News Currents
AFRICA African leaders, meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, through June 5, are advocating a fresh course for their troubled continent with pleas for democracy, economic integration, and an end to civil strife. Speaking at the Organization of African Unity summit in the central Nigerian city, they emphasized that the transformation must be profound and could be painful. Nigerian President Gen. Ibrahim Babangida was named the new chairman of the OAU, very few of whose representatives were elected under multi-party systems.... Aid agencies were preparing June 4 to move food supplies to famine-stricken eastern Ethiopia, where a million peasants and Somali refugees face starvation. Ethiopia's new leader, Meles Zenawi, said in a television broadcast the previous night that his Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front controlled virtually the entire country.
UNITED STATES
Whites are 9 to 1 more likely than minorities to agree with President Bush that minorities should not be given preferences in hiring, a Washington Post/ABC news poll reported. The poll was taken in advance of a House vote this week on a controversial Democratic-sponsored civil rights bill opposed by Bush.... President Bush waived for the Soviet Union the so-called Jackson-Vanik law that requires countries to allow free emigration in order to receive favorable trade tr eatment from the US. He is expected in coming days to grant $1.5 billion in farm credits to the Soviets for buying US food. Extending most-favored-nation trade status for the first time to the Soviet Union should not be far behind, experts say.... The US economy grew in May for the first time in eight months, according to purchasing managers surveyed by the National Association of Purchasing Management. But the manufacturing segment of the economy continued to decline.... The adminis tration has confirmed that a tentative agreement has been reached to double American access to the Japanese public construction market and avert the threat of bilateral trade sanctions.... Supporters of Space Station Freedom fought June 4 for continued financial support after the House Appropriations Committee, ignoring White House pleas, voted June 3 to kill Freedom, a project considered a key step toward more ambitious manned voyages into space.
OTHER WORLD NEWS
President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will meet in Moscow on June 25-27, the German newspaper Bild said June 4. The paper said 400 beds had been reserved in Moscow hotels for the US delegation.... Saudi Arabia rejected calls to curb oil production and help boost prices to $21 a barrel as OPEC prepared June 4 for the group's twice-yearly ministerial conference, this time to chart its strategy in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf crisis.... Israel's A ir Force June 4 staged one of its biggest air raids into Lebanon this year by hitting guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon, killing two guerrillas and wounding 20. It was Israel's second air operation in the region in less 24 hours.
