Help keep us up and running: Become a Patron!
The first of several thousand troops arrived to beef up the U.S. military presence in Kuwait on Thursday, picking up equipment from duffel bags to tanks and speculating about chemical weapons and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Though their mission is defined as a training exercise, they know that their presence in the region is meant to deter an Iraqi invasion and reassure American allies. Many of Thursday’s 384 arrivals from the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., were groggy after a 17-hour flight on their chartered 747 airliner. But as they gathered for food and supplies, most knew they would be headed to the Kuwaiti desert within a day. With U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan headed to Baghdad for what many consider the last chance at a peaceful resolution to the standoff, the troops were coming from Fort Stewart to bolster the 25,000 U.S. servicemen and women already in the gulf region. Several thousand more are expected from Georgia during the next week. The troops will train like normal, firing weapons, maneuvering in the desert, keeping trucks, computers and radios working.
Unrest over rising food prices flared again when mobs attacked Chinese-owned shops and homes in a town 1120 miles northeast of Jakarta Piles of tires were set afire sending palls of black smoke over the town of Kendari on Sulawesi island Riots began one month ago when mobs suffering under the worst economic crisis in three decades vented their outrage on a scapegoat used in the past: Chinese merchants Sweeping austerity measures under a $40 billion International Monetary und bailout have exacerbated the economic despair.
And kidnappers seized four U.N. military observers in the former Soviet republic of Georgia today. Police tracked down and surrounded the heavily armed gang, which threatened to execute its captives. After barricading themselves in a house, the abductors armed with assault rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers demanded that the government free seven suspects in last week’s failed assassination attempt against President Eduard Shevardnadze. Georgian officials identified the kidnappers’ leader as Gocha Estebua and said he masterminded the attack on Shevardnadze. The kidnappers opened their assault by shelling the U.N.
observers’ headquarters, then abducted the four officers and stole one of their vehicles in the western Georgian town of Zugdidi, police said.
And that’s just a sampling of what happened on February 21, 1998 as reported by The BBC World Service Newshour.
