World in brief

U.N. to study itself in killing of observers

NAIROBI, Kenya - The United Nations has expanded an inquiry into the brutal killings of two of its military observers in the Congo to include allegations from its employees that the U.N. Mission in Congo was partly responsible for their deaths.

In a public announcement Monday from its headquarters in New York, the United Nations said it would investigate "the allegations and circumstances" surrounding the deaths of Maj. Safwat al Oran, 37, of Jordan and Capt. Siddon Davis Banda, 29, of Malawi.

Both were savagely murdered last month in the remote outpost of Mongbwalu, some 40 miles north of Bunia, where rival Hema and Lendu tribal militias are battling for control of mineral-rich Ituri province.

WIESEL HOSPITALIZED: Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who lectures at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, was released from intensive care Tuesday after being treated for a respiratory infection. Dimitrios Linos, director of surgery at Igeia Hospital in Athens, Greece, said Wiesel, 74, could be discharged from the hospital this week.

N. KOREA DIPLOMACY: Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the United States had lined up broad support to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, but a U.S. initiative to interdict shipments of nuclear materials brought a new threat of retaliation from the Pyongyang government, which declared Tuesday that any blockade would bring "limitless" retaliation, and the spread of war to Japan.

BIG JET MISSING IN AFRICA: A Boeing 727 parked for 14 months has been missing since it took off from the Luanda airport around dinnertime May 25, setting off a continentwide search that includes the CIA, the State Department and a number of African nations. Their fear is that terrorists could stage a replay of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, using the plane in a suicide attack somewhere in Africa.

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