Bolivia
Street peddlers riot against work permits
Police used tear gas Thursday to scatter thousands of street vendors who paralyzed La Paz with flaming blockades on major downtown streets, protesting threatened restrictions on their work. There were no reports of injuries or arrests.
About 18,000 protesters flooded streets near city hall, burning boxes and paper at intersections to protest a plan by Mayor Juan del Granado to allow street access only to vendors who received city permission before 1994.
The mayor says the measure aims to bring some order to the streets, which are now crowded with peddlers. There are nearly 100,000 street vendors in Bolivia's capital and more than 50 percent are likely to be affected. Talks between city officials and protest leaders were under way. Unless there's a change, the plan is expected to take affect in April.
TOKYO
Tainted blood begins hepatitis scare
Tainted blood products used in Japan until 1988 may have exposed hundreds of people to hepatitis, the Health Ministry said Thursday.
The ministry released a list of 803 hospitals that used the products, and urged patients who took them to be tested. The drugs were administered before the approval of heat-treated blood products that eliminate the danger of infection.
Similar tainted blood products were responsible for nearly 2,000 hemophiliacs in Japan contracting HIV in the 1980s. Government officials are suspected of contributing to the infections by blocking approval for safer drugs to allow domestic companies to develop their own products.
After the HIV scandal broke, the Health Ministry in 1996 tested for possible HIV infection from the untreated blood products. However, it did not conduct similar tests for hepatitis until this year.
LONDON
Famous retailer cutting jobs, closing stores
In a major restructuring, struggling British retailer Marks & Spencer said on Thursday that it plans to close all its stores in continental Europe, cut about 6 percent of its work force and put its Brooks Brothers chain up for sale. The clothing seller said it also plans to close its British catalogue business, but it will refurbish two-thirds of its British stores.
Chief executive Luc Vandevelde said the moves were designed to help the firm focus on its core business in Britain.
The move will see 4,390 jobs go 3,350 in Europe and just over 1,000 in Britain, including 350 at the company's head office in Baker Street in central London. The company now employs 75,000 people worldwide, including 62,000 in Britain.
BERLIN
Neo-Nazi violence on the increase
German neo-Nazis are increasingly prone to violence, and a far-right party the government wants to ban for fueling hate crimes gained hundreds of new members last year, the interior minister said Thursday.
"We have to take especially seriously the growing violence of young offenders," Interior Minister Otto Schily said in presenting the annual report of the federal agency that tracks extremists.
The number of far-right extremists ready to use violence grew to 9,700 last year from 9,000 the year before, he said. The numbers are estimates based on federal authorities' surveillance of the far-right.
"The poison of anti-foreigner, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic propaganda" is becoming increasingly linked to violence, Schily said.
Membership in the National Democratic Party, the focus of a government crackdown on Germany's burgeoning far-right scene, rose to 6,500 up 500 from 1999, the ministry said.
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