Foreign

Hijack drama ends as hostages released
NEW DELHI -- India agreed yesterday to exchange three jailed Muslim militants for all 160 people aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Afghanistan, with the hostages expected back in New Delhi within hours. "As a result of the negotiations w...

Grim Yeltsin surprises all by resigning
MOSCOW -- President Boris Yeltsin, 68, announced on national television yesterday that he had resigned and that presidential elections would be held within 90 days to replace him. The announcement caught Russia by total surprise, and is likely to...

Will lame-duck Bill beat odds?
WASHINGTON -- He wants to fix Medicare, bring peace to the Middle East, institute tougher gun controls ... Bill Clinton has a long wish list for the new year, his last as president. But while he may reasonably expect progress in the foreign polic...

Century of triumphs over disease, with more to come
PARIS -- A century ago, smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, measles and polio ravaged the world. Wheezy breathing, a cut or even an abscessed tooth were cause for alarm, as they could herald pneumonia or gangrene, against which doctors could only of...

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE YEAR AHEAD:
An early reveller in New York City walks through Times Square yesterday wearing spectacular Year 2000 glasses. While this party-goer chose to literally "see the new year in" at Times Square, he was expected to be joined by thousands when the tra...

India prepares low-key party plans
NEW DELHI -- Final preparations for millennium celebrations in India were tempered yesterday by concerns for 160 hostages held on a hijacked Indian airliner and the official mourning period for late president Shankar Sharma. With negotiations at ...

Internet: a major e-ffect on language
SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts -- Ask John Morse, publisher of Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, to name the word that defines the close of the millennium and he doesn't hesitate: Internet. "No other word has become part of people's lives so quickly or h...

24-hour eye kept on nuclear hotline
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colorado -- Side by side, Russian and American military officers were monitoring the skies yesterday to ensure that the millennium doesn't end with a nuclear missile launch accidentally sent because of the Y2K bug. The co...

A polar New Year at -32šC
SYDNEY -- The champagne has been on ice for months. So have most of the revellers planning one of the world's most remote New Year's Eve parties -- at a US scientific base at the South Pole. Braving subzero temperatures, about 220 staff at the Am...

Ex-KGB Putin now in hot seat at Kremlin 'Still an enigma'
MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin, the poker-faced ex-KGB spy, once tried to westernise a crumbling Soviet Union but has since galvanised a new Russia and is vowing to annihilate the rebels of Chechnya. "We'll get them anywhere -- if we find terrorists si...

Putin given 'atomic case'
MOSCOW -- Outgoing president Boris Yeltsin handed over yesterday to interim president Vladimir Putin an attaché case that can be used to activate Russia's nuclear arsenal, Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing Kremlin sources. The Russian...

Here's why Y2K won't bug the Amish
BIRD-IN-HAND, Pennsylvania -- Omar Stoltzfus lives in 1999 as if it were 1899. He has gas lamps at home and in his crafts shop in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County. He uses gas heat and has an air compressor to pump water into his store. He has a c...

Baby boys bounce into new century
AUCKLAND -- The new millennium's first child is a baby boy -- born here at 12.01am today (11:01 on Friday, GMT), New Zealand media reported. In Fiji, which greeted the millennium at the same time as New Zealand, the first birth occurred at 12.18a...

No 2000 bug snags for NZ ... but long ATM queues
AUCKLAND -- New Zealand was the first industrial nation into the new millennium today and the electricity and water still worked, cash machines gave out money, phones rang, computers hummed and the Y2K bug, if alive, was small. Following in behin...