February 2001 World Headlines

Monday, February 26, 2001 - Web posted at 7:08:26 AM GMT

World News Summary

JERUSALEM - Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has complained to US Secretary of State Colin Powell that Palestinians are not doing their part to reduce Israel-Palestinian violence.

The private meeting occurred shortly after Powell's arrival in Israel following talks in Egypt.

*HARARE - The widows of two Zimbabweans killed in political violence last year said Saturday they were "appalled" that the US government was considering granting President Robert Mugabe immunity from facing human rights charges in a civil suit they lodged in the United States.

*BELGRADE - Tightening the vise around Slobodan Milosevic, authorities arrest his former secret service chief, alleged to have been involved in assassinations ordered by the former president, the Serbian justice minister says.

*BEIJING - Beijing throws open its city government for reporters to watch inspectors probe its suitability to play host to the 2008 Olympic games.

On the same day, it emerges that the wife of a dissident had been sent to a labour camp for asking Olympic officials to seek her husband's release.

*RIO DE JANEIRO - Top Brazilian performers refuse to sing it.

A big-city mayor begged radio stations not to play it.

Women protest that it is degrading and downright dangerous.

It's the "Face Slap," a lilting, uptempo ditty about a woman who asks her lover to hit her.

The song - and the controversy surrounding it - promise to turn the heat up several notches at Brazil's steamy Carnival.

*WASHINGTON - The CIA tightened security dramatically after one of its own, Aldrich Ames, pleaded guilty to espionage in 1994.

The FBI, by contrast, tiptoed.

Now, agent Robert Philip Hanssen has been charged with spying for the Soviet Union and then Russia for more than 15 years, and some are calling for the bureau to match the CIA's earlier response.

*JERUSALEM - Fugitive financier Marc Rich whose eleventh-hour pardon by former US President Clinton has caused a wave of controversy speaks out for the first time, describing the pardon as a "humanitarian act."

"*CAIRO - The United States on Saturday accepted a Russian request that arms control experts resume talks in the framework developed under Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US President Bill Clinton.

*LOME - Togo's government has demanded further explanation of a report cataloguing human rights abuses in the country after the 1998 presidential election by the joint UN-Organisation of African Unity panel that issued it.

President Gnassingbe Eyadema requested the joint inquiry after London-based human rights group Amnesty International alleged several hundred people had been executed after the 1998 elections that kept him in power.

- Nampa-Sapa-AFP-AP-Reuters