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Afghan
poppy farmers angry with new government
KABUL,
Afghanistan (AP) — Protests by poppy farmers furious over a
new government anti-drug campaign have stranded thousands of Afghan
refugees seeking to return home from Pakistan, a U.N. spokesman
said Tuesday.
About
14,000 Afghan refugees are stranded between the Pakistani border
town of Torkham and Jalalabad because Shenwari tribesmen who grow
poppies have blocked the highway to protest the government campaign.
Afghanistan’s
interim administration is offering cash to growers of heroin-producing
poppy in exchange for destroying their crop. Farmers say the compensation
is inadequate, and the campaign has triggered violent incidents
in several major poppy-growing areas.
Government
troops in the southern province of Helmand, the largest poppy region,
shot and killed eight farmers Sunday and wounded 16 others when
a protest by about 2,000 farmers got out of control, authorities
said.
The
country’s defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, escaped assassination
Monday during a bomb blast as he arrived in Jalalabad to discuss
the poppy eradication campaign. At least four people were killed
and 16 injured.
The
unrest has added to the problems facing the United Nations as it
tries to return refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan, according
to U.N. spokesman Yusuf Hassan.
Postal
Service stamp increase effective June 30th
WASHINGTON
(AP) — Mailing a letter, bill payment or birthday gift will
cost more starting June 30.
Higher
postal rates, including a 3-cent boost to 37 cents for first-class
mail, were approved in February. The effective date was announced
Tuesday by the Postal Service board of governors.
“The
governors recognize that raising rates is not the long-term solution
to retaining universal service,” board Chairman Robert Rider
said. But he said the higher rates will help the agency cope with
its current economic problems.
The
increases affect only domestic mail. The international letter rate
of 60 cents for the first ounce to Mexico and Canada and 80 cents
to other countries remains unchanged.
The
increase will give the cash-strapped postal service a boost as it
tries to cope with declining business and hundreds of millions of
dollars in costs from the terror attacks and anthrax contamination
last fall.
Postmaster
General John Potter repeated his promise that there won’t be
another increase until at least 2004.
Iraqi
oil suspension leads to drop in oil prices
LONDON
(AP) — Oil prices retreated Tuesday as Iran and Libya held
back from joining Iraq’s suspension of crude shipments to countries
allied with Israel.
OPEC
Secretary-general Ali Rodriguez said the oil producers’ group
is opposed to an oil embargo, and some analysts expected Saudi Arabia
and other moderate OPEC members to quietly boost their output to
cover any serious shortfall in global supplies.
The
incentive of higher oil prices might encourage non-OPEC producers
such as Russia and Mexico to do the same, analysts said.
Signs
of a partial Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories also
helped to calm futures markets, a day after Iraq’s cutoff triggered
a 6 percent surge in prices. Markets seemed initially to shrug off
a flare-up in fighting Tuesday in which at least 13 Israeli soldiers
died.
The
European Union’s head office said it was convening a special
meeting later this week to discuss rising oil prices. However, the
European Commission played down fears of a looming world fuel emergency.
Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein announced Monday that he was halting oil
exports for 30 days or until Israel withdrew from the territories.
A political dispute at Venezuela’s state-run oil company exacerbated
the turmoil.
Young
boys rescued from mine after cave-in
THIDA,
Ark. (AP) — Dreams of gold drew them in. Teams of rescuers
pulled them out.
Three
boys who went looking for riches in a Civil War-era mine got caught
in a cave-in that trapped them in a crawl space 200 feet underground
for a day and a half. Rescuers dug with their hands and small shovels
and crawled on their bellies to reach the three, who were a little
dehydrated and scared but unhurt.
William
Zachary Foster, 9, had feared the worst. “We wasn’t going
to get out. We didn’t have any food and we’d starve to
death,” he said Tuesday at a hospital in Batesville, where
the three boys were treated.
The
boy had been eager to search for gold after finding sparkling dust
on his shirt in a previous trip to the mine. On Sunday morning,
he and his brother, David Keith Foster, 11, and their 19-year-old
cousin, Jeffery Keith Foster, set out with their black Labrador,
Precious, to explore.
Though
no gold has ever been found in the mines, local lore has it that
the walls hide treasure left by train robbers who escaped through
the mines in the late 1800s.
Five
minutes into the boys’ trek, the ground rumbled and the dirt
ceiling collapsed. What was once a 5-by-5-foot entranceway into
the hillside was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
Now
firefighters are deciding what to do with the remaining mines —
a popular hangout for teen-agers around Thida, population 150.
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