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SKOPJE, Aug 2 (AFP) - A brief renewal of clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces on Macedonia's National Day casted a shadow Thursday over a breakthrough in peace negotiations which had raised hopes for averting another Balkans war. A Macedonian policeman was seriously wounded during an exchange of fire between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Macedonian government forces in the northwestern town of Tetovo. The shooting came on Macedonia's National day, and less than 24 hours after the main Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties reached a preliminary accord over the use of the Albanian language, seen as the ...

Stripper has grenade put in her knickers A Serbian man has been arrested after putting a hand grenade in a stripper's underwear instead of cash. Tomislav Krstic slipped the device into the woman's knickers as she danced on the bar beside his table at the AS club in Kragujevac. The terrified woman fled with the explosive still in her pants to the changing room, where she removed it. The grenade's pin had been left in place. Krstic was arrested, but said he had only wanted to play practical joke. He said the pin in the grenade had not been ...

SKOPJE, Aug 2 (AFP) - One of the greatest casualties in months of ethnic fighting in Macedonia has been the loss of media impartiality, according to the head of the country's private A1 television station. "What is difficult is the polarisation of media space -- the Albanian propaganda on one side and the regime's on the other pushed by Macedonian national TV (MTV)," Aco Kabranov explains. The greying editor-in-chief bitterly regrets what he says is the "disappearance of all professionalism" among "certain journalists" working in the Balkan country. About 30 journalists gathered in the station's studio, situated in the industrial ...

Metal detectors, street closures and specific public entrances to the Capitol building are expected to be part of security when lawmakers return Tuesday to try to override Gov. Don Sundquist's budget veto. Anti-tax demonstrators who came to the Capitol on July 12 to oppose last-minute income tax negotiations are expected to return Tuesday. Last month's talks fizzled, and lawmakers approved a $19.6 billion budget, which Sundquist vetoed. ''Our hope will be to come up with a compromise so people are allowed to be a part of the process, but there is the understanding that there is a certain decorum and ...

An all-star cast of veteran liberals, including former attorney general Janet Reno, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund President Elaine Jones, former judge Abner J. Mikva, Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe and former solicitor general Walter Dellinger, has joined forces to support a new legal organization to counter the conservative Federalist Society. An overflow crowd of more than 300 showed up at a kickoff event Monday night for the American Constitution Society at Georgetown University Law Center. You can read the rest of the article here: Liberals Form Counter to Federalist Society

Japanese men and women set domestic records for life expectancy in 2000 at 77.64 years and 84.62 years, respectively, and Japanese women maintained the world record for life expectancy for the 16th straight year, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said in a report released Thursday. The difference in life expectancy between men and women, however, widened to a record 6.98 years, up by 0.09 year from 6.89 in 1999. The previous records for life expectancy were 77.19 years for men in 1997 and 84.01 for women in 1998. Women's expected life span increased by 0.63 year from 83.99 ...

To TIPH or not to TIPH The Barak administration is currently debating the merits of an international observer force to be deployed in Israel. Hebron has first-hand experience with such a force. The Temporary International Presence in Hebron, otherwise known as TIPH, has frequented Hebron's streets for the past four years. TIPH observers are citizens of four Scandinavian countries, Italy, and Turkey. The TIPH mandate says explicitly, "It is TIPH's purpose to create a feeling of security among the Palestinian population of Hebron and contribute in restoring normal life." The allegations implicit are clear. Despite the fact that the Palestinian ...

The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia have announced plans to create a new joint brigade consisting of 1,500 personnel. The Czech and Polish defence ministers agreed on 23 July to participate in the new trilateral brigade. "One of the key reasons for establishing the joint brigade, apart from promoting closer co-operation between the armed forces of the three neighbouring countries is to assist Slovakia in its endeavour to join NATO and the European Union," said Milan Repka, spokesman for the Czech Ministry of Defence (MoD). For this reason the new brigade will initially be commanded by a Slovak officer ...

We didn't mind being robbed by strippers, say pensioners A pair of Norwegian pensioners robbed by two strippers say they don't mind because it's a long time since they had so much fun. Arne and Oystein Tokvam, aged 73 and 80, say they invited the women to their home after meeting in a shop. The women then did a striptease before saying they needed the toilet. When they failed to re-appear the brothers realised they'd been robbed of £4,600 cash. "It's too bad about the money, but we just have to take it with good humour," Arne told the ...

Summary -- South Korea is taking one of the first concrete steps toward implementing a long-discussed rail link between East Asia and Europe. The Korean railroad administration recently began developing special cold-tolerant train cars that would be able to travel throughout the Koreas, China, Europe and Russia. With the prospects of a trans-Eurasian rail line growing brighter, both Moscow and Beijing will increase economic and political ties with Seoul and Pyongyang. Analysis -- South Korea's national railroad administration has begun developing train cars for operation along the Trans Siberian Railroad, which links Russia's Pacific coast with Europe. It will design ...

BALTIMORE — The U.S. Navy may buy or lease several Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to complement the service’s maritime surveillance and reconnaissance assets. Capt. Rand LeBouvier, UAV requirements officer in the service’s expeditionary warfare program office, said Aug. 1 the Navy is extremely interested in the Northrop Grumman-built high-altitude, long-endurance Global Hawk being produced for the U.S. Air Force. LeBouvier spoke at The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference here. "We’re looking seriously at either purchasing the Global Hawk or leasing it … so that we can take advantage of it," the Navy official said. LeBouvier ...

http://www.gomemphis.com/newca/080201/2state.htm Tenn. not alone in budget woes By James W. Brosnan brosnanj@shns.com WASHINGTON -- Tennessee fiscal woes may be severe, but its state government is hardly alone. A slow economy and quickly rising costs of state-run Medicaid programs are combining to weaken state balances, slow the pace of tax cuts in some states and force tax hikes and service cutbacks in others, according to an annual report on state budget actions released Wednesday by the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The legislatures are watching the budget traffic light turn from a green light to a yellow light," said Jim Costa, ...

DNA from Ezra Chamberlin's father may be the only way to tell if the Union soldier was on board the last mission of the Confederate submarine Hunley. And if a newly discovered 19th-century newspaper clipping can be believed, there is a chance he was. An Associated Press story in Wednesday's paper reported that Connecticut researchers would not be digging up Ezra Chamberlin's grave because they had learned he wasn't in it. A wartime report in a newspaper that served Chamberlin's hometown of Killingly, Conn., suggests that, contrary to initial accounts, Chamberlin and a friend survived the assault on Charleston's Fort ...

Australia and the United States have expressed disappointment over China's claim that a proposed new regional security grouping is an attempt to limit its influence and military power. A commentary in the Government-controlled People's Daily accuses the Howard Government of "dancing to the tune of America's pipe" over the planned new security dialogue between Australia, Japan and the US. The People's Daily said the US and Australia were working together on a strategic manoeuvre aimed at the "containment" of China. A spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said yesterday: "We don't see there is anything in this that ...

CHINA marked Army Day yesterday with a renewed warning to Taiwan that it will attack it if the island declares independence. It also announced that combined Chinese Forces will start the biggest-yet war games off the island. The country’s largest and most advanced military exercise was due to start soon after tens of thousands of troops had spent the past three months in training on Dongshan island in the Taiwan Strait, a pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper said. The Wen Wei Po said that senior military leaders would preside over the exercise, but gave no date other than saying they ...

The Air Force’s shortage of precision guided munitions must be addressed by increasing the purchases of new PGMs beyond the quantities requested in the fiscal year 2002 budget, Air Combat Command chief Gen. John Jumper said today. The service added $186 million to the amended FY-02 defense budget request for training munitions, but Jumper believes this will not be enough. "What worries me is that if we have another Operation Allied Force, and we get another big drop in our inventory. We have to take steps to work on this munitions problem" that built up over several years, Jumper ...

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Congress contemplates new rounds of military base closures and realignments (BRAC), the General Accounting Office (GAO) is taking issue with the Pentagon’s recently revised estimates of cost savings from previous closure and realignment actions. In its report, "Military Base Closures," released July 31, the GAO noted the Pentagon raised its net savings estimate for the four BRAC rounds that took place in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995. The Defense Department’s 2001 budget request indicates it "now expects net savings of $15.5 billion through 2001," a 9 percent increase over the $14.2 billion in savings ...

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, has drafted a plan to hold the defense secretary’s ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review to relatively challenging standards in a military assessment required by law, according to Pentagon officials. But Shelton has held off on signing the document, and some military officials believe the delay indicates the chairman is uncertain how much criticism he wants to unleash on the Bush administration on the eve of his own retirement. In fact, one Pentagon military officer said the document will not go out as a publicly available "Joint Staff notice," as ...

Thursday, August 2 8:16 PM SGT Ethnic Albanian rebels hold a key for future of peace deal in Macedonia SKOPJE, Aug 2 (AFP) - Refused a seat at negotiations between Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political parties, the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (NLA) now hold the key to whether progress at the talks will evolve into a fully-fledged peace deal. When the conflict broke out in February, the international community saw the NLA as a terrorist group from outside the country threatening the stability of Macedonia, the only former Yugoslav republic that has managed to leave the former communist ...

Adversaries Would Find Other Attack Methods, Game Theory Shows CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — As Congress ponders a $3 billion increase in funding for a national missile defense system, University of Illinois professor Julian Palmore is looking at the program’s prospects for success from a mathematician’s perspective. To predict whether deployment of a proposed NMD system against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack makes sense, the UI mathematics professor and a colleague looked at applied basic insights drawn from a mathematical model known as game theory. Their conclusions are detailed in the August issue of the journal Defense Analysis, in a paper ...