TIME EUROPE
July 24, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 4
World Watch
Belfast
Northern IrelandÕs 1998 Good Friday agreement passed its toughest test on the streets so far when moderate Protestant opinion turned against Orangemen insisting on their right to march through Catholic areas. Early in the week, clashes among the marchers, police and extreme elements of the provinceÕs Catholic community had brought parts of Northern Ireland to a standstill, but later the violence fizzled out, depriving the new power-sharing governmentÕs opponents of another chance to disable the peace process.
Madrid
A powerful car bomb injured nine people and caused massive damage to the cityÕs commercial center. Officials say the blast, which was caused by 20 kilograms of explosives concealed in a car, was the work of the Basque terrorist movement eta, which has killed about 800 people and maimed more in shootings and bombings over the past three decades. Last weekÕs blast took place on the third anniversary of the murder of the young Popular Party local councillor, Miguel Angel Blanco, in the Basque town of Ermua. His death prompted some of the largest anti-eta demonstrations seen in Spain.
Athens
Two firefighters were killed and at least nine people were injured as 184 wildfires raged through Greece for a second week, prompting the government to mobilize the armed forces and request help from Israel, Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic. Fanned by gale force winds and exacerbated by the regionÕs recent heatwave, the freak flames have razed thousands of acres of forestland, wiping out crops and livestock. Thick smoke
has also driven tourists from resorts.
Jerusalem
Former Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri will begin a three-year prison sentence on Aug. 13,
after IsraelÕs Supreme Court upheld his conviction for bribe-taking, breach of trust and fraud, but lopped one year off his original term. Deri, 41, a leader of the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas party, will also be barred from ministerial posts for 10 years. The courtÕs ruling sparked controversyÑDeri and his supporters accused the judges of discriminating against eastern Jews, noting that Ezer Weizman, an icon of the Ashkenazi, or European Jewish establishment, was not prosecuted, although he allegedly accepted undeclared gifts of more than $300,000 from businessmen while holding public office.
Kailahun
In a surprise operation, heavily armed United Nations forces rescued 222 peacekeepers and 11 military observers held captive by rebels in Sierra Leone since early May. The U.N. took the unusual step of launching a military operation after its request to send in urgently required food and medical supplies was turned down by the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.). The rebels offered no resistance as the captives were led out of their compound and airlifted by helicopter to the capital Freetown some 300 km away.
Durban
At the 13th International aids Conference, pharmaceutical companies came under fire for the high price of aids drugs. While activists and scientists presented papers on the latest drug research and studies into behavioral change as a way to decrease infection rates, most participants agreed that more money was needed to fight the disease, especially in Africa, home to 70% of the worldÕs hiv-infected population. The U.S. government announced plans to increase its funding from $200 million a year to $300 million a year.
Leh
Sectarian violence forced authorities to impose an indefinite curfew in this Indian hill town and adjoining areas after three Buddhist monks were shot dead by Muslim extremists. The secessionist movement in the Muslim districts of IndiaÕs Jammu and Kashmir state has been causing tension in Buddhist-majority Ladakh, of which Leh is the capital, and trouble erupted when a Buddhist leader made disparaging remarks about the Koran. Shops are now shut in the tourist town; police are patrolling the streets; and the army is on alert to prevent more violence.
Quezon City
At least 136 people were killed and 150 are still unaccounted for after a garbage dump caved in on shanty dwellings in a suburb of Manila. Officials said the collapse was caused by torrential rains that loosened the dumpÕs foundations, and they expressed concern that the mountain of garbage may give way again. Poor weather caused havoc in the Indian city of Bombay, where at least 80 people were killed when part of a hill, weighed down by water after a 24-hour monsoon, came loose and crashed into a slum tenement below.
Kimcheon
18 people were killed, many of them high school students, in a collision involving 12 vehicles on a motorway south of Seoul. The accident happened when seven buses carrying school students returning from a trip collided with a lorry during a heavy storm. Three buses caught fire after the collision, with one plunging off an embankment. A further 97 people were injured, some with serious burns.
Tokyo
Sogo, a major department store operator, went bankrupt with $17 billion of debt. Just two weeks ago, the Japanese government had approved a taxpayer-funded plan to save the retailer, but in the face of mounting public criticism the government abandoned the idea, departing from JapanÕs traditional approach of protecting big, ailing companies. The move is likely to worry other indebted Japanese corporations, which until the Sogo saga assumed the government would save them from
bankruptcy.
Suva
Coup leader George Speight freed the 27 hostages he had held in captivity for more than seven weeks. As part of the deal for their release, FijiÕs Great Council of Chiefs met to elect a new civilian President, and appointed Ratu Josefa Iloilo, the former vice-president, who was a preferred candidate of the hostage-takers. SpeightÕs gang was confident that the new cabinet would include several of their supporters and no Indo-Fijians, whom they have made the scapegoats for the grievances of indigenous people. A new constitution, to be promulgated in July 2001, is expected to exclude Indo-Fijians from political power.
Victoria
The British Columbia film commissioner ruled that the video game Soldier of Fortune is explicitly violent and should be classified as a Òrestricted adult motion pictureÓ that cannot be sold to anyone under 18. Andrew Petter, the provinceÕs attorney general, said the government is considering a rating system for all video gamesÑlegislation that would be the first of its kind in North America.
Washington
After more than five years of negotiations, the U.S. and Vietnam completed a wide-ranging agreement designed to lower trade barriers between the two countries. Under the terms of the plan, Vietnam is to allow U.S. companies increased access to its traditionally closed markets, while allowing Americans, for example, to conduct banking operations and enter the retail market. The U.S. would reduce restrictive tariffs on certain Vietnamese goods. U.S. President Bill Clinton called the agreement Òanother historic step in the process of normalization, reconciliation and healing between our two nations.Ó But he faces a tough fight to get the terms of the deal ratified by Congress before he leaves office next year.
Quito
EcuadorÕs Supreme Court issued an arrest order against ex-President Jamil Mahuad, deposed in a January coup. The court ruled that Mahuad and his finance minister, Ana Luc’a Armijos, violated the constitution when the then government, facing an economic crisis in March 1999, partially froze bank accounts. The court claims that Mahuad tipped off several of his banker friends before the freeze, enabling them to transfer vast sums out of Ecuador. Both Mahuad and Armijos are abroad, but their lawyers insist they will return to face charges.
Caracas
VenezuelaÕs attorney general launched an investigation to find out how Venezuelan military weapons wound up in the hands of ColombiaÕs biggest guerrilla group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc). The probe was prompted by last weekÕs display by Colombian military
officials of confiscated machine guns, rifles, revolvers, hand grenades, ammunition and other weaponry marked with the Venezuelan coat of arms, indicating that they are official military weapons. Authorities denied that
they had supplied arms to rebels, but did not rule out the possibility of clandestine trafficking by military officials. Colombian officials also said they found weapons with Panamanian and Bolivian military stamps, as well as German and U.S. made arms.
Belfast
Violence lurched back onto the streets of Northern Ireland after the Protestant Orange Order was prevented from marching through a Roman Catholic neighborhood southwest of Belfast. In response to the now annual ban, Protestant rioters threw up barricades, attacked Catholic homes and businesses, and clashed with police on successive nights across the province, in violence so bad that the British army was called out to the streets of Belfast for the first time in almost two years. Intermediaries were striving for a resolution before the unrest damaged Northern Ireland's new power-sharing government, but they fear that the crisis will get worse when tens of thousands of Orangemen take to the streets on July 12 to mark the 310th anniversary of a victory over a Catholic king.
Soria
A bus carrying Spanish schoolchildren on their way to summer camp plunged down an embankment north of Madrid, killing at least 28 people, 23 of them teenagers, and seriously injuring 12. The coach, which was only seven months old, collided with a truck taking pigs to a slaughterhouse. For reasons that are still being investigated, the 10-year-old truck swerved into the oncoming lane and hit the bus head-on, pushing it down a 20-foot bank where it landed on its roof.
Athens
Shedding its image as the E.U.'s most backward economy, Greece became the 12th member state to join the Economic and Monetary Union, a decision endorsed by E.U. leaders at a summit in Portugal. Greece's entry into the monetary system, which will take place on Jan. 1, 2001, comes two years after the E.U. turned down its application because of the country's then poor economic performance. Prime Minister Costas Simitis insists there will be no letup on the measures that put the country's finances in order.
Belgrade
The Yugoslav parliament rubber-stamped a series of constitutional changes aimed at keeping President Slobodan Milosevic in power for as much as eight more years — and boosting his authority. Milosevic, whose second term as a parliament-appointed President expires next year, will now be able to seek a new mandate through a popular vote, thus bypassing a two-term constitutional limit. The parliament also voted for changes designed to diminish the influence of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the truncated Yugoslav federation. Its pro-Western leadership has refused to acknowledge the changes, branding them unconstitutional.
Jerusalem
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are scheduled to attend a summit hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton aimed at drafting a blueprint for a final peace treaty between the two sides. Clinton called the meeting at Camp David after impasses on the remaining issues dividing the parties, notably the location of borders, the status of Jerusalem and the future of Palestinian refugees. Any progress is unlikely to be smooth, however — three of the parties in Barak's coalition government have threatened to resign to protest concessions they expect him to make; Arafat's aides say that, as his leadership draws to a close, he may be even more disinclined to compromise.
Kuwait City
Kuwaiti women suffered another setback in their quest for political equality. Last Tuesday, Kuwait's highest Constitutional Court refused to rule on four lawsuits that would have granted women the right to vote, claiming that the cases were improperly filed. The women say they will refile, continuing a struggle which began late last year when the country's all-male parliament rejected a decree granting women voting rights. Fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, the main opponents of the bill, say that extending political rights of any sort to women is against Islamic law.
Riyadh
Saudi Arabia made a surprise vow to increase oil production by 500,000 barrels a day, causing consternation among some of its opec partners, who immediately started to negotiate their own share of the increased output. The extra oil production is designed to bring the price of oil back down to $25 a barrel. That would both reduce the inflationary threat posed by rising oil costs, and bring relief to politicians under pressure from motorists furious at high gasoline prices.
Abidjan
A military protest was quelled after Ivory Coast leader General Robert Guei agreed to pay soldiers a $1,600 bonus for their part in bringing him to power in a December coup, the country's first. A group of renegade soldiers had fired into the air, erected barricades, commandeered cars from commuters and demanded that the military government pay them $9,000 each to buy houses. The coup was initially popular among Ivorians, who were tired of the corruption and nepotism of the former ruling party. But many have since become disillusioned with the regime. Guei, who imposed a curfew last week, has promised elections in September but has not said whether he will run.
Durban
Some 10,000 doctors, health workers, scientists and aids activists gathered for the 13th International aids Conference. However, the five-day meeting is not expected to yield news of a medical breakthrough. Instead, the focus is expected to be policy, and the continuing debate in South Africa over the link between aids and the hiv virus. Such discussions have frustrated the 5,000 doctors and scientists around the world who last week signed a declaration that the battle against aids needs "research, not myths."
Bhubaneswar
At least 12 endangered Royal Bengal tigers are dead and six more are critically ill at Nandankanan Zoo in India's eastern Orissa state. Hit by what veterinarians say was a simple parasitical infection, the tigers were injected by zoo staff with lethal overdoses of a drug. The zoo houses India's largest collection of tigers in captivity — 53 big cats, all heavily inbred and susceptible to common illnesses.
Mindoro Island
Thirteen people were killed when rebel guerrillas opened fired on Filipino police in mountainous Victoria. The police were on their way to investigate the death of a village chairman when the members of the Philippine Marxist New People's Army attacked, killing eight policemen and two civilians. Three rebels were reported killed. The ambush was the second major clash on the usually quiet Mindoro Island in less than a week.
Osaka
In one of Japan's worst food poisoning crises for 30 years, almost 13,000 people are ill after drinking contaminated milk products from the Osaka plant of Snow Brand Milk Products. Company president Tetsuro Ishikawa said he will resign.
Adelaide
The International Whaling Commission finished its 52nd annual meeting amid claims of vote buying. Atherton Martin, Dominica's Fisheries Minister, resigned after accusing the Japanese government of bribing his nation's leaders to support it in key iwc policy votes: an allegation denied by the Japanese. Dominica's representatives had joined Japan in defeating Australia and New Zealand's proposal for a South Pacific whale sanctuary.
Suva
Supporters of coup leader George Speight took about 30 people hostage, seizing them in a police station. Previously, Speight's supporters had closed down an airport and sealed off roads. The unrest in Fiji was sparked by the military's July 4 announcement of an interim civilian government and its establishment of an exclusion zone around Suva's parliamentary complex, where Speight continues to hold hostage 27 politicians, including Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry. News of the civilian administration was followed by a shoot-out, in which five of Speight's followers were wounded. The military said it would seek traditional chiefs' help to resolve the crisis.
Washington
The World Bank scrapped a loan to China for a controversial antipoverty project that proposed to resettle some 60,000 poor farmers in a Chinese highland area populated by ethnic Tibetan and Mongolian herders. Opponents of the project, including the United States and Tibetan exiles allied to the Dalai Lama, claimed that Bank funding would indicate international support of Beijing's policy of diluting Tibetan culture by relocating Han Chinese into areas populated by Tibetans. China said it would fund the $40 million project itself rather than resubmit the previously approved plan to further reviews.
Rio de Janeiro
As part of an attempt to combat alleged widespread corruption, Rio de Janeiro Governor Anthony Garotinho suspended 425 police officers, prison guards and firemen he accused of crimes ranging from kidnap and extortion to bribery and car theft. The move came three weeks after police shot an innocent girl while trying to end a hostage siege and then allegedly strangled the hostage taker while he was in the back of a police truck. Although Brazilian police are notoriously corrupt, Garotinho's bold action met with criticism after it was revealed the 425 on the list included officers who were dead or retired and did not include some officers who had been suspected of wrongdoing.
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July 24, 2000
COVER
One Is 100
Famous and beloved for her entire adult life, the Queen Mother notches up a century on August 4Ñand the celebrations are already in full swing
Believe It or Not
A century lived to the full
EUROPE
Crackdown
MoscowÕs powerful oligarchs feel the heat as Vladimir PutinÕs tax police and prosecutors continue to make life uncomfortable for RussiaÕs big business
The Hit List
Russia's ruble rousers
Q & A
Berezovsky speaks
The Tax Break Man
By squeezing through sweeping reforms, Chancellor Gerhard Schršder has stolen a march on his critics
BUSINESS
Third Generation Gap
Lower-than-expected bidding for mobile licenses is bad news for governments but good news for consumers
Names in Waiting
The trial is overÑnow judgment day looms for LloydÕs and investors
HEALTH
The New Science of Alzheimer's
Racing against timeÑand one anotherÑresearchers close in on the aging brainÕs most heartbreaking disorder
SOCIETY
The French Disease
In France, a best seller exposes a nationwide problem of emotional abuse in the workplace
THE ARTS
In Praise of Flattery
How the rampant sucking up to the famous has undermined the language of private praise
You Look Marvelous!
Tips for kissing up
Irony Is Dead. Long Live Irony (on the Web)
The snide tradition of disrespecting media and movie stars is thriving on delightfully sardonic sites
DEPARTMENTS
Essay
Olympic Monitor
World Watch
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