new internationalist

SIERRA LEONE Revolutionary United Front rebels attack the capital, Freetown but are driven out by the multinational West African force supporting President Kabbah.

CUBA After 39 years, the US relaxes the strict trade embargo on Castro’s regime. It rejects, however, a full-scale review of its policy towards the country.

AFGHANISTAN After a four-month lull, fighting resumes north of Kabul between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.

COLOMBIA An earthquake kills over 2,000 people.

INDIA A spate of massacres takes place as Hindu extremist attacks on Christians spread throughout the country.

IRAN celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Revolution.

ISRAEL / PALESTINE Palestinian prisoners are released as part of the peace process. But while no Palestinians with Jewish ‘blood on their hands’ are released, the sentences of several Jews who have killed Arabs are reduced.

CAMBODIA Two leading architects of the Khmer Rouge genocide are promised amnesty and apologize for the mass murder of two million people.

CHINA Dissident Zhang Shanguang receives a ten-year prison sentence for ‘subversion’ after giving an interview to a radio station funded by the US.

KOSOVO Forty-five ethnic Albanian civilians are killed in Recak, Kosovo, by the Serbian army. The army maintains they were KLA rebels.

NICARAGUA President Aleman’s Liberals and the left-wing Sandinista Front heed national and international calls to forget differences and combine efforts to rebuild infrastructure devastated by last year’s Hurricane Mitch.

GEORGIA Ethnic Georgian refugees are forced to risk a return to the separatist province of Abkhazia to gather their crops to prevent starving. Around 40,000 were driven out last May by the minority Abkhaz people, allegedly supported by Russia.

INDIA / PAKISTAN The first regular bus service between the two countries since 1948 is opened.

SENEGAL Parliament votes to ban female genital mutilation.

UNITED STATES Clothing workers and human-rights groups bring lawsuits against US clothing companies Tommy Hilfiger, GAP and others for the bad conditions in the Asian sweatshops that supply them.

IRAQ Air raids kill up to 11 civilians in Basra as the US and Britain continue their bombing campaign to destabilize Iraq’s military and curtail its production of weapons of mass destruction.

ROMANIA 15,000 striking miners agree to return to their homes in the Jiu valley as a secret agreement is reached on a pay rise and the re-opening of pits closed before Christmas 1998.

BRAZIL Economic crisis hits as the real drops eight per cent and foreign investors withdraw eight billion dollars worth of capital.

ZIMBABWE President Mugabe promises to seize farms belonging to absentee British and give them to black villagers. Too many land seizures have, however, benefited his friends and relatives.