Portadown

Legislation setting May 22 as the date for separate referenda on the Northern Ireland peace agreement was passed by Parliament in London and the Dail in Dublin. With the backing of most of the major parties in both the North and the Irish Republic, the deal stands a good chance of approval. But the sectarian violence has not stopped. A gunman shot and killed a Catholic man in Portadown. No group claimed responsibility, but police suspect the Loyalist Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary organization that opposes the accord and has threatened to continue the violence.

Bonn

The ultra-left Red Army Faction, which terrorized West Germany in the 1970s and '80s but has been dormant since 1991, formally announced it was disbanding. "Today we are ending this project," the raf, which grew out of the so-called Baader-Meinhof gang, declared in a letter that judicial officials said seemed authentic. "The urban guerrilla struggle of the RAF is now history." In its violent heyday, the Red Army Faction was responsible for at least 50 killings, including the assassinations of political figures and prominent industrialists.

Moscow

Four weeks of political paralysis and haggling over a Russian prime minister ended when the Duma finally confirmed Sergei Kiriyenko, President Boris Yeltsin's nominee, by a vote of 251-25. The third vote on Kiriyenko, 35, was the chamber's last chance: had it turned him down again, the legislature would have been dissolved and new elections called. Many members of two opposition blocs, the Communists and Yabloko, boycotted the final vote on Kiriyenko.

Diyarbakir

A State Security Court sentenced Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul's popular Islamist mayor, to 10 months in prison for "inciting hatred" in a speech in southeast Turkey last year. Visiting Siirt, he had quoted a poem comparing Islam to a military force--a sentiment not shared by Turkey's influential army, which defends the country's secular constitution. Erdogan, the likely heir to former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan as leader of Turkey's largest Islamic party, appealed the verdict. With Erdogan out of the way, the government announced parliamentary elections for next March.

Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat agreed to meet separately with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in London on May 4. British Prime Minister Tony Blair--touring the Middle East fresh from his success in securing a peace agreement for Northern Ireland--pledged that he would do whatever was necessary to "help clear the logjam" in the stalled regional peace process.

Abuja

Nigeria's long-awaited presidential election, set for August, is already sewn up. General Sani Abacha, who seized power after the last election in 1993, has now been nominated as the sole candidate by all five of the country's registered political parties. Each party was paid $250,000 of public money to hold a national convention and to "approve or endorse" Abacha. The general's promise of a quick return to civilian rule, it appears, might only mean that he will retire from the army to continue as President. Pro-democracy groups assailed the scheduled election--which will now be a referendum on Abacha--as a sham.

Kigali

Rwandan firing squads executed 22 people, the first of 116 sentenced to die so far for their roles in the 1994 genocide in which half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. The executions--carried out in Kigali and four other towns--proceeded after Rwandan leaders dismissed last-minute appeals for clemency. In Paris, meanwhile, former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and three members of his government defended themselves before a parliamentary committee investigating reports that France had continued to arm Hutu forces responsible for the massacres after the killings began. The four argued that they had acted to stop the slaughter while the rest of the world stood by.

Jakarta

Up to 2,000 Indonesian students defied a ban on off-campus rallies and marched into the streets of Jakarta, shouting for an end to three decades of President Suharto's rule. While the protests in the capital and in some other cities were generally peaceful, students and security forces clashed in Bandung, Surabaya, Palu and other places.

Seoul

The South Korean government, frustrated in its attempts to persuade Japan to compensate 152 Korean women used as sex slaves by the Japanese military in World War II, will award the "comfort women" $27,000 each. Japan acknowledged in 1992 that military officials had a role in setting up the wartime brothels, but has refused to pay compensation, saying that all reparation claims were settled under a 1965 treaty. Of an estimated 200,000 women from Asian countries who were forced into brothels by the Japanese, 152 live in South Korea.

Kuala Lumpur

The Malaysian government warned private television stations that they could lose their broadcasting licenses for negative reporting of environmental conditions, particularly regarding what has been called "the haze." For about two months, thick smog--attributed to a blend of smoke from wildfires and air pollution--has drifted from Borneo into neighboring regions. "They can report on the fires and action taken to put them out," Information Minister Mohamed Rahmat said of the TV stations, "but they should not label it as haze."

Noumea

An agreement signed in New Caledonia's capital by the French government, native Kanaks and anti-independence white settlers paves the way for New Caledonians to vote on whether their South Pacific territory should move towards independence from France. If the referendum is approved in the December vote, a 20-year period of "shared sovereignty" would follow, before a second referendum in 2018 on self-determination.

Melbourne

Australia's 1,400 fired waterfront workers won a major victory against their former employer, Patrick stevedores, when the Federal Court ruled that they must be reinstated. Patrick, which hired non-union labor to replace the workers, has appealed to the High Court. Chris Corrigan, chairman of Patrick, which handles the largest portion of cargo along the country's docks, said the decision meant that "for the foreseeable future, we will go back...to the inefficiencies of the past."

Goya

Severe flooding brought on by three weeks of torrential rain devastated some 5 million hectares of vital agricultural and cattle-raising areas of northeastern Argentina and forced the evacuation of about 80,000 people. At least 12 deaths were reported in the flooding in the provinces of Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Rios and Santa Fe after the Parana and Uruguay rivers burst their banks. The severe rain was blamed on the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Bogota

A Boeing 727 leased by Air France crashed into a Colombian mountainside shortly after takeoff from Bogota, killing all 53 people aboard. Civil aviation officials said they were puzzled as to why the experienced Ecuadorian pilot--flying for TAME, a carrier run by Ecuador's armed forces--had veered off course on the flight to Quito. Moments before the plane slammed into the 3,100-meter El Cable, the pilot acknowledged a warning that he needed to avoid the mountain.

Havana

In a blow to U.S. policy, the mandate of the investigator for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Cuba will not be renewed. Rejecting a U.S.-backed resolution to continue Carl-Johan Groth's investigation, the commission dealt its first such defeat in seven years. In a report last month, Groth accused the Cuban government of brutal repression in dealing with its domestic critics. The U.S. expressed disappointment over the defeat in Geneva, a sign of declining support for Washington's efforts to isolate Cuba. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic became the last Caribbean nation to restore diplomatic ties with the communist government of Fidel Castro.

Florence

Another foreign citizen was executed for murder in the U.S. despite protests that the condemned man had been denied his rights under an international treaty. Jose Roberto Villafuerte, a Honduran, was put to death in Arizona for the 1983 killing of an American woman. As Paraguay did in the case of a man executed in Virginia a week earlier, Honduras argued that Villafuerte was denied his legal rights under the Vienna Convention because diplomats were not notified of his arrest.