The House of Representatives, reacting to a plan by AIG to pay its executives as much as $218 million in bonuses, voted 328 to 93 in favor of a 90-percent tax on executive bonuses at firms that receive $5 billion or more in federal funds. Eighty-five Republicans voted for the bill despite their party’s traditional opposition to tax increases. “The American people,” explained Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), “are all watching here.” “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them,” said Senator Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) of the AIG executives, “if they�??d follow the Japanese …

Doctors in Berlin announced that they had cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a donor naturally resistant to the virus; other researchers cautioned that the treatment was of little immediate use, and justified in this case only because the patient had leukemia. “Frankly,” said Dr. Robert C. Gallo of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, “I’d rather take the medicine.”NYTA German shoplifter with no arms stole a 24-inch television. “It’s hard to believe,” said a police officer, “that the sight of an armless man walking along with a giant TV clamped to …

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and awaits imminent extradition to The Hague, where he will face charges of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacres and the siege of Sarajevo. The former Bosnian Serb president, a psychiatrist and poet who in 1991 pledged to drive Bosnian Muslims down “the highway of hell and suffering,” had been living in the Serbian capital as a New Age guru, promoting alternative medicine and “Human Quantum Energy” under the name “Dragan David Dabic.” Serbia hoped the arrest would hasten its campaign to join the European Union, and it was reported that Ratko …

Kosovo, in a move supported by the United States and strongly opposed by Russia, declared its independence from Serbia. NATO sealed Kosovo’s northern border, and Serbians looted designer clothes, shoes, and chocolates, and set fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade.ReutersTurkey began a ground invasion into Iraq targeting the PKK, despite protests that the invasion was “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month extension of his Mahdi militia’s unilateral cease-fire, which has led to a 60 percent decrease in violence across Iraq.BBCnews.comLA TimesBenazir Bhutto’s party received the most votes in the Pakistani parliamentary election. …

At 20 points along the Gaza Strip’s southern border, Hamas operatives detonated explosives to topple an Israeli-built fence, allowing as many as 200,000 Palestinians�??13 percent of the territory’s population�??to cross into Egypt and shop. The Gazans purchased camels, candy, cement, chairs, cheese, cigarettes, computers, cows, doughnuts, gasoline, generators, goats, mattresses, medicine, motorcycles, pistols, potato chips, sheep, snack cakes, soap, and televisions. Supplies at Egyptian shops dwindled, prices spiked, and fistfights ensued. Several Gazan women married Egyptians, and the Israel Defense Force patrolled its southern border for would-be suicide bombers and hostage takers.New York TimesJerusalem PostAFPDublin IndependentSeif al-Islam Qaddafi, the 36-year-old …

Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of Iraq; criticized for the announcement, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that the United States invaded Iraq without anyone�??s permission. Al JazeeraHürriyetAfter the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted for a resolution affirming that a genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians during World War I, General Yasar Buyukanit, commander of the Turkish armed forces, said that, should Congress pass the resolution, his country�??s military alliance with the United …