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Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended what his presidential news service called a "sojourn in a sanatorium" and returned to the Kremlin after two months of treatment and rest for acute coronary ischemia (restricted blood flow to the heart). Prior to his public appearance in the Kremlin, Yeltsin quickly met with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to map out potential strategies to deal with the strong showing of the Communist Party in the Dec. 17 parliamentary elections.
SOLAR TEMPLE MASSACRE II
Two members of the Order of the Solar Temple methodically shot 14 fellow cultists lying sedated and arranged in the shape of a star on the forest floor, then ignited the bodies before turning their revolvers on themselves. The charred corpses were discovered on Dec. 23 outside the village of St.-Pierre-de-Cherennes in southeastern France. The killings were a grisly replay of the murder-suicides that claimed the lives of 53 Solar Temple members in Switzerland and Quebec last year.
FIGHTING IN CHECHNYA
Russia recaptured Chechnya's second largest city, Gudermes, from secessionist rebels who had moved into the city to disrupt elections for a local president and for the Russian parliament. Moscow's 10-day assault on Gudermes left nearly 600 people dead, half of them civilians, according to the Russian military commander, and destroyed a third of the city's buildings.
ISRAEL AND SYRIA REOPEN TALKS
Meeting at a quiet conference center on Maryland's Eastern Shore, negotiators for Israel and Syria held informal discussions with U.S. State Department officials in an attempt to restart the peace dialogue. The talks had collapsed six months ago.
THE LADY VANQUISHES
The great French storyteller Honore de Balzac could have written this tale of a Faustian bargain gone terribly wrong. In 1965 lawyer Andre-Francois Raffray agreed to "purchase" the house of an elderly client with $500-a-month installments, then a steep price--on condition that he would inherit the property outright the moment she died. Last week, 30 years older and $180,000 poorer, Raffray, 77, expired on Christmas Day. His client, Jeanne Calment, celebrated the holiday with a sumptuous hotel banquet in her hometown of Arles. "We all make bad deals in life," she joked to Raffray when she turned 120 early last year. She is now officially the oldest person in the world.
BUSINESS
IS THERE A ZEV IN YOUR FUTURE?
California, home to 26 million registered automobiles, backed away from passing legislation that would require 2% of all cars sold in the state to be electrically powered within two years. Instead, the state's Air Resources Board proposed giving car manufacturers more time to come up with a marketable "zero emission vehicle" (ZEV). Under the new schedule, 10% of all cars sold in California will be electrically powered by 2003.
A FINANCIAL HOUSECLEANING