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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 21, 2002
DUBLIN, Ireland -- With final results tallied from a referendum here that endorsed a major expansion of the European Union, diplomats and officials across the continent on Sunday celebrated the vote with some relief, saying it heralded a redrawing of the continent's frontiers.
The ballot reversed an Irish vote last year to reject the enlargement.
This time, official figures showed almost 63 percent of voters favored the Treaty of Nice, which sets the rules for expanding the 15-nation European Union by 2004 to embrace 10 new members, mostly Eastern and Central European countries once part of the Soviet hegemony. Ireland was the only European Union member whose constitution required a referendum on the issue.
In a stunning upset in June 2001, 54 percent of Irish voters rejected the expansion in a turnout of only a third of eligible voters. The treaty required unanimous support among all 15 member states and the other 14 had already approved it by parliamentary vote.
After passionate campaigning on both sides before the ballot Saturday, about 48 percent of registered voters turned out and, in some districts, polled as much as 73 percent in favor of the expansion. The outcome ended a suspenseful vigil for many in the 10 countries waiting to see if they would be allowed into the union: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Opponents of President Hugo Chavez hope to bring Venezuela to a standstill today in a 12-hour general strike -- their latest effort to push him out of office.
The government planned to deploy 3,000 National Guardsmen in Caracas -- mindful of what happened the last time there was a general strike: the April 12-14 coup that briefly toppled Chavez and left dozens dead in rioting.
It will be the third general strike against Chavez in less than a year, a product of the deepening divide between Venezuelans who despise him as an autocrat and those who idolize him as a champion of the poor.
On Sunday, Chavez claimed that Venezuelan intelligence officials thwarted a plot to assassinate him as he returned from a European tour early Saturday morning.
Chavez said authorities surprised a group of assassins who had been poised to shoot down the presidential airplane with a bazooka as it prepared to land at the Simon Bolivar International Airport, outside of Caracas, he said.
BOUAKE, Ivory Coast -- French troops fanned out across Ivory Coast on Sunday, moving between government and rebel forces to secure a fledgling cease-fire after a month of fighting that split the West African country and sent tens of thousands of terrified residents fleeing.
But in the rebel heartland of Bouake, Ivory Coast's second-largest city, many residents remained wary, fearful fighting could restart.
Even as French troops rolled across the country, through the cocoa and coffee fields of the West to the eastern reaches near the Ghanaian border, scores of residents fled the city, heading for Brobo, about 15 miles to the east.
Aid workers estimate 200,000 people, about a third of Bouake's population, have fled.
VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II beatified six people Sunday, adding founders of religious orders and two teenage Ugandan missionary "martyrs" to the swelling ranks of those on the path to possible sainthood.
Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood and requires evidence of one miracle after the person's death, except in the case of martyrs. Nonmartyrs are canonized a saint after the Vatican confirms one more miracle.
Among the six elevated Sunday were Ugandan teenagers Daudi Okelo and Jildo Irwa, who worked as missionaries in northern Uganda until they were killed in 1918.
Also beatified were Bishop Andrea Giacinto Longhin, a Capucchin who was bishop of Treviso during World War I; the Rev. Marcantonio Durando, the Italian founder of the Nazareth Sisters order; Marie de la Passion, who was borne Helene Marie de Chappotin de Neuville and founded the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary; and Liduina Meneguzzi, a member of the Institute of the Sisters of St. Francis de Sales.