SRI LANKA celebrates 50 years of independence. Festivities are scaled down following a Tamil Tiger bomb attack in which 11 people were killed at Kandy’s temple where the main ceremony was to have taken place.

MONGOLIA A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says Mongolia, Asia’s newest democracy, needs 90,000 tons of food aid to combat widespread malnutrition. But the Mongolian Government claims money, not food, is in short supply.

MICHAEL HARVEY / PANOS

Fire in Brazil caused by the climatic disruption.

COSTA RICA Miguel Angel Rodriguez, leader of the opposition Christian Social Unity Party, wins the presidential elections with a much narrower margin than expected.

MAURITANIA The chair of Mauritania’s main anti-slavery pressure group, SOS Esclavage, and three other human-rights activists are sentenced to 13 months in prison after declaring on French television that use of slaves in the West African country is continuing and widespread. The arrests effectively silence all human-rights opposition to leader Colonel Maaouya Sid’ Ahmed Ould Taya.

IRAQ UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, sign an accord providing ‘immediate, unrestricted and unconditional access to the Unscom weapons inspectors to all suspect sites in Iraq’. (See special feature : Disarming Iraq)

SUDAN The UN launches an appeal for $109 million of aid to Sudan, where drought is exacerbating problems caused by 14 years of civil war.

KOREA Kim Dae Jung, persecuted, jailed, exiled and hounded for decades by previous governments, calls for ‘reconciliation’ and a break with the ‘authoritarian past’ as he is inaugurated as South Korea’s new President.  

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