Around the world
SWORN IN: Roman Herzog took the oath as Germany's president Friday, telling countrymen they must show nervous neighbors they have nothing to fear from the bigger and stronger unified Germany. Herzog, 60, spoke in a half-hour televised address after being sworn in to replace Richard von Weizsaecker at the Reichstag, Germany's former and future parliament building.ANNIVERSARY: Prince Charles marked his 25th anniversary as Prince of Wales on Friday with a low-key ceremony and a less-than-rapturous welcome. Crowds were small, and a few protesters booed as the 45-year-old heir to the throne arrived at Caernarvon Castle in Caernarvon, Wales, where Queen Elizabeth II presented him to her Welsh subjects in 1969. Some here feel that Wales does not get enough time or attention from the prince, who does not have a house in Wales.
YEMEN: Northern and southern forces fought with artillery and rockets around the southern stronghold of Aden on Friday, shooting down yet another cease-fire in Yemen's 2-month-old civil war. The Moscow-brokered truce was the eighth to come and go in the war, which is believed to have killed thousands and left Aden - a port city of some 400,000 residents and refugees - suffering from water, food and power shortages.
NAZI FILES: The United States on Friday returned a collection of 25 million Nazi files held since the end of World War II at Berlin's Document Center to the German government. Detailed and comprehensive personal files on the approximately 11 million members of the former NSDAP, or Nazi party, are arousing the most interest. These were discovered in 1945 in the southern German city of Munich, where Nazi officials had planned to shred them.
CRACKDOWN: Chinese Premier Li Peng defended the army crackdown on China's democracy movement in 1989, arguing Friday that history will show it was necessary for world peace. "If we had not taken those measures, it would have been worse in China than in the Soviet Union and the East European countries" since the collapse of communism, the Austria Press Agency quoted him as saying during a meeting with a group of reporters in Vienna, Austria.
Across the nation
LAWSUIT: Philip Morris filed suit seeking to strike down a new Florida law that allows the state to sue tobacco companies for millions in smoking-related Medicaid payments, officials said Friday. The cigarette company's lawsuit, filed late Thursday in Leon County circuit court, was joined by the National Association of Convenience Stores and a group of Florida grocery stores. The controversial new state law took effect Friday. By some accounts, tobacco companies could face nearly $1 billion a year in potential repayments to Florida's residents from the landmark legislation.
THREAT: A New Jersey police officer who wrote a book called "How to Cheat on Your Wife And Not Get Caught" was charged with threatening to kill his estranged spouse, authorities said Friday. "I'll chop you into bits. I'll do to you what O.J. Simpson did to his wife," Sgt. Joe McCullough allegedly told her, according to a police complaint filed in Linwood, about eight miles west of Atlantic City.
SLAYINGS: A bar owner and three other people were shot to death as his 4-year-old son slept in a back office in Virginia Beach, Va. No arrests were made in the slayings. Police spokesman Lewis Thurston said the motive may have been robbery.
In Washington
REACTORS: Cracks have been found in the core shrouds of nine reactors at U.S. nuclear power plants, but a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said Friday the cracks do not pose any immediate safety concerns. Cracks have been discovered in welds of the core shrouds - which direct the flow of water inside the reactor - of nine boiling water reactors in Eastern and Midwestern states.
CHERNOBYL: The United States and Ukraine finished a study on ways to replace power from the Chernobyl plant, a step toward closing the Ukrainian plant that caused the world's worst nuclear accident, the Energy Department said Friday. "This report is an important step in identifying acceptable alternatives to the continued operation of Chernobyl and in achieving its earliest possible shutdown," Deputy Energy Secretary Bill White said in a statement.
Other news
FLORIDA STATE troopers will no longer have to be blasted with pepper spray now that the state has suspended a policy requiring them to get a taste of the chemical weapon firsthand before they use it. . . . A GROUP of 200 Americans who spent a week in Cuba, defying the U.S. embargo against that country, returned to the United States Friday. No members of the group were arrested. . . . EL SALVADOR was left without a Supreme Court Friday in the midst of a post-civil war crime wave because of the failure of congress to reach consensus on a new chief justice.