EVENTS
AID FOR GAZA, WEST BANK PLANNED
The World Bank is considering a $1 billion aid package to develop the West Bank and Gaza Strip during interim self-government, according to a Palestinian delegate to the multilateral Middle East peace talks. Samirr Huleileh, a senior member of the Palestinian team to the multilateral economic talks that resumed May 4 in Rome, told Reuters the bank would seek final approval for aid to cover a five-year interim period of self rule being negotiated with Israel in the main Middle East peace talks. Economic d evelopment has been limited in these territories for 25 years by Israeli occupation and the last five and a half years by the Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule. Amnesty questioned
The Lebanese government has appealed a military court ruling that the bombing of the United States Embassy in Beirut in 1983 was covered by an amnesty for war crimes, officials in Beirut said May 4. Judge Nasri Lahoud, the government's delegate at the military tribunal, argued that the bombing, which killed 63 people, involved diplomats and political leaders and should not be included in the amnesty for offenses committed during the civil war between 1975 and 1990. Cult children abused
Children who left the Branch Davidian cult compound said David Koresh gave girls as young as 11 plastic Stars of David that signified they were ready to be his wives, the New York Times reported May 4. The children, who left the compound during the 51-day siege that began Feb. 28, also told social workers that Koresh told them to call their parents "dogs" and refer only to him as their father. The paper quoted from the report of a team headed by Dr. Bruce D. Perry, chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's
Hospital in Houston. The team interviewed 19 of the 21 surviving children, ages 4 to 11. Woman governs in German state
Germany appears certain to get its first woman at the head of a state government after Heide Simonis was nominated by the governing party May 4 to succeed Bjoern Engholm as governor of Schleswig-Holstein. Ms. Simonis, an economist, has been finance minister in Germany's northernmost state. She became acting governor after Engholm resigned his posts as national head of the Social Democratic Party and state governor. And in Dusseldorf, former East German spymaster Markus Wolf who headed the Communist East German spy apparatus from 1953 to 1986 went on trial May 4 for treason, espionage, and bribery. German strike continues
Striking East German steel workers and management agreed May 4 to resume negotiations in hopes of ending a landmark steel and engineering strike over the low rate of east German wages. But east Germany's first strike in more than 60 years grew the same day to 38,000. The International Metalworkers' Federation, representing 18 million workers in 70 countries, has decided to support the strike. Yeltsin may cancel again
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, widely expected to visit Tokyo later this month, may leave his Japanese hosts in the lurch for the second time in a year, news reports in Tokyo said May 4. Yeltsin, who called off a planned trip to Japan last September with just four days' notice, may also cancel a visit tentatively slated for the end of May due to a bitter territorial dispute and political tensions at home, a Russian official told a newspaper. China makes US badges
A factory in rural China has been cranking out military emblems for the US military and state police since 1991, Beijing's Farmers Daily said. The Jinxiang Badge Factory near Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, manufactures insignia for more than 100 US military units and for police forces in all 50 states. Japan and Taiwan used to have the business.
