Around the world
ERUPTION: Volcanic ash catapulted more than five miles into the sky after two explosions Monday, billowing like a gray carpet over Old Towne, Montserrat. The first of the afternoon eruptions rivaled a Saturday explosion that was the biggest since the Montserrat volcano came to life July 18 after centuries of dormancy.
CLOSER TIES? In a sign that Amman is moving even further from neighboring Iraq, U.S. Air Force jet fighters flying patrols over southern Iraq are being temporarily based in Jordan. The deployment is the first time U.S. warplanes enforcing a "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq will use Jordanian bases.
SURROUNDED: Turkish ground troops closed in Tuesday on hundreds of Kurdish rebels in a major offensive that has already claimed at least 129 lives. Tuesday's fighting was concentrated in a mountainous area of southeastern Turkey.
Across the nation
DOING BETTER: Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, recovering from heart surgery and a stroke, is able to smile, squeeze relatives' hands and take a few steps in a walker. "He's very alert . . . and his doctors have him sitting up in a chair," said Roberta Tinajero of Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. Bradley, 78, was in fair condition and still unable to speak.
CONFESSION: A postal worker in Hicksville, N.Y., has confessed to beating five prostitutes to death in his house, then dismembering and dumping the body parts in garbage bins, police said. "His choice of weapons was hammer, barbell or bat," a law enforcement source told The Associated Press. Robert Shulman, 42, was arraigned Monday on two counts of murder in the slayings of two prostitutes.
In Washington
HEARING: The Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a hearing April 23 to determine what happened to the millions deposited into Swiss banks by European Jews before the Holocaust. "Huge sums of wealth vanished, and some of it may be sitting in Swiss banks today," the committee's chairman, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., said Monday.
In other news . . .
MORE YOUNG Chinese children die of pneumonia than any other illness, according to a health institute survey published Tuesday . . . GLORIA FELDT, a high-energy Arizona advocate for women's reproductive rights, has been picked to head the national parent organization for Planned Parenthood. . . . SOUTH KOREAN students said on Tuesday they will allow the body of a colleague who died in a protest rally to be buried, but vowed their campaign to wrest an apology from President Kim Young-sam would not cease.