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Montenegro (Yugoslavia) |
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Parliamentary elections. Results : "Victory is Montenegro" which includes President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists and the Social Democrat Party wins 42.1% of the vote (35 seats) against 40.7% (33 seats) for the "Together for Yugoslavia" bloc led by the Socialist People's Party; the Liberal Alliance takes 7.7%. Turnout is 80.1%. |
Russia (Kemerovo Oblast) |
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Legislative Assembly and Gubernatorial elections. Results : Aman Tuleyev won a second five-year term as governor of the Kemerovo region, some 1,200 miles east of Moscow, with 93 percent of the vote. Tuleyev, who at times has allied himself with the Communists, came in fourth in last year's Russian presidential election. |
Russia (Tula Oblast) |
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Second-round gubernatorial election. Results : Head of the Administration Vasily Starodubtsev wins more than 71% of the vote against 17% for Viktor Sokolovsky. In Kemerovo oblast, Head of the Administration Aman Tuleyev wins a second term with 93% of the vote. |
Russia |
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Sochi City, Mayoral election. Result : None of the six candidates in the Sochi mayor elections collected enough votes to be declared winner. 47 percent of all votes cast were given to Acting Mayor Leonid Mostovoi. Almost 30 percent of the voters cast ballots against all candidates. |
Vietnam |
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Nong Duc Manh becomes secretary-general of the Communist Party. Nong Duc Manh was born into a family of the Tay ethnic minority group in Cuong Loi village, Na Ri District, Bac Can Province on September 11, 1940. Mr. Manh became a member of the Communist Party of Viet Nam on July 5, 1963. He was deputy director of the Provincial Foresty Service and director of the Construction Company of the Foresty Service in former Bac Thai Province in August 1976 until January 1977. In the following seven months Mr. Manh kept only the post of deputy director of the same foresty service. He was appointed director of the same foresty service during July 1977 and September 1980. He became deputy chairman of the Bac Thai Provincial People's Committee in September 1980. In October 1983 he was appointed to the post of chairman of hte Bac Thai Provincial People's Committee and he kept the same post until three years later. He was elected to the post of National Assembly chairman to the ninth National Assembly in 1992. He was re-elected to the same post by the National Assembly in 1997. |
Canada (New Brunswick) |
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Provincial byelection in Kent South. Results : Claude Williams, 45, was declared the winner about 45 minutes after the polls closed in the riding of Kent South. The Saint-Antoine, N.B., businessman easily outdistanced Liberal Lucille Riedle to win the seat on New Brunswick's eastern shore. Williams finished with 4,346 votes to 2,728 for Riedle. New Democrat Marguerite Girouard was a distant third with 370 votes. |
Japan |
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Junichiro Koizumi, a reformer with a nationalist tinge, was elected prime minister of Japan. He received 287 votes out of the 478 ballots cast, while opposition Democratic Party chief Yukio Hatoyama got 127 votes. Koizumi graduated with a degree in economics from prestigious Keio University in Tokyo. He got into politics in 1970, working as a secretary to Takeo Fukuda, an LDP elder statesman who later became prime minister. |
Ukrainia |
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The Communist-dominated parliament dismissed reform-oriented Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko and his government, plunging the nation into political chaos. Yushchenko was born in the town of Khoruzhivka in Sumy Oblast, which borders Russia. His first financial job was as assistant to the chief accountant at a collective farm in Western Ukraine. After serving his time in the Soviet Army he began work in the USSR State Bank and rose rapidly within its ranks. When Ukraine declared independence in 1991, Yushchenko was the deputy director of the commercial agro-industrial bank Ukrainia. |
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This week : VIPS-GOV. - CANADA VIPS-FEDS. - MEXICO |
THIS WEEK'S STORY
Pedro Alvares Cabral Arrival in Brasil The Portuguese set foot in
Brazil On April 22, 1500, twelve Portuguese caravels were in
sight of unknown shores in the South-Western Atlantic. As he
was trying to skirt Africa, Pedro Alvares Cabral the
navigator and his 1200 crew- men discovered almost by
accident what would become Brazil. Such an unexpected
conquest meant the beginning of a new era for small and
daring Portugal. The new land named Santa Cruz by its
discoverer would later be called Brazil after some
coals-coloured local wood, the" pau brasil", which the
Portuguese would trade abundantly. The Portuguese will
settle in Brazil a few years following Cabral's journey. The
Dutch and the French Huguenots remained the only contestants
on the Portuguese claim over the country, but in vain. A "spicy" race Following his skirt of Africa, Vasco de Gama arrived in
India and later, he victoriously returned to Lisbon in
1497-1499. King Manuel I of Portugal, whose nickname was the
Fortunate, resolved to launch a new expedition in order to
find out the best way to skirt Africa and to reach India.The
purpose was merely commercial. The main point was competing
with Venitians and Genoeses who had developped a fruitful
spice trade by earth, with India. The young nobleman, Pedro
Alvares Cabral was entrusted with a new expedition. He
required the assistance of distinguished sailors such as
Bartolomeu Dias who would double the Cape of Good Hope along
with Vasco de Gama and die during the journey. Pedro Alvares
Cabral reminded Christopher Colombus' first journey and
thought it wiser to sail off African Shores in order to
catch the Southern Atlantic trade winds and avoid the calm
waters of the Guinean Gulf where sailing-ships usually stood
still. Like many Europeans then, Cabral still ignored the
land discovered by Colombus was reckoned as a new continent.
Cabral's discovery of a large and wonderful "terra
incognita" on the site of what would become the Brazilian
city of Salvador was thus a real surprise to him. He
therefore managed to send one of his caravels back to Lisbon
with some beautiful parrots on board in order to inform
about his discovery. And Portugal invented Brazil... Pedro Alvares Cabral stayed about ten days at the place
he thought to be an island and took possession of it on
behalf of his King, ignoring the importance of such a
location. The take over was authenticated with the 1493
agreement between Spain and Portugal. Despite its early
involvement into explorations overseas the latter had to
grant Spain a right of inspection over any forthcoming
discovery, since Colombus' deed. According to the agreement
ratified by Pope Alexander VI Borgia's Inter Caetera bull,
all new lands standing at the West of the Azores Archipelago
should be evangelized and therefore conquered by the
Spaniards and the remaining lands, by the Portuguese ! On
June 7, 1494, under the treaty of Tordesillas, the
Portuguese managed to have the demarcation line removed
further West, to 370 Leagues from the Islands of Cape Verde.
Owing to a weird inspiration the lands discovered by Cabral
could subsequently turn Portuguese in accordance with
international law (after the Europeans) (and having no
regard to previous consultation whatsoever with the natives
!). After his take over of Brazil, Pedro Alvares Cabral
resumed his journey towards the Cape of Good Hope, South of
Africa. He reached India as he had planned. In Calicut, the
samorim, or Lord of the Sea, did not welcome him but further
down, in Cochin, Cabral would fill his caravels up with
spice before his return. He came back to Lisbon two years
later with four vessels and only a third of his initial
crew, still they were loaded with spice... and had in mind
some incidental discovery West of the South Atlantic. By André Larané
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