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Two US airmen have been shot dead and two wounded at Frankfurt airport. The gunman, believed to be from Kosovo, opened fire on a bus containing US airmen in front of Terminal 2. The bus driver and a passenger were killed and two others were seriously injured. Police said it appeared an argument had broken out on board the bus before the suspect opened fire. The dead soldier was found outside the bus, which had a US government licence plate marked "AF", for air force.

A Silver Spring man convicted of falsifying immigration documents had threatened to blow up the White House, the U.S. Treasury building, a federal courthouse and a Metro stop, vowing to "slaughter the enemies of Islam," federal prosecutors said Monday in court. Lajqi, an ethnic Albanian who came to the United States through Mexico in the mid-1980s, is a self-described "extremist militant," who said he was trained by Bosnian Muslim rebels, according to court papers. He was angry about American military involvement in Kosovo in the 1990s, and "blamed all Albanian deaths in Kosovo on the United States," the court papers...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. official says a North Korean ship has turned around and is headed back the way it came, after being tracked for days by American vessels on suspicion it was carrying illicit weapons. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, says it is unclear whether the Kang Nam is going back to its home port in North Korea or diverting elsewhere.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Machete-waving mobs thousands-strong looted and burned in Ivory Coast's largest city Sunday, laying siege to a French military base and searching house to house for French families. The violence came one day after ground and air clashes between French forces and its former colony. About 250 French troop reinforcements landed at Abidjan's international airport, which was taken by France late Saturday after it destroyed what it said was the entire Ivory Coast air force — two Sukhoi warplanes and five helicopter gunships. The reinforcements, bolstering a 4,000-man French peacekeeping force, flew from the West African nation...

ABIDJAN (AFP) - France was set to send fresh troops to Ivory Coast after a night of fighting in which French peacekeepers clashed with thousands of demonstrators seeking to "retake" Abidjan airport, leaving at least three dead. The clash came after nine French troops and an American civilian were killed in an air raid Saturday by Ivory Coast warplanes in the central Ivorian city of Bouake, according to French officials. The Security Council, which held an emergency meeting at France's request, condemned the attack on French forces and voiced support for French and UN forces in the former French colony....

SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - A huge explosion rocked North Korea (news - web sites) three days ago but U.S. and South Korean officials said on Sunday it was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test despite a report the blast produced a mushroom cloud. South Korea (news - web sites)'s Yonhap news agency said the blast on Thursday in Kimhyungjik county in Ryanggang province in the northeast near the border with China appeared much stronger than a train explosion that killed at least 170 people in April. The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions the Bush...

Here's a copy of the letters I just sent to my Senators and Congressmen. I'd also like to lobby for tax help for victims of other kinds of crime, if such would be of help to them. Any suggestions most welcome! Subject: Proposal of tax deduction for crime victims’ moving expenses, in cases where the move was necessitated by the crime(s) committed against them. Dear [Senator/Congressman], Here it is tax time again, and I'm sure you're hearing from many constituents concerning the tax code. I'm sorry to add to the volume of your mail concerning taxes, but I do feel...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) launched an ambitious plan Wednesday to put Kosovo's bloodied peace process back on track two weeks after the province exploded in ethnic violence. It detailed policies Kosovo's authorities must implement before talks can begin on its bitterly disputed final status, at the earliest in 2005. Majority Albanians demand independence but beleaguered Serbs say the province should remain part of Serbia. The road map, with deadlines for meeting democracy and human rights conditions, was already in the works before Albanian mobs attacked Serb villages and churches in two...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana hit back at criticism from Serbs after violent riots erupted in Kosovo, saying the international community was not to blame for the flare-up. Solana, speaking a day after he was jeered by displaced Serbs during a visit to the UN-run province, said: "I would not say that it is a failure of strategy of the European Union (news - web sites). "I think it is a failure of the behavior of the people of Kosovo. We are not responsible for the behavior of the people of Kosovo," he told reporters. "We...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - The European Union (news - web sites)'s foreign policy chief Javier Solana told Kosovo Albanians Wednesday that Western intelligence had a clear picture of who led last week's orgy of arson, rioting and expulsion of Serbs. When we start arresting those responsible, do not jump up clamoring for their release," he was quoted as saying by sources close to his talks with Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi, President Ibrahim Rugova and other Albanian leaders. NATO (news - web sites) allies have blamed Albanian extremists for organising the violence, but Solana's comments appeared to indicate that...

There is an uneasy calm here in Kosovo after the troubles of recent days which left 31 dead and more than 500 wounded. Driving from the airport to the capital Pristina, you see reminders of the biggest outbreak of violence here since the war ended five years ago. In between pizzerias and petrol stations are blackened remains of houses and churches. There are virtually no Serbs left now in Pristina. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that 3,600 have fled their homes in the past week. Many were headed for the security of larger settlements, and about a third...

GRACANICA, Serbia-Montenegro - NATO (news - web sites)-led peacekeepers in Kosovo smashed through doors and tossed stun grenades in pre-dawn raids Tuesday to collect evidence on what caused the worst ethnic violence here since the 1999 war. About 200 peacekeepers raided four houses in Obilic, a city just outside the provincial capital, Pristina. Norwegian forces arrested two people and stuffed evidence in trash bags, seeking clues on who was behind the clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians that killed 28, destroyed 366 homes and burned 41 churches. In all, 196 people have been arrested. Also, two police officers were shot...

PRISTINA, Serbia (AFP) - The UN mission chief in Kosovo accused the instigators of riots that claimed 28 lives in the Serbian province last week of carrying out "severe crimes against humanity." Harri Holkeri told members of Kosovo's minority Serb community the international community was "totally determined to find the perpetrators, to find those people who are behind those kind of things, because they have tried to destroy the whole future of Kosovo. "They are responsible for severe crimes against humanity." He was asked by Serbs in Obilic, a community near Pristina, whether the wave of violence, which also left...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), said on Tuesday that violence in Kosovo was predictable because the international community failed to move on the final status of the Serbian province. Holbrooke, a veteran Balkans trouble-shooter, said in an interview that the European Union (news - web sites), the United Nations and the United States needed to be prepared to go directly to Kosovo's status "but only if the violence subsides on both sides." Clashes between Albanian and Serb communities last week left 28 people dead and 870 injured. Holbrooke...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - A United Nations (news - web sites) policeman and a Kosovo police officer were killed in an attack on a U.N. car near Pristina late on Tuesday, the chief of Kosovo police said. The attack, in the village of Luzane some 12 miles north of the Kosovo capital, followed two days of relative quiet in a region that was shaken by Albanian-Serb ethnic violence this month. Twenty-eight people were killed in fighting. "In an attack against a police patrol, two policemen were killed -- one international and one local," Kosovo police chief Sheremet Ahmetli...

ZAGREB, Croatia - Croatia's government ordered doctors to return to work Thursday, nearly a month after they began a strike that has paralyzed the country's nationalized health system. Labor unions did not immediately respond to the order. Earlier they said doctors would not openly defy such an order but would attempt to thwart its purpose by slowing down service once they were back on the job. Thousands of doctors went on strike Jan. 15, demanding a nearly 50 percent increase in their salaries. Since Jan. 20, they have been performing only emergency surgery and checkups. The Health Ministry is investigating...

One of Croatia's sporting heroes is being accused of Nazi sympathies, after he compared his own attitude before a ski race to that of a German soldier in World War II. Ivica Kostelic's comments - which he made after winning a World Cup slalom race 10 days ago - are reported in a Croatian news magazine. Kostelic compared Hitler favourably with Stalin While Mr Kostelic's spokesman says his words were taken out of context, the magazine's website also carries the recording of an earlier interview, in which the skier says Nazism was a healthy system. Mr Kostelic, who is a...

2 hours, 48 minutes ago By Abigail Levene THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The "unimaginable" rapes, killings and camps of the 1992-5 Bosnian war evoked the horrors of World War II, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright (news - web sites) told the U.N. war crimes tribunal Tuesday. At a landmark hearing to determine sentence for ex-Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, Albright -- the most senior U.S. official ever to testify at The Hague (news - web sites) -- described her horror as she learned of ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs in the Bosnian war. "It was unimaginable that these kinds...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslav military police arrested a U.S. diplomat and a former top Milosevic-era general in a Belgrade restaurant on Thursday night and accused them of espionage, officials said on Friday. Plain-clothes officers roughed up the envoy and interrogated him over spying allegations during a 17-hour incarceration, the U.S. embassy said. Washington issued a sharp rebuke, saying it had complained to the highest levels in Yugoslavia. "The United States government is outraged at this unwarranted detention," said spokesman Paul Denig. "The embassy has delivered forceful protests about these actions." Momcilo Perisic, a former chief of staff of the Yugoslav...

RAMALLAH (Reuters) - An officer in Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s guard and an Italian war photographer were killed Wednesday as Israel pressed on with its biggest offensive in decades against the Palestinians on the eve of a U.S. peace mission. Abu Fadi, deputy commander in Ramallah for Arafat's Force 17 elite guard, was killed in new fighting, Palestinian security sources said. They gave no details. Photographer Raffaele Ciriello, who had worked in many of the world's hot spots, was shot six times in the chest while covering the Israeli takeover of the West Bank city of Ramallah, the...