Around the world
AMBUSH: Gunmen ambushed and robbed three British aid workers on a relief mission in central Bosnia. One of the men was killed and the other two were wounded as they fled, officials said Friday. The bloodshed highlighted growing lawlessness and desperation in central Bosnia, where food is dangerously short. Aid officials warned such attacks could endanger their mission to feed hungry Bosnians. Britain on Friday suspended its humanitarian convoys to former Yugoslavia as a result of the attack.BELARUS: The ouster of Belarus' head of state is part of a "creeping coup" that will steer the former Soviet republic away from fledgling market reforms and back into the arms of Russia, reformers warn. Lawmakers met Friday to discuss a successor to Stanislav Shushkevich, who was voted out as parliament speaker Wednesday after being implicated in a corruption scandal. But reformers in the nation, located between Russia and Poland, said the corruption charges were just an excuse by hard-liners made more confident by the decline of reform forces in Moscow.
Across the nation
KEVORKIAN: Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from house arrest Thursday by a judge who overturned Michigan's ban on assisted suicide and dismissed two of three charges against him. Oakland County Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper was the third judge to reject the ban, put in effect about a year ago to stop Kevorkian. The judge dismissed assisted suicide charges in the Oakland County deaths of a 72-year-old woman with Lou Gehrig's disease and a 61-year-old man with bone cancer. Both died in Kevorkian's apartment building last fall.
CRASH AWARD: A jury in Cleveland awarded $8.1 million to survivors of a surgeon killed in the 1992 crash of USAir Flight 405 at New York's LaGuardia. The award Thursday was the first from the ill-fated flight to be reached in court. Ten other lawsuits were settled out of court. Flight 405 from New York to Cleveland crashed attempting to take off in a snowstorm. Investigators cited icy wings as the likely cause. Twenty-seven people died and 24 were injured.