORRY SALES in Japan slid by 15.2% to 4.34m units last year,
    the biggest drop since 1974. By contrast, in America car sales were
    healthy, with Volkswagen of Germany recording a 59% rise to 219,679
    units in 1998, thanks to the huge success of its new Beetle.


  + Mergers were a theme in the Detroit Motor Show, with America's FORD
    credited with trying to buy both Germany's BMW and Japan's HONDA. All
    three denied that any marriage would take place. Sweden's VOLVO was
    rumoured to be considering selling its car division but keeping its
    truck and plant-making operations; Ford, Fiat of Italy and Volkswagen
    are said to be possible buyers. Rumours also persisted that Japan's
    Nissan would soon announce a merger partner.



    ALARM BELLS

  + Bell Atlantic offered $45 billion for AIRTOUCH, an American mobile-
    phone firm, only to be trumped by VODAFONE, a British mobile-phone
    operator, with a $55 billion offer. If Vodafone's offer succeeds, the
    result will be the world's biggest mobile-phone business. But market
    rumours suggest that America's MCI WorldCom and Germany's Mannesmann
    are considering making rival bids for AirTouch.


  + Australia's largest INTERNET service provider, OzEmail, recommended
    that shareholders accept a takeover bid of A$520m ($327m) from MCI
    WorldCom. In America, MindSpring is paying $245m for the Internet-
    access part of Netcom, the network unit of ICG Communications.


  + In a sign that the restructuring of South Korea's chaebol is on course,
    LG GROUP at last knuckled under to government pressure and agreed to
    sell its chip unit, LG Semicon, to HYUNDAI Group's Hyundai Electronics
    Industry. This will create the world's second-biggest semiconductor
    maker, albeit in an industry suffering from huge overcapacity.



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