World Briefs

Author: Derek Schlickeisen

FRENCH JOB PROTESTS

More than a million protesters - mostly students - participated yesterday in sometimes violent protests against new youth employment laws across France. The laws in question would allow employers incorporated in France to terminate employees under the age of 26 without explanation anytime during their first two years of work. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin claims the reforms will keep France competitive in the world market while critics say the new policy will erode the nation's economic safety net. International observers have called the protests "a real test of… de Villepin's resolve" on the issue.

--BBC, Paris

MISSING WAR CRIMINAL

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, wanted for war crimes by a court in Sierra Leone, disappeared Tuesday from a Nigerian villa days before he was to be delivered for trial. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the arrest of his guards, saying, "We will get to the bottom of it." Taylor, in exile since 2003, was once jailed in the United States for embezzling $900,000 from the Liberian government but escaped with four other convicts from a Massachusetts prison in 1985 after serving only one year. In 1989 he returned to Liberia and launched the revolt that overthrew the existing dictatorship and led to his presidency. Taylor's is descended from the freed U.S. slaves who established the nation of Liberia in the late 1800s.

--CNN, Lagos, Nigeria

ISRAELI ELECTIONS

Israeli Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that his Kadima party was projected to win an estimated 29 to 32 seats in that country's 120-member parliament. Olmert said his party's election victory represented an affirmative referendum on his proposal to sacrifice parts of the West Bank and impose a border between his country and Palestine if the peace process remains stalled. As part of Olmert's plan, "isolated settlements" in the Israeli-occupied West Bank will be abandoned and larger sections of territory fortified by 2010.

-Reuters, Jerusalem

IRAQ KIDNAPPINGS

Twenty-one bodies were found and 35 individuals reported kidnapped in Baghdad Tuesday, according to U.S. authorities. In four separate incidents, gunmen dressed as Iraqi police commandos snatched customers and employees from business establishments across the city. General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the kidnappings are especially worrisome because it is not known whether they were the work of insurgents or organized kidnapping rings.

-CNN, Baghdad