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Argentina |
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Legislative elections. Results : Next Senate : PJ (Partido Justicialista/Justicialist Party) 39 ; (Alianza/Aliance) 26 ; MPN (Movimiento Popular Neuquiño/Neuquino People's Movement) 2 ; Frepaso (Frente del País Solidario / Front for a Country in Solidarity) 2 ; PRS (Partido Renovador de Salta / Salta Renewal Party) 1 , FR (Fuerza Republicana /Republican Force) 1 and ARI 1 |
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Canada (Alberta) |
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Municipal elections. Results : Conservative Calgary chose a former federal Liberal candidate as its new mayor as Albertans went to the polls in province wide civic elections. David Bronconnier narrowly defeated two former city councillors and a veteran Tory MLA in a quirky campaign that featured an alleged death threat, backroom job offers and billboards bashing Edmonton. Bronconnier, 39, paid tribute to rivals Bev Longstaff, Ray Clark and Richard Magnus after a rollercoaster evening that saw them all come within a few thousand votes of each other. |
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Greece |
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Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis was re-elected as ruling PASOK president at the party's congress with 71.16 percent of the votes. The registered delegates numbered 6,439 and of those, 6,196 voted while the valid votes were 6,069, 127 were invalid and 1,753 were blank votes, Simitis received 4,316 votes or 71.16 per cent of the votes. |
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IWA |
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World Water Congress - Berlin Some 3000 delegates gather for the World Bank-sponsored congress, "Water - Mirror Of The World." The meeting looks at the issues of water economics and water politics in Europe, and the impact of a structural shift in water management from public to private control. The agenda includes belligerence over scarce water resources, and cross-border accidents. The emphasis is on better management of ever scarcer water. Experts predict that the demand for water could exceed the total available supply by around 2030. Shortages of water are expected to become to become a major source of international tension, a cause of social and possibly even military conflict. |
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Canada (Ontario) |
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Premier Mike 'Chainsaw' Harris to resign after six years in office. Mike Harris, best known for his right-wing agenda of drastic tax and spending cuts, stunned cabinet ministers and party insiders alike by announcing that he had made a "very personal decision" to resign as premier of Canada's most populous province. |
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Great Britain |
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Lord Hailsham died. Lord Hailsham, who served in the governments of six Conservative prime ministers. He was 94. Hailsham, one of the last survivors of Winston Churchill's wartime government, finished as lord chancellor, chief of the judiciary, for Prime Ministers Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. He was born Quintin McGarel Hogg Oct. 9. 1907, elder son of Viscount Hailsham, who also served as lord chancellor and as Britain's attorney general. His mother was a judge's daughter from Nashville, Tenn. When his father died in 1950, Hogg inherited the title, which consigned him to what he called the "political ghetto" of the House of Lords, the unelected upper house. He renounced the title in 1963 when he had a chance of succeeding Harold Macmillan as prime minister, but lost out to Alec Douglas-Home. He served in both their governments. In 1970, he was named Heath's lord chancellor. He became Lord Hailsham again and was made a life baron. When Thatcher took power, she kept him as lord chancellor and he served in the post a total of 12 years. Hailsham retired from the Cabinet in 1987. He remained an active and colorful member of the House of Lords, and was reprimanded for "intervening from a sedentary position in a loud and boisterous way" during a 1993 debate. |
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Germany {Hamburg) |
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Three Parties Form Government In Hamburg. Spokesmen for the Christian Democratic Union, the Free Democratic Party and the Party for a Law-and-Order Offensive (PRO) said the agreement they had finalized would, as expected, make the CDU's Ole von Beust the new mayor. |
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U.S.A. |
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Virginia State Senator Emily Couric dies. Couric profile : Born in Atlanta, the Couric sisters moved to Virginia with their family in the early 1950s. Emily graduated from high school in Arlington and earned a bachelor's degree from Smith College. She had a varied employment history, working as a public information officer and speech writer for the federal government, a newspaper reporter, a newsletter editor and a high school biology teacher. After she moved to Charlottesville in 1981, her interest turned to politics during her six years on the city school board, an appointed position steeped in community affairs. In the state Senate, Couric gained the respect and admiration of her colleagues. She served as the party's chief spokeswoman and fund-raiser. |
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Gambia |
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Presidential election. Results : Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has been declared the winner of a second five-year term. The vote was seen as a test of this West African country's commitment to democracy. Mr Jammeh, who was first elected in a widely-criticised 1996 ballot, won 52.96% of the votes cast in an election that international observers called largely free and fair. His main rival, opposition leader Ousainou Darboe, won 32.67%, followed by Hamat Bah with 8%, Sheriff Dibba with 4%, and Sidia Jatta with 3%. Turnout is about 80%. |
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Russia |
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President Vladimir Putin has abolished a ministry, created a new one and appointed Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov as industry, science and technology minister in a Cabinet reshuffle. Industry, Science and Technology Minister Alexander Dondukov was replaced with Klebanov, who is to retain his title as deputy prime minister. |
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Mauritania |
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Parliamentary and local elections - 1st round. Results : President Maaouya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya's ruling Republican Democratic Party won 61.6 percent of vote, taking 2, 209 of the 3, 400 city council seats across the impoverished West African nation. Two government-allied parties followed with 10.5 percent and 8 percent of the vote, taking a combined 481 seats. The country's three major opposition parties took less than 6 percent of the vote apiece, accounting for a combined 161 seats. In the absence of outright winners, runoff votes were expected next Friday in all nine municipalities in the capital, Nouakchott, and in a number of other cities. Parties needed more than 50 percent of the vote to win. |
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Norway |
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Norway's new Government in place Incoming prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik presented his new coalition government. The new government was officially inaugurated at the Royal Palace. Ten of the MPs come from the Conservative Party, five from Bondevik's Christian People's Party and three from the Liberal Left. Eight of the MPs are women. See new governement next week |
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EU |
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Special EU summit - Belgium The October summit sets the agenda for the December 2001 EU summit - the meeting expected to result in a plan of action for implementing the Treaty of Nice on Jan. 1, 2004. Signed by the 15 EU leaders at the conclusion of the December 2000 summit, the Treaty lays out institutional and decision-making reforms suitable for a much-expanded Union. Opponents see the Treaty as a sure step towards eroding national political and economic sovereignty. Proponents say it is the only way the enlarged entity can function efficiently. The first tasks of Belgium, one of the Treaty's enthusiasts, will be clarifying the exact language of the signed treaty. The December 2000 summit, hosted by France, concluded with treaty signatures but confusion about the treaty contents. President Jacques Chirac is accused of slipping in some last-minute deals that were not noticed until after the signed document was translated, typed up and distributed. Belgium also has the task of starting to organize the next Inter-Governmental Conference in 2004. |
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Poland |
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President Aleksander Kwasniewski will accept the resignation of the Jerzy Buzek government, and appoint a new government led by Leszek Miller at the Presidential Palace later in the day when the new cabinet is sworn-in. See new governement next week |
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Australia |
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Capital Territory, Territorial election. Results : Labor has increased its lead over the Liberal Party, according to the latest Canberra Times Datacol poll and is almost certain to take minority government with Democrats or Greens support. Liberal Chief Minister Gary Humphries said it confirmed the previous poll that the ACT was headed for a Labor government with Greens and/or Democrats support. Labor Leader Jon Stanhope said he was encouraged but cautious. |
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APEC |
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China hosts APEC summit - Shanghai But for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the contentious question of revising APEC's 1995 guidelines for liberalizing trade and investment within the Pacific Rim by 2020 would have been the centerpiece of the conference. As it is, the issue of economic measures to combat terrorism has main billing. Beijing's hosting of the summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Forum underscores its determination to be seen as a major economic player and worthy of its newly-won acceptance into the World Trade Organization. Beijing boasts that over half of the world's top 500 companies have established solely-funded and jointly-run enterprises or representative offices in China, and that the volume of direct foreign investment in China has reached USD 450 billion. Early indications are that the recession in the United States economy will prompt fretful discussion at the summit about a domino impact on Asian economies. United States President George W. Bush makes his debut at the summit. There is word that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is attending at the invitation of Japan, and that Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will meet on the sidelines of the summit. |
THIS WEEK'S STORY
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Mao begin's "Long March" The embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch'ang Cheng-the "Long March"- the retreat lasted 368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New York to San Francisco. Civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists broke out in 1927. In 1931, Communist leader Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China, based in Kiangsi province in the southwest. Between 1930 and 1934, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of five encirclement campaigns against the Soviet Republic. Under the leadership of Mao, the Communists employed guerrilla tactics to resist successfully the first four campaigns, but in the fifth, Chiang raised 700,000 troops and built fortifications around the Communist positions. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed or died of starvation in the siege, and Mao was removed as chairman by the Communist Central Committee. The new Communist leadership employed more conventional warfare tactics, and its Red Army was decimated. With defeat imminent, the Communists decided to break out of the encirclement at its weakest points. The Long March began at 5:00 p.m. on October 16, 1934. Secrecy and rear-guard actions confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they realized that the main body of the Red Army had fled. The retreating force initially consisted of 86,000 troops, 15,000 personnel, and 35 women. Weapons and supplies were borne on men's backs or in horse-drawn carts, and the line of marchers stretched for 50 miles. The Communists generally marched at night, and when the enemy was not near, a long column of torches could be seen snaking over valleys and hills into the distance. The first disaster came in November, when Nationalist forces blocked the Communists' route across the Hsiang River. It took a week for the Communists to break through the fortifications and cost them 50,000 men-more than half their number. After that debacle, Mao steadily regained his influence, and in January he was again made chairman during a meeting of the party leaders in the captured city of Tsuni. Mao changed strategy, breaking his force into several columns that would take varying paths to confuse the enemy. There would be no more direct assaults on enemy positions. And the destination would now be Shensi Province, in the far northwest, where the Communists hoped to fight the Japanese invaders and earn the respect of China's masses. After enduring starvation, aerial bombardment, and almost daily skirmishes with Nationalist forces, Mao halted his columns at the foot of the Great Wall of China on October 20, 1935. Waiting for them were five machine-gun- and red-flag-bearing horsemen. "Welcome, Chairman Mao," one said. "We represent the Provincial Soviet of Northern Shensi. We have been waiting for you anxiously. All that we have is at your disposal!" The Long March was over. The Communist marchers crossed 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, mostly snow-capped. Only 4,000 troops completed the journey. The majority of those who did not perished. It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and marked the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communists. Learning of the Communists' heroism and determination in the Long March, thousands of young Chinese traveled to Shensi to enlist in Mao's Red Army. After fighting the Japanese for a decade, the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Four years later, the Nationalists were defeated, and Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. He served as chairman until his death in 1976. |
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