Volendam
Hundreds of young people had just toasted in the New Year at the Little Heaven café in Volendam, northeast of Amsterdam, when a devastating fire broke out. By week's end, it had taken 10 lives. More deaths are possible, since 90 people remain in hospitals. The café's owner said the blaze started when a reveler's sparkler ignited pine boughs decorating the ceiling. The Dutch government announced it would pursue stricter flame-retardant standards in clothing after police reported that flammable party dresses of synthetic fabric had made the victims' burns far worse.
Stockholm
Two days before Christmas three armed and hooded robbers walked into Stockholm's National Museum just before closing time and ordered guards to the ground at gunpoint. The gang grabbed three paintings from the walls, ran out to a small speedboat moored alongside the waterfront gallery and disappeared into the city's archipelago. Days later the thieves contacted the police, offering to return the paintings in exchange for a ransom payment. Media reports say the thieves demanded $1 million for each of the three paintings — a self-portrait by Rembrandt and Renoir's 'Young Parisienne' and 'Conversation'. Though the works are still missing, five men were arrested last week.
Berlin
The first 244 women allowed into combat units of the German armed forces reported for basic training last week. The recruits were among 1,900 women who applied for combat duty following a vote by the German parliament last October to open the ranks to women applicants. In the first class of women recruits were 151 trainees for the army, 76 for the air force and 17 for the navy. Women were allowed in the services only for noncombat jobs until a European Court decision found the German rules in violation of European Union laws against sex discrimination.
Antalya
The trade in illegal immigrants took a grim toll on New Year's Day when the Georgian-registered ship Pati foundered off the Turkish coast in stormy weather and sank with its human cargo locked in the hold. Turkish authorities recovered the bodies of 10 of the 50 people believed to have perished — most of them from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan — while 33, including the Greek captain, were rescued. One survivor was Abukalam Ajad, a Bangladeshi, who hung on to wreckage in 4.5-m waves to make his way to rocks where he was spotted 29 hours later. Charged $2,000 for illicit passage to a new life in Europe, Ajad, along with fellow survivors, now faces deportation back home.
Jerusalem
Yasser Arafat got the backing he wanted from the Arab League for his tough positions on the right of return for Palestinian refugees and control over Jerusalem's holy sites. But the Palestinian leader may have been boxed in by the Arab states, which called the return of refugees a "holy right." The importance of peace talks was emphasized last week when the son of the assassinated Jewish extremist, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and his wife were shot to death near the West Bank settlement of Ofra. The same day Israeli snipers killed Thabet Thabet, the top official from Arafat's Fateh Party in the town of Tulkarem.
Tehran
Four defendants confessed in a Tehran court to a brutal series of murders of dissidents, including nationalist opposition leader Daruish Foruhar and his wife Parvaneh, in late 1998. The killings evolved into a political scandal implicating the highest ranks of the Intelligence Ministry. President Mohammed Khatami made the investigation into the murders a key task of his tenure, insisting he would not rest until his government cut out "the cancerous tumor" in the ministry. Reformists criticize the closed-door proceedings for failing to reveal the official roots behind the killing campaign.
Dakar
Talks aimed at ending 18 years of civil strife in Senegal ended before they began last week when fighting broke out between rival separatist groups. After supporters of the Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC) were attacked by another rebel faction based across the border in Guinea-Bissau, they postponed talks with the government. The delay came just weeks after the MFDC had held its first face-to-face meetings with the government to discuss formal peace negotiations.
Baidoa
The election of a national government in Somalia last August ended nine years of factional fighting. The new administration hoped to establish an interim parliament in Baidoa, 200 km northwest of the capital, Mogadishu. But last week the town, which was known as the city of death after fighting and famine devastated the region in 1992, had its communications links with the outside world cut, apparently by the Rahanwein Resistance Army that controls the area. Reports said that fighting among RRA members caused the breakdown.
Phnom Penh
Cambodia's National Assembly last week approved a plan for a special U.N.-assisted tribunal to bring leaders of the brutal 1970s Khmer Rouge regime to trial for crimes against humanity. None of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders has faced a court for the "killing fields" — the slave-labor farming camps and torture centers in which 1.7 million Cambodians died between 1975 and '79. But the lawmakers left open the question of whether Ieng Sary, a key cadre in the old regime who received a royal pardon when he defected in 1996, would be eligible for trial in the new court.
Manila
As the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada on corruption charges continued, four senators and the Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court received death threats. The targeted senators, all members of the impeachment court, have been described by the Manila press as sympathetic to the President, while Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide said his warning letter accused him of being "anti-Estrada." In the latest twist, an attorney testified that an Estrada aide ordered her to set up two shell companies, which prosecutors claim were used to hide bribe money.
Xiamen
Three vessels sailing to Chinese ports from the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu marked the first legal direct transport from Taiwan-held territory to the Chinese mainland in 51 years. The passenger ships carried religious pilgrims as well as local government officials and tourists. The voyages were made possible by a law passed earlier this year by the Taiwan legislature permitting limited exchanges of people and goods between the two offshore island groups and the nearby mainland. The economic impact of the new policy is likely to be slight, but its symbolic importance may be greater, possibly opening the way for full-scale direct trade and transport links between Taiwan and China.
Canberra
Europe's beleaguered cattle farmers suffered a further blow last week when the Australia-New Zealand Food Authority announced it was banning the import of beef products from 30 European countries to protect consumers from the human variant of "mad cow" disease. Foods containing British beef have been banned since 1996, but the recent discoveries of sick animals in France, Germany and other European countries have prompted the ban from Jan.8.
Castries
As more than 400 people attended Sunday Mass in the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, two men burst in brandishing machetes and a blowtorch. In a frenzied attack they killed an Irish nun, Sister Theresa Egan, and injured a dozen other worshipers. Kim John and Francis Phillip were later arrested and allegedly told police they were Rastafarian "prophets" on a mission to combat corruption in the church. Rastafarian leaders denounced the attack.
San Pablo
The Colombian Government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the second-largest guerrilla group, recently drafted a tentative agreement to create a demilitarized zone in northern Colombia to hold peace talks. The draft is being discussed with residents, who have fiercely opposed the idea. Despite the intended presence of intenational monitors and some civil authorities, residents fear the zone may be used to cultivate drugs, stage military offensives and hold hostages. The ELN could get an area of around 4,700 sq km, a tenth the size of the area reserved for the main rebel group, the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia.