New leader takes office in Bolivia
La Paz, Bolivia Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indian president, took office on Sunday with a promise to lift his nation’s struggling indigenous majority out of centuries of poverty and discrimination.
Morales, a former leader of Bolivia’s coca growers and a fierce critic of U.S. policies, raised a fist in a leftist salute as he swore to uphold the constitution.
The 46-year-old son of a peasant farmer, Morales vowed that his socialist government would reshape Bolivia. He criticized free-market economic prescriptions supported by the U.S. and international donors, saying they had failed to end chronic poverty.
“The neoliberal economic model has run out,” said Morales, an Aymara Indian.
Nigerian militants say they’ll free hostages
Lagos, Nigeria Militants holding four foreign hostages in Nigeria claimed Sunday they would release the captives soon, according to a statement purportedly from the militant group.
The hostages – an American, a Briton, a Bulgarian and a Honduran – were seized near a Shell oil field on Jan. 11 by a group that also claimed responsibility for other oil industry attacks that have cut Nigerian production by almost 10 percent.
The militants are demanding the release of two imprisoned figureheads of their ethnic Ijaw group and have threatened more attacks on oil facilities. They claim to be fighting for a greater local share of oil wealth they believe is being unfairly snapped up by foreign companies and the federal government.
The kidnapped workers are employed by two companies contracted by Shell in the delta.
U.N. says 20,000 flee violence in Congo
Geneva About 20,000 people have fled violence in Congo to seek refuge across the border in Uganda over the last four days, the U.N. refugee agency said Sunday.
In eastern Congo, home to many of the refugees, renegade former army soldiers ambushed U.N. peacekeepers with mortars in a hilltop banana plantation in eastern Congo Sunday, sparking a firefight that left four attackers dead, U.N. officials said.
The peacekeepers were trying to flush the former soldiers out of territory they captured during raids this week, U.N. military spokesman Mayank Awasthi said. The raids in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province forced the refugees to cross the nearby border with Uganda.
Kosovo mourns late president with silence
Pristina, Serbia-Montenegro Kosovo lawmakers, some crying, observed a minute of silence Sunday in memory of late President Ibrahim Rugova and pledged to pursue his lifelong dream of independence from Serbia.
Throughout the province, flags flew at half-staff and ethnic Albanians mourning their leader’s death placed flowers and formed long lines to pay condolences at Rugova’s official residence.
The 61-year-old ethnic Albanian leader died Saturday from lung cancer. He was diagnosed with the disease in September.
His death occurred just days before talks were to begin on the final status of the U.N.-administered province and left Kosovo’s political scene in disarray. The talks have been delayed until February.