new internationalist
WORLD The World Trade Organization talks in Seattle collapse (See Box: WTO). A campaign against the death penalty is launched in Rome. The Coliseum will be lit up in gold for two days each time a convict is reprieved or a country abandons capital punishment. Britain will forgive debts to it of the poorest countries provided the money goes to social projects.
NORTHERN IRELAND After 25 years of direct rule from London, the main unionist and nationalist parties agree to share power. The Irish Republic signs away its constitutional claim to the North.
CHECHNYA / RUSSIA Residents of the besieged city of Grozny are given an ultimatum – leave the city or be killed. Russia brushes aside international protest and finally sends in troops to capture the provincial capital. This end-of-century colonial war is compared with Britain’s crushing of the Boers at the start of the century.
VENEZUELA Ex-paratrooper President Chavez’s radical new constitution is approved by voters. 20,000 are feared dead in flooding and mudslides near Caracas – Venezuela’s worst disaster of the century.
CHINA The last of the foreign enclaves, Macau, returns to China after 442 years of Portuguese rule.
CANADA An historic treaty gives land and extended rights to the Nisga’a people of British Columbia.
PANAMA The US hands over control of the Canal to Panama, in line with a 1970s deal. US leaders do not turn up for the ceremony.
KUWAIT The all-male parliament narrowly rejects a draft law granting women full political rights.
ISRAEL / SYRIA The first high-level peace talks for 50 years begin.
SUDAN President Bashir declares a state of emergency; his rivals claim it is a coup d’état. Bashir also signs a surprise peace deal with arch-enemy Uganda.
CROATIA Nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman dies. Western leaders snub the funeral, disapproving of his authoritarian rule and his attempts to dismember Bosnia.
TURKEY becomes an official candidate for membership of the European Union. Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan may be the first beneficiary: Euro human-rights concerns may stay his execution.
LATIN AMERICA More than 2,500 revolutionaries from all over the Americas – including Mexico’s Zapatistas, Colombia’s FARC and US Black Panthers – gather for a Humanities against Neo-Liberalism conference in the Amazon.
