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<p>Wall Street braced for a rout today following the collapse of troubled telecom giant WorldCom over admissions it inflated profits by $3.6 billion.</p> <p>It would likely force the company to file for bankruptcy protection.</p> <p>The company fired the financial brains of the company - Chief Financial Officer Scott Sullivan, who helped Chairman Bernie Ebbers build the giant for the last seven years - and will fire 17,000 people starting Friday.</p>

HAVANA - Rejecting Washington's demands that Cuba embrace capitalism, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told hundreds of fellow lawmakers that consecrating socialism in the constitution could help the current system survive after Fidel Castro and his brother Raul die. Perez Roque's unusual public reference to the mortality of both Cuba's president and his designated successor came Tuesday night, on the eve of a third day examining a constitutional change that would declare Cuba's economic, political and social systems to be "untouchable." The National Assembly's discussion of the amendment, backed in speeches over two days by nearly 100 lawmakers, comes as...

<p>June 26, 2002 -- Rosie O'Donnell's magazine yesterday bounced the editor who had supervised the magazine's transformation from McCall's into its new incarnation as Rosie magazine.</p> <p>The new editor is Susan Toepfer, former No. 2 editor at People and wife of best-selling novelist Lorrenzo Carcaterra. She replaces Cathy Cavender at the helm of Rosie.</p>

June 26, 2002 -- Hell at Martha dream house IT'S definitely no fun to be building Martha Stewart's mansion while the embattled domestic diva suffers the worst crisis of her career. Stewart bought a $15 million, 153-acre Kanticoe Corners estate in upstate Bedford two years ago, and has been building a huge new house there to the dismay of neighbors, who include Richard Gere, Christopher Reeve, Glenn Close, Ralph Lauren and George Soros. "Work has slowed down almost to a standstill and she's cut everyone's pay," says our construction site snitch, noting that as the ImClone scandal spreads and Stewart's...

Thabo Mbeki has made hard compromises to keep his ambitious recovery plan for Africa on the international agenda. Days after Robert Mugabe stole Zimbabwe's election, Tony Blair warned the South African president that continued prevarication over Zimbabwe would cost him crucial support for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). A few weeks later, a raucous press conference following a meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, brought home to Mr Mbeki just how much his strange views on Aids - questioning the link between HIV and Aids - were tainting western perceptions of his vision of an African...

Spanking children can make them temporarily more compliant but causes more problems than it cures by raising the risk that children will become aggressive, antisocial and chronically defiant, according to new research. The discipline technique is also associated with delinquency, a failure to learn right from wrong, and an increased risk that the spanking might turn into child abuse, according to the author of one of the most comprehensive examinations of the subject. "The bottom line is that corporal punishment is associated with numerous risks for children," said Elizabeth Gershoff, a researcher at Columbia University's National Center for Children in...

NEPAD: Helping those who help Mugabe ZWNEWS Date posted:Wed 26-Jun-2002 Date published:Wed 26-Jun-2002 Back to previous page The West will be rewarding the men who helped Zanu PF to hold Zimbabwe down so that Mugabe could rape her Comment On Thursday, 27 June 2002, the G8 nations, meeting in Canada, will consider NEPAD - the New Partnership for African Development. President Mbeki and other African leaders have made it clear that they expect immediate and generous results: cancellation of debts, a long term aid package of over 700 million dollars, and acknowledgement of their right to police their own regional...

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jun 26, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A Belgian appeals court ruled Wednesday that Belgium cannot investigate war crimes charges against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon related to a 1982 massacre in two Palestinian refugee camps. The three-judge panel said a case could not proceed against a person who is not in Belgium. "If a person is not found on the territory, we find it inadmissible," the court said in its 22-page ruling. Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved

<p>June 26, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday blasted Yasser Arafat as a failed leader, but ducked the question of what will happen if he gets re-elected despite President Bush's call to dump him.</p> <p>"We'll see what happens as a result of that election. We hope the election will produce a number of leaders," Powell told the Fox News Channel.</p>

Owen Connor, a white Zimbabwean farmer, committed a crime yesterday. Helped by half a dozen of his workers he poured seed maize into a fumigator and then bagged it. A power cut had prevented Mr Connor, 68, completing the job by Monday so he decided to risk two years in jail rather than lose the grain. Yesterday marked one of the more bizarre twists of modern African history as President Mugabe's Government banned most of the country's white farmers from growing food amid Zimbabwe's worst famine in a century. Within 45 days 2,900 designated farmers must leave their property altogether....

Arafat Aide Announces Elections Wed Jun 26, 4:35 AM ET By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer JERICHO, West Bank (AP) - An aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ( news - web sites) announced Wednesday that presidential and parliamentary elections would be held in January 2003, with precise dates to be announced later. The announcement by Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister and key Arafat aide, comes two days after President Bush ( news - web sites) called for a change in the Palestinian leadership, and set sweeping democratic reforms and new elections as conditions for a provisional Palestinian state....

<p>June 26, 2002 -- The agency that let in all 19 of the Sept. 11 terrorists should absolutely be a part of the new Department of Homeland Defense - but that's not the plan.</p> <p>The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) has proven that it can't be trusted to keep potential terrorists out of the country - or even to be honest with Congress and the American people.</p>

European bourses came under intense pressure in early trade on Wednesday as US telecoms and data services group WorldCom became the latest company to declare accounting irregularities. The pan-European FTSE Eurotop 100 index tumbled 4.4 per cent to 2,211.73, while London's FTSE 100 was 3.9 per cent weaker. The Xetra Dax index in Frankfurt fell 5.7 per cent and the CAC 40 in Paris fell 4.5 per cent and WorldCom said it would restate its results for 2001 and the first quarter of 2002 after uncovering what appeared to be a $3.8bn fraud in its books. It also fired...

<p>RAMALLAH - Yasser Arafat yesterday brushed off President Bush's call for new Palestinian leadership - saying Bush couldn't have been referring to him.</p> <p>"Definitely not," Arafat said when asked by reporters if the U.S. president meant him on Monday when urging Palestinians to choose new leaders who are "not compromised by terror."</p>

<p>June 26, 2002 -- Actress Tatum O'Neal says ex-hubby John McEnroe used steroids to power his tennis playing, but she made him stop because he was "becoming violent."</p> <p>The tempestuous tennis ace would also "take out all his rage" on her when he was losing, O'Neal says in an interview with ABC's "20/20" that airs Friday.</p>

<p>June 26, 2002 -- Executives close to ImClone had firmer and earlier evidence than first believed that their application for the much-hyped cancer drug Erbitux faced government rejection, a newly disclosed e-mail shows.</p> <p>A Dec. 24 e-mail by Alan Bennett, a lawyer for Bristol Myers Squibb - ImClone's Erbitux partner - cited a Food and Drug Administration warning that a rejection of the drug's application called a "refusal to file letter," or RTF, was coming.</p>

<p>Just as we were absorbing Rosie O'Donnell's defense of her, Monica Lewinsky made a return appearance to the limelight.</p> <p>The occasion was Entertainment Weekly's mostly celebrity-free "It" party at a huge warehouse space on the western edge of lower Manhattan Monday night.</p>

<p>June 26, 2002 -- With Congress, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission probing the ImClone insider-trading scandal, Martha Stewart wants to focus on more important matters - like salad.</p> <p>The domestic diva brusquely brushed off questions about insider trading yesterday to concentrate on whipping up a tasty chicken and cabbage salad on national TV.</p>

<p>June 26, 2002 -- MANILA, Philippines - The man suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks lived lavishly in the Philippines with his nephew, the 1993 World Trade Center plotter - partying, scuba-diving and renting a helicopter as they planned the assault.</p>

<p>June 26, 2002 -- ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui accused a federal judge of "preparing me for the gas chamber" during a courtroom tiff that was sparked by his refusal to say how he's pleading.</p> <p>"This is an outrageous prosecution . . . This is a parody," the accused terrorist told Judge Leonie Brinkema.</p>