News In Brief

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Iraq should be awarded for its ''180-degree'' change in policy on weapons disclosure, Rolf Ekeus, the UN official in charge of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, said yesterday. The Gulf war cease-fire resolutions should be honored, and the date for lifting the ban on Iraqi oil sales be advanced, he said. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government denied claims by Iraqi defectors that President Hussein had new plans to invade Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A 1,400-strong group of US troops started arriving in Kuwait yesterday for war exercises aimed at deterring an Iraqi confrontation. (Story, Page 1.)

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French UN peacekeepers fired their heaviest weaponry yet on Serb rebels outside Sarajevo Tuesday night in retaliation for a Serb assault on Egyptian peacekeepers, they said. Tuesday's casualty figures for the Sarajevo area were the highest in weeks. In a report yesterday, the UN's former chief human rights investigator demanded that Bosnian Serb leaders immediately account for Muslim men missing after the Serb seizure of Srebrenica. Tadeusz Mazowieck said the Red Cross has received up to 10,000 tracing requests for those missing after Srebrenica's fall.

US envoy Dennis Ross pushed for an accord on wider Palestinian self-rule in talks with Israeli and PLO negotiators, which resumed yesterday. Israel also reopened its border with the Gaza Strip yesterday. And an intelligence official told an Israeli newspaper that Hamas is planning more attacks in the run-up to the signing of a final accord.

Family size is shrinking worldwide because women in most countries want fewer children, according to a study to be presented at the Aug. 30 UN conference on women in China. Average family size dropped from six to three children in the past 25 years in many Asian and Latin American countries, it said.

The head of one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels is negotiating the terms of his surrender with the government. Juan Garcia Abrego is demanding that he not be extradited to the US to face trafficking charges, the New York Times and Dallas Morning News said.

An ethnic group virtually shut down Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, yesterday with a strike to protest alleged police brutality. The two-day strike, called by the largest faction of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, follows a recent police crackdown on ethnic activists in Karachi.

The Khmer Rouge can be prosecuted for genocide, an international conference on genocide in Cambodia concluded yesterday. The conference also charged the Khmer Rouge with crimes against humanity and war crimes against Vietnam.

President Lee Teng-hui said yesterday he intends to run for a second term in Taiwan's first direct presidential elections, raising the spectre of a party split . Some National Party members say he's been in power too long.

Indian officials expressed hope of a release after successfully persuading Kashmiri rebels to send recent photos and audio tapes of four Western captives.

Etcetera

Queen Elizabeth will save taxpayers' money by using a commercial flight for the first time when she visits New Zealand later this year, according to the Daily Mirror. She usually flies on special royal flights. The first-class section of a 747 would be revamped for the trip.

Two South African women, whose babies were accidentally switched at birth, are suing authorities for thousands of dollars. But they want to keep their nonbiological sons. Both women say they have formed deep bonds with the boys. The switch occurred in 1989.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who died in Chicago Monday, won the Nobel Prize for a theory he developed as a teenager that led to today's conception of blacks holes. He was a member of the University of Chicago faculty.

News In Brief

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William Faulkner sues Woody Allen?

Neighborhood fighting between Syrian forces and rebels continues in Aleppo

William Faulkner's Nobel prize, papers come to auction