Officers charged in immigrant's murder

NEW YORK -- Four white police officers were charged with murder Wednesday for killing an unarmed African immigrant in a hail of 41 bullets -- a shooting that has led to months of protests and a painful examination of police tactics and race relations.

Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy pleaded innocent in a Bronx courtroom to second-degree murder. They could get 25 years to life in prison on the murder charges.

Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old street vendor from Guinea with no criminal record, was shot 19 times Feb. 4 in his vestibule by members of an elite street-crime unit looking for a rape suspect.

Through their lawyers, the officers have said they thought Diallo had a gun.

The slaying has frayed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's already strained relationship with the black community, and many have accused him of failing to understand the depth of New Yorkers' anger.

Nunavut becomes newest Canadian territory

IQALUIT, Nunavut -- Dignitaries and foreign TV crews crowded into this small island town Wednesday, and Inuit chefs prepared a huge feast featuring caribou, musk ox and raw seal to celebrate the creation of Nunavut, Canada's newest territory.

Nunavut is being created out of the eastern 60 percent of the Northwest Territories, culminating more than 20 years of lobbying by Inuit leaders.

About 85 percent of Nunavut's 25,000 people are Inuit, as are 15 of the 19 candidates elected in February to the territorial Legislature.

U.N. court indicts Serb paramilitary leader

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A U.N. court revealed Wednesday it has secretly indicted a notorious Serb paramilitary leader for Bosnian war-era crimes and issued a veiled warning to the Yugoslav government not to deploy his feared "Tiger" forces in Kosovo.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal also threatened to hold Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accountable for any atrocities in Kosovo, where thousands of refugees say the military has forced them from their homes.
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