World
Every new attack on one of its leaders will result in the deaths of 100 more Israelis, a defiant Hamas warned. Despite international condemnation for the bomb explosion Wednesday at Jerusalem's Hebrew University in which seven people among them five Americans died, the radical movement said that was only its first reprisal for the July 22 Israeli raid that killed Salah Shehadeh, the leader of its "military wing." US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, laying a wreath at the site of the blast, said "the terrorist murderers [and] those who sent them have descended to a new depth of depravity." In Washington, President Bush said: "I am just as angry as Israel is. I am furious."
As expected and over the bitter objections of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit Turkey's parliament overwhelmingly approved a national election Nov. 3. After the 449-to-62 vote Wednesday, the legislators were tackling a long-delayed package of reforms among them abolishing the death penalty and legalizing Kurdish-language education demanded by the European Union as a condition for Turkish membership.
"Internal saboteurs" who urged that the US and other Western nations impose sanctions against the Zimbabwean government will be punished, its home affairs minister told a Harare newspaper. John Nkomo said measures such as withdrawal of passports and the requiring of exit and entry visas for "our political opponents" are under active consideration. Economic sanctions have been imposed against Zimbabwe for its history of human rights abuses.
To prevent a run on savings accounts by their depositors, all banks in Uruguay were ordered to stay closed until 1 p.m. Monday as the government sought to stave off the financial crisis spawned in neighboring Argentina. But reports said dozens of people looted a supermarket in Montivideo, the capital, with police arresting at least eight of them. Under a plan devised by the Central Bank, Uruguayans could withdraw pension funds and their weekly pay at automated teller machines. Uruguay's cash reserves have shrunk from $3.1 billion at the end of last year to $655 million, and the government is seeking an emergency infusion of $1.5 billion from international lenders.
Pope John Paul II was to complete his week-long tour of the Western Hemisphere and leave Mexico for Rome Thursday. His last public event was the beatification the last step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church of two Mexican Indians killed in the 1700s for collaboration with the Spanish colonial church. Despite reports that he appeared weary, the pontiff missed no events on his schedule.
