Bethlehem was empty this Christmas, devoid of lights or trees or public celebrations, having been sealed off by the Israeli army.Jerusalem’sChristian churches endorsed Palestinian demands for sovereignty in East Jerusalem;…
Chile’s former dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested, in Chile.The terms of the amnesty he negotiated upon his abdication included murder but not kidnapping, and the bodies of nineteen people…
Peru’s dictator Alberto Fujimori stopped in Japan on his way to an economic summit, decided he liked it there, and quit his job, via fax; Peruvians were generally pleased with…
The European Commission announced its intention to test all beef cattle for mad cow disease. Italy banned the importation of French beef. Sales of beef in France dropped, even at…
Israelassassinated a Palestinian paramilitary commander by blowing up his vehicle with missiles fired from helicopter gunships; two women who were standing nearby were also killed. One witness described seeing the…
The Mexican government was upset about a Mexican citizen on death row whom Texas failed to notify of his right under the Vienna Convention to contact his government’s embassy; the…
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called “timeout” and decided to make peace with Ariel Sharon, the right-wing opposition leader, instead of with the Palestinians.Gun sales in Israel were on the…
Safeway, the supermarket chain, recalled its house brand of corn taco shells after food critics discovered that the shells contained StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn that was not…
Thousands of Chinese who worked as slaves for Japan in World War II filed suit in California against Japanese companies that might have profited from their servitude; Japanese military occupiers…
A new book claimed that anthropologists working in Venezuela in the 1960s deliberately infected the Yanomami people with measles, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in order to test theories about evolution…
The Vatican proclaimed, not for the first time, that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true Church of Christ and that worshippers of false gods were in a “gravely…